Building blocks

From the pen of Angel Gonzalez, one of the powerhouses behind the ATR protest Weingarten did her best to sabotage on the 24th but which took on a life of its own:

"The lack of information, transparency and open debate in our union denies member input into critical issues about pedagogy and historic union rights. An uninformed membership gives even a well-intentioned leadership free rein to function as it pleases. As the economy worsens, we need to take a strong stand in defense of the rights of teachers and communities, rather than to facilitate the erosion of all that has been built over the years."

You can read Gonzalez's whole column over at Ednotes, which Norm posted this afternoon just as I was writing up another example of how Unity keeps gaming the word democracy. It centers around Leo Casey's post over at Edwize on the ATR settlement, and before I get into that, let me just say that anyone can tell from the title where Unity's affections lie: "UFT, DoE Agreement Addresses ATR Educator Issue, Saves Money for Schools." They'll support the DoE's need to save money for schools all right, and throw career security for all union members out the bloody window. That stinks, and Norm is so right when he says "their idea is to give the union leaders a seat at the table while the rank and file gain little."

Weingarten's lost her way. She's been weakening the whole structure of the union for more than a decade, disinforming the membership, letting the abusive, misguided DoE degrade our profession and turn us into facilitators, and collaborating on simply horrible goals for the children entrusted to our care.

I don't like the new ATR agreement, and have already said so in my own column. It lays the groundwork for making tiers for tenured educators, and we don't need no tiers at this point. No one's tenure should be better than or different from anyone else's, but that's what they've agreed to. What we need is solidarity, and that message is not getting out to the rank and file. That's because Weingarten's not sending it.

In fact, none of the oppositional voices in the union like this agreement or the false notion of democracy Unity keeps hiding behind. And these people make up a substantial part of the fully credentialed membership. (We can discount the untenured thousands, since they're mostly too afraid to get involved with union at all at this stage in their careers and are in general too busy with grad school anyway.)

TJC thinks the agreement paves the way for firing ATRs and the membership needs to get educated. ICE member James Eterno put it through a strainer last Sunday on the ICE blog (a must-read), and various bloggers have been posting a fair amount all along on Unity's unrecognizable democracy. Examples can be seen in Ednotes ("That is why unless power within the union is shifted from the top, teachers will be given the illusion they are professionals but treated as drones"), on the ICE blog (pseudo-democracy), in NYC Educator (when only a quarter of the members vote, there's no check on Unity's tactics), and a couple of times already on this blog (here for how distribution and costs makes it difficult to get our message out and here for democracy or demogoguery).

It's funny how it's coming from all sides. In Weingarten's vision of labor unionism, totalitarianism is in and democracy is most definitely out.


Getting back to Leo's blog, here's the comment I tried to post:

Any union leader who backs this agreement should resign.

You people have created 4 kinds of tenure, which paves the way for throwing some of us under the bus in the next contract. That’s cause for concern or condemnation, but not for surprise: it’s the way you always negotiate our givebacks — incrementally, hoping we don’t notice.

This agreement only creates incentives to re-hire SOME of the ATRs back, the centrally funded ones, and Weingarten was very clever in her press release to avoid mentioning there’s more than one kind. She says there more than once that the DoE can hire “from the ATR pool,” avoiding any mention of the fact that there is no incentive whatsoever to hire back ATRs whose positions have been cut and who remain on the school’s budget.

So, here are the 4 kinds of tenure, though I’m sure you’re not losing any sleep over what you’ve done:

1. Tenured educators in real positions, paid out of the school’s budget.

2. Tenured educators in real positions, paid in part by central for eight years; principals get extra money the first year to sweeten the deal.

3. Tenured educators in provisional positions one year at a time, paid in part by central. Principals will get that extra cash only if they keep them on permanently. It’s like an auditioning for your job. Disgraceful that you allowed this.

4. Tenured educators who will remain ATRs, paid for by central or by the school. Obviously, the least privileged category: the teacher’s qualifications and years of service make absolutely no difference to anyone. In fact, the vets are worse off, because two-for-the-price-one hiring still flourishes citywide.

Comment by woodlass — November 29, 2008 @ 12:26 pm

When I checked it today, not being logged on, it seemed to have been removed: there were 6 comments, but not mine. Then I logged in and tried again. Oddly enough, it showed up just the way I wrote it, time-stamped and all. What's going on? Either it wasn't deleted properly by the site administrator, or they've devised a way to make you believe your comment is viewable (i.e., if you're logged in, you'll see it), but it really isn't. That would be a whole other level of deception I don't care to think about. I prefer to think it's just a technical glitch, and they meant to take it out entirely.


I want to take this opportunity to re-visit Edwize's General Rules for commenters. Keep in mind when you read these rules that Unity keeps proclaiming far and wide how democratic our union is. No. 8 below specifically says so, and nos. 4 and 10 imply the same. Then keep in mind how much money is going directly out of our salaries into theirs.

1. You should treat this form of discussion just as you would a face-to-face conversation. There will be no tolerance for foul language, abusive attacks or threatening of members or moderators, or any other form of harassment. If this rule is broken, you will be immediately removed from this blog. Proper etiquette and charity must be observed at ALL times by ALL users. Others here may be as adamant in their opinions and ideas as you are.
[While I did say that anyone who backs this agreement "should resign," it's only an opinion. I didn't use any foul language, and I would certainly be comfortable telling Casey face-to-face that I think he should resign. Even if I had said something a little more threatening, like: "Let's get these bums out of office!" it'd be like throwing a pebble at the Hoover Dam, a threat to nobody, and they'd all probably have a good laugh. That's actually the problem with the totalitarian structure they've built. They've made themselves impervious.]

2. If in the judgment of the moderators we believe that comments are frivolous and non-constructive, we will delete them.
[My comment was hardly frivolous or non-constructive. I think it is totally in the members' interest to know when tenure has been diluted, because the next step is tenure eliminated.]

3. If a moderator has declined your post, please drop that thread. Advice from the moderators that your post is inappropriate should be taken seriously. Your participation is desired, but a person’s right and desire to participate ends where it begins to violate the right and desire of others to participate and harms Edwize’s capacity to maintain a welcoming forum for all. If you disagree with the host or moderator you may appeal in the proper place at http://edwize.org/contact/.
[A forum for "all"? I object to this boldface lie. No need to check the dictionary definition of the word "all," we know exactly who "all" means to the Unity moderators, and it doesn't include the oppositional voices.]

4. All points of view are welcome on EdWize, with the following exceptions: EdWize will limit commenters to one comment a day if, in its sole discretion, the commenter is “trolling“: (We’re not trying to insult anyone it’s an actual term to describe an activity on blogs.)
["All points of view are welcome" — another boldface lie. And I certainly wasn't trolling. The whole agreement is pertinent to my career, having been an unplaced ATR — or a displaced teacher, if you like — for more than a year.]

a. Posts numerous times a day with the intent of dominating, re-directing or hijacking the thread.
[Not guilty.]; or

b. Posts numerous times a day and insults or calls other commenters names or repeatedly makes the same point with the effect of annoying other commenters.
[Not guilty.]

c. Cross Posting articles from other sites, from copyrighted sources or posting the same message to multiple threads is considered spamming.
[Not guilty.]

5. Obscene, slanderous, abusive, attacks, expressions of prejudice and bigotry, or use of profanity by any commenter will not be tolerated and will result in the deletion of the comment and the banning of the commenter.
[Not guilty, but I wonder if they notify you that you've been banned. I didn't get notified yet. It must be something like Guantanamo, where they accuse you and diminish your rights in secret. I'm going to post a favorable comment and see if I've been banned outright.]

6. Comments will remain editable for 20 minutes to allow the commenter to correct grammatical errors.

7. The first comment from new users automatically goes into the moderation queue.

8. The UFT is a democratic organization. However, since the Landrum-Griffin Act prohibits the use of union dues for internal election activity and since the union’s political caucuses run candidates for elective offices within the leadership, comments that argue for or against one political caucus or another will be removed.
[Not guilty on the 2nd sentence. As for being democratic, when does misrepresentation become fraud?]

9. Please use upper and lower case letters, as appropriate, for better legibility.

10. EdWize was built as an advocacy vehicle for labor and education issues, if you are a member of the UFT and need help in any way feel free to contact your borough office, or program directly, or send an email to blog@uft.org.
[Might do.]

Whether this particular comment of mine has been deleted or not, we all know Edwize for what it is: a Unity armband. But, does everyone?

Our first job will always be towards our students, but in this degraded union, we need to be talking to our newest colleagues as well, and to everyone else who's bought the Unity line.

After all, that's what education's all about.

What's all this about arbitration?

Everyone and his uncle knows that the grievance system we had a couple of years ago was dismantled by the present contract.

In its place, a denial at Step I means that the grievant and UFT rep get to face off at Step II against the Chancellor’s rep (who runs the hearing), the principal (most likely phoning in from a remote site), and reps from the district and Human Resources.

At this point the whole thing, which seems pretty much rigged against members in the first place, comes to a complete halt unless the UFT grievance team comes riding in like knights in shining armor to take the case forward to arbitration.


I’ve had an overwhelming urge in recent weeks to re-acquaint myself with Article 22.C of the contract, which constitutes the arbitration process being practiced these days.

The essential points are these:

— A denied Step II doesn't, as mentioned above, go automatically to arbitration;

— You can’t get to the arbitration stage without going through the other steps (obviously), unless it’s a class size or group size issue or for some reason the Chancellor’s office missed the deadline at Step II;

— The notice of arbitration filed by the UFT gives a brief statement of the issue and the provision in the Agreement that’s been violated;

— The panel of arbitrators includes 7 people already agreed upon by the UFT and the Board to serve for renewable one-year terms. There’s a process for not renewing the services of any of these arbitrators at year’s end, and if a replacment arbitrator isn't installed in time, no problem: the same “normal” number of dates have to be scheduled in any case (in another process);

— The parties stipulate the facts beforehand where possible;

— They agree to make expeditious decisions and will not normally file briefs or order transcripts;

— The American Arbitration Association’s voluntary arbitration rules relating to the hearings, fees, and expenses apply;

— The arbitrator can’t go against or modify anything in the contract, cannot make any decision “involving Board discretion” in the contract (unless he feels the Board disregarded something in it, discriminated against the individual, or acted capriciously), and can’t interfere with the Board’s by-laws, etc.;

— The decision the arbitrator is final and the parties must abide by it;

— The arbitrator can determine a remedy, including back pay, but not a monetary penalty;

— The Board agrees to apply the arbitrator’s rulings in all similar situations, and UFT agrees it will bring no new grievances or continue any old ones that are similar to those already resolved by arbitration.

At the same time all this is going on, Article 22.D says that the Board can continue acting against you until the final decision comes down. Moreover, the UFT can't pursue a grievance on anything outside the contract without your consent (there seems to be a typo in that clause: D.2.: “in behalf”), and you get to retain any rights granted by other protections, like Section 15 of the NYS Civil Rights Law and the State Ed Law.

(Actually, I’m not sure about this last item, because that Section 15 seems to contradict the paragraph in section C.c., which says the arbitrator’s decision is “final”:

§ 15. Right of appeal not to be denied. . . . a citizen shall not be deprived of the right to appeal to the legislature, or to any public officer, board, commission or other public body, for the redress of grievances, on account of employment in the civil service of the state or any of its civil divisions or cities.

But, heck, I’m not a lawyer.)

What really made me look into this whole issue of arbitration more deeply was the an article by Stephanie Mencimer in the March/April issue of Mother Jones called “Don’t Tell it to the Judge,” which gives some background into what she calls an “arbitration trend” in this country.

She says that after the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that Congress had created a “national policy favoring arbitration,” there was a dramatic increase in mandatory binding arbitration. That’s not our problem here, since we're not dealing here with mandatory anything, but what she says about arbitrators is very disturbing:

Justice Hugo Black once observed [that] arbitrators can be “wholly unqualified” to oversee complicated cases. Indeed, private arbitrators aren’t required to follow the law or established precedent, or even issue written decisions. Many have legal backgrounds, but there is no standard dictating that they be lawyers or credentialed in any way — yet their decisions can’t be appealed.

In a series of decisions, Mencimer says, courts have ruled “that an arbitration decision can stand even if it’s legally wrong and causes ‘substantial injustice.’” Furthermore, “courts shouldn’t review arbitrators’ decisions even when they are ‘wacky,’” and people challenging arbitration awards in court “ought to be sanctioned.” WOW.

If there is a national trend toward arbitration, it doesn't seem to be a positive thing, and we need to be vigilant.


Perhaps UFT management is being deliberately obscure on our grievance/arbitration process, not to mention way short on documentation, so that they can continue to play games and make private deals with the other side. In any case, there’s a whole lot of stuff we’re not being told much about . . .

. . . Like if it’s true what I heard, that the UFT and the Board have to agree on winning roughly the same number of cases.

. . . Like the names of the arbitrators, and their backgrounds. In the past, we used to go up against people we knew: the superintendent and their creepy little hit-people that came into the building from time to time. Tell us some more about these people, on the UFT website if you'd like, and prove to us you’re taking this seriously.

. . . Like the "normal" number of cases that grievance teams in each borough are taking to arbitration, perhaps even broken down by category.

. . . Like if the parties are supposed to stipulate the facts beforehand “whenever possible,” what reasons might there be for not being able to do this.

. . . Like if the parties would “not normally file briefs or order transcripts,” when would doing such things be actually appropriate and called for.

. . . Like when Leo Casey a couple of years ago — having already admitted that the UFT only takes the strongest cases to arbitration because of scheduling restraints (probably to keep the stats higher as well) — defended the UFT’s record of successful results this way:

As a general rule, the UFT has a very strong win rate at arbitration, with victories in well over half of the cases we take. This is considered a very high union success rate within the industrial relations field. Most of the credit for that rate belongs to our UFT grievance department, but it also indicates that the DOE is pursuing cases which should have been settled without arbitration, because the position on their side simply lacked merit. (Oct. 12, 2005):

then it follows that if many of the Board’s cases “lacked merit” way back in 2005, what must it be like now in this current free-for-all, where principals and administrators are having a field day with immoral and improper attacks and are being shamelessly backed by chancellor’s lackeys. Let's hear whether with all the increasingly aggressive, malicious, union-bashing, and possibly discriminatory Board practices going on, the union has started to balk at the limit on the number of cases they can take to arbitration.

. . . And another thing for Casey. He said back on Oct. 4, 2005 that the UFT was attempting to streamline things: "by eliminating a redundant step in the grievance process, in which the superintendent invariably ruled against the grievant, we have made some progress in this area.” Well, I was told by someone in the union only recently that the chancellor’s reps at Step II are ruling against members practically all the time, and that grievants should actually expect denials at that level. So, I’d like an update on the “progress” Casey thought the union was making , with some figures please, because it seems to me we’re just being blown out of the water by a higher level of blowfish.

. . . And lastly, if the arbitrators’ rulings must, as it says in the contract, be carried forward and applied to similar cases now and future, I’d really, really like to see a list of these rulings on the UFT website, so we all can figure out the substance and extent of this new era of post-contractual law.