Will the UFT stand up to Bloomberg?

[Hannah Bell]

THE 200,000 members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) received their ballots for the citywide union elections this March, in the midst of some of the fiercest attacks on our union in decades...

The key question in the UFT elections is what strategy to take against this rising tide of attacks. The UFT has been dominated for decades by the Unity caucus, which has made major concessions in work rules and job security in exchange for pay raises. In opposition, a variety of groups have sprung up to challenge this concessionary agenda and demand a mobilization of the membership to resist the city's demands. Greater union democracy is also a key part of the opposition's platform...

ESSENTIALLY, THE opposition groups want the union to stop making concessionary deals with the city, and instead galvanize the membership to take a stand against the attacks from Bloomberg and Klein.
For example, when the union's contract with the city expired in October 2009, the UFT had the opportunity to publicize the city's draconian union-busting demands to its membership and the city at large amid a closely contested mayoral election. Instead, the union sat out the election and chose the passive option of going through a fact-finding procedure at with the state labor board.

The same fact-finding procedure resulted in major concessions in the 2005 contract. This time around, members were kept in the dark by a negotiating committee sworn to secrecy about the negotiations--that is, until the mayor trumpeted his contracted demands in a nationally publicized speech. To date, there has been no hint of action on the contract talks...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/04/01/will-the-uft-stand-up-to-bloomberg

[maryf]

1. Cross posting here...

At another OP ,the Myth of the Selfish Striker, I just compared a sentence from that article to teacher's unions:

"The anti-union lobby claims that it doesn't mind unions as long as they're responsible, but it's more accurate to say they don't mind unions as long as they're ineffective. They'd be happy if a union was like a church group, and told its members, "We've all been given a 40 percent wage cut, so in response, we're going to have some lovely Madeira cake and a game of whist.""

Just had to repeat it here...

We need a separate grass roots teachers' union, and a nationwide teachers' strike...

K&R of course...

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Probably not. But I voted ICE and encouraged my chapter to....

... do likewise.

Mulgrew is... in the surface, anyway... a significant improvement over his predecessor. That will be enough to ensure a lopsided victory from a general membership that is increasingly young, increasingly unschooled in the union, its politics and history, and just grateful to have a job in this economy.