Why I Support COPE, and Why You Should Too

For those who may not know, COPE is the political fund of the UFT and NYSUT. Contributions are strictly optional. 

I've been chapter leader for eight years now, and each and every one of those years I've received some package or other from UFT urging me to do a COPE drive. In fact, a few years back, I decided to take them up on it. So I invited a Queens rep over to a meeting, but the rep texted me after the meeting had begun asking me what time to show. I was left to largely improvise a meeting, but that was OK because, as usual, these were pretty lively times and we all had much to discuss.

I was interested in supporting leadership at that time because it was hanging tough against Cuomo's insistence we rate teachers on junk science. And when the rep showed up, he said, after we'd gone years with no contract, "Don't worry, Michael Mulgrew is very smart. You'll get your contract, because Bloomberg can't get evaluation without it." Despite that proclamation, virtually every sentient NY City teacher remembers ending up with an evaluation system devised by Reformy John King and no contract. My members still ask me to bring the rep back so they can throw stuff at him. And by the end of that meeting, only one UFT delegate and I had signed up for COPE.

I continued to pay because I felt it gave me marginal cred with leadership, which for reasons I can't fathom, criticized bloggers from time to time. But I didn't see the point in inviting anyone else until very recently, when I heard UFT Political Director Paul Egan speak of the NY constitutional convention vote, coming next November. You probably know that NY State, unlike New Jersey and Illinois, has to pay its share of pension contributions by law. You probably also know that the states I just mentioned, since they don't have to, tend not to pay their share.

This is problematic for those of us who envision a retirement in which we don't have to check prices of canned cat food before purchasing it for lunch. Of course, there are valid arguments against paying into COPE. For one, NYC high schools have absolutely no voice nor vote in NYSUT. For another, COPE has supported some questionable politicians, from Serphin Maltese, who broke two Catholic school unions, to George Pataki, who answered our support by vetoing improvements in the Taylor Law, to teacher-basher Andrew Cuomo, to the execrable Fernando Cabrera.

This notwithstanding, there are powerful forces looking to open a Constitutional Convention, and Egan is not exaggerating when he says they are after our pensions. Upstate teacher Maria May recently sent me this paper describing Reclaim NY, a group that claims to be impartial, but only meets that standard if you believe Fox News is "fair and balanced."

This group is headed by hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, who supports all sorts of right-wing causes, including Breitbart Media, Ted Cruz, and everybody's best buddy Donald Trump (or "the presidential election," as Unity leadership calls him).  Reclaim NY is the very definition of an astroturf group, being 100% financed by Mercer's Family Foundation.

Reclaim NY is very much against taxes, and is suing school districts to try to expose what it deems to be overspending. They seem to have a very reformy outlook, strongly supporting charter schools, religious schools, and our good pal Betsy DeVos. They support a national constitutional convention so it's not a big leap to assume they will support a state one as well. Imagine how much more money New York could devote to charter schools, religious schools, and tax breaks for zillionaires if it simply didn't pay the pensions it's promised NY State teachers.

This is a very real threat, and not just for senior teachers. Our pensions are already under attack by national reformies, and folks like Mercer would probably like nothing better than to do away with them utterly. Right now, the only solid entity I know that's fighting this is our union and AFL-CIO. That's why I went before my staff and made my own pitch for COPE this year, and that's why I signed up another 80-plus members.

I would not be able to sleep at night if I weren't doing my bit to fight Mercer and like-minded reformies. While some of my friends disagree, I will continue to push COPE for now. Hey, if we win in November, maybe we can reconsider. But a country controlled by Donald Trump and his thugs is a very dangerous place for working people. While I frequently disagree with union leadership, this is one area in which I don't want their hands tied.

To them, I say fight this vigorously. Too frequently I see UFT leadership fall down when no one pushes them. They can't afford to do that now. We need to not only support them in this, but also to monitor their actions and progress.

Slippery Talk from Constitutional Convention Advocate

On Saturday I got a message from one of my members about this op-ed in the NY Daily News. It categorizes those of us who oppose it as purveyors of "alternative facts." That's the phrase that Trump stooge Kellyanne Conway used to rationalize outright lies on the part of the President, and it's got a useful ring when you wish to ridicule ideas. The writer ridicules Flanagan for overestimating the costs of a convention, offering no sources, so who knows whether or not that's true?

Personally, I doubt it, because the writer then launches into alternative facts of his own:

Another scare tactic being used to oppose the convention, this time by public employee unions that worry about threats to their entrenched clout, is the claim that a convention could vote to reduce their pensions. The protection for public employee pensions in the state Constitution cannot be eliminated without violating the contract clause of the federal Constitution, which bars states from rescinding contract rights.

Okay, let's grant this writer the possibility that the US Constitution says that. Personally I'm skeptical. If contract rights were so ironclad, how could Detroit have imposed one? And why would we need the Triborough Agreement? Perhaps the writer is correct, and contract rights are ironclad up until they expire. Of course, that doesn't explain how, in times of fiscal emergency, contracts are not necessarily enforced. I've been to many UFT meetings and I've heard about what happens in times of emergency. But let's grant the writer's supposition.

So our pensions are ironclad, given his statement, right up until our contracts expire. Then you're on your own. That doesn't sound so great, does it? Could it be that UFT pensions are only guaranteed until 2018, when our contract expires? Could it be that we're saved because of the Triborough Amendment?

The answer is none of the above, actually. Our pensions are not part of our contract, so whatever the US Constitution may say on the subject, the writer's point is nonsense. Someone is trafficking in alternative facts here, but it isn't the working people of New York State, it isn't the United Federation of Teachers, and it isn't those of us who've worked all our lives under the expectation that the pensions we signed up for would be honored when we retired.

I have my differences with UFT leadership, and I may in fact have mentioned them once or twice on this little blog. But misleading nonsense like this op-ed are just the opening salvo in what will be a long-term attack against the financial security for which we've worked all our working lives. This targets all UFT members and all state employees, whether new, veteran, or retired.

A few weeks ago, I conducted my first and only COPE drive. I recruited 78 members, 79 if you count the one who came to me weeks earlier complaining about the Constitutional Convention. And I may invite UFT in for lunch meetings to recruit further.. I don't expect to support everything that COPE does.

Nonetheless, I don't know of any other organization right now that's going to fight this. Whatever happens with this Constitutional Convention, I'm not gonna say that I didn't do everything within my power to fight it. I've contributed five bucks a paycheck for a number of years, largely because I thought it made me a little more credible as chapter leader. But I didn't ask my members to join me until this year. We need not look far to see what happens when pension promises aren't kept.

We face all kinds of threats, all the time. Sometimes the union is helpful and sometimes it isn't. But as a teacher, I'm all in. If you are, or if you think you ever will be, it's hard for me to understand how you could decline to fight this with every means at your disposal. Come November, if we win, it may be time to reassess this decision. But right now I don't regret it at all.

Update--I wrote the following as a letter to the editor:

I read with interest your op-ed advocating a Constitutional Convention in NY. The writer focuses on “alternative fact” and asserts that pensions will not be renegotiated because they are protected by contract and the US Constitution, UFT pensions are not, in fact, part of our contract. I’d have to assume, since pensions are an independent agreement with the state, that they are not part of other union contracts either. Therefore the writer’s assertion that unions oppose the Constitutional Convention to maintain “entrenched clout” is baseless. The writer either did extremely shoddy research or is himself a purveyor of alternative fact.

Arthur Goldstein, ESL teacher/ UFT Chapter Leader
Francis Lewis High School, Fresh Meadows NY

To COPE or Not to COPE?

I've been paying into COPE for a number of years now, at five bucks a paycheck. For a while, the UFT was hanging tough against the evaluation system. I was pretty happy they were finally showing a little backbone, so I invited a COPE rep to our school. He showed up over an hour late, leaving me to pretty much improvise our meeting. While he only managed to sign me and one of my delegates, he did field a few questions. One was when the hell are we gonna get a raise?

He said that Michael Mulgrew was very smart, and not to worry. He said that we would get our raise, because without it Bloomberg could not get an evaluation system. This statement hung with my members, and as you may recall, Mulgrew dumped the evaluation system into the hands of John King some time before we got a contract.  Members still come up to me asking to bring that guy back so they can throw stuff at him. I have thus far declined to do so.

But there is a vote on a Constitutional Convention coming up next year, and I think it's important we oppose that. I have searched for an organization that opposes it and found none. So the only game in town is COPE. I had been inclined to do a drive in my school at the end of January but my reservations get stronger each and every week.

Of course there are always the good folks who run NYSUT, who buy tables at Cuomo fundraisers, who give to Flanagan and his GOP buds. You know, the ones who said they opposed Common Core when they ran, but then said it was this or anarchy, the folks who said they opposed Cuomo but failed utterly to do so, the folks who said they opposed APPR but failed to do that too. In fact, the only legislative victory they can claim is the one that ensures them double pensions so they don't screw themselves the way they screwed Lee Cutler.

That was kind of a constant. And then, of course, there is their odd vision of strategic planning, which included pulling out all the stops for Hillary Clinton when she was running against Bernie Sanders. A lot of us wondered why we were endorsing someone who had the temerity to lecture us about "public charter schools," among other things. There is the massive and chronic failures to endorse a winning mayoral candidate.

I have a lot of friends around the state who swear they'll never put another dime into COPE. They're horrified by the unresponsiveness of NYSUT leadership, among other things. As a New York City high school teacher, I find it even more objectionable because I have no vote or voice in NYSUT. Why should my money go to fund them, and how can I ask my members to invest their hard-earned pay into an organization that doesn't even pretend to represent them?

The turning point, for me, was when I brought a class size resolution to the UFT and they essentially told me, my school,  tens of thousands of my colleagues, and 1.1 million students to go screw ourselves. I mean, if their objection was to the clause about the arbitrator, as they said, they could have moved to strike it. Clearly they objected to the entire thing, and nothing reinforced that to me more than their repetition of class size matters, but. Once someone says but you can safely disregard  everything and anything that precedes it.

Bottom line is I absolutely agree that we ought to stop the constitutional convention. But if anyone can screw up a campaign to stop it, it's the leadership of NYSUT and the United Federation of Teachers. Still, it's the only game in town as far as financing the anti-Constitutional Convention campaign.

So I'm on the fence, and man it can be painful sitting on a fence. What would you do if you were me?

COPE Is Like Medical Insurance

 I go to a lot of meetings. I go to them in my school all the time. I'm on committees. If anyone in my school is in trouble, so am I. And of course I go to regular school meetings. I am a real meeting guy, I guess, for better or worse, and I go to a lot of meetings outside my building too.

So anyway, last night  I was at a meeting.  The topic was COPE  (the optional fund through which members can voluntarily contribute to UFT and NYSUT political action).  A woman got up and started comparing COPE to medical insurance. Now I'm gonna let you in on a secret. I often hear things I've heard before, and I don't always pay close attention at meetings unless I'm taking notes. But my ears really perked up at that. She follows up by saying if you don’t pay into COPE you might not have medical insurance. I’m only slowly processing this line of thought when the woman opens her mouth again.

Now she says she knows how hard it is to get people to give money. She says boy, if I knew how to get money out of people I could've made a lot more than I did back when I was a teacher. Now she's got my full attention. I'm thinking gee, it's great that you no longer have to get by on some crappy teacher salary, like all the tens of thousands of teachers (among others) who pay to have you do whatever it is we pay you to do. Doubless it can really pay off to sign a loyalty oath and become a UFT employee. Gee, I wonder why you aren't good at getting people to give you money.

Then she goes on, talking about the people who only give 25 cents per paycheck. 25 cents was a lot back in 1980, she says, although I question whether she was even alive in 1980. (I was, and it doesn't sound like that much to me.) Now I'm wondering where she was in 2014, when she was certainly alive, and all of us lowly teachers were being told to wait until 2020 for money we earned in 2010. I thought that money had really decreased in value, particularly since I was not able to use the $40,000 NYC owed me to buy the car I got in 2014. But enough of my troubles. After all, I live on that measly teacher salary that the young woman had so handily surpassed.

It's ironic, because I'd been actually thinking about collecting for COPE. My friends tell me I shouldn't, you know, because Andy Pallotta uses it to buy tables at Cuomo fund raisers, because when Dick Iannuzzi curtailed such usage both UFT and NYSUT Unity rose up to toss him and his loyal friends out of office. Because COPE supported Serphin Maltese, who had a hand in breaking not one but two Catholic school unions. Because we supported Governor Pataki, who thanked us by vetoing improvements to the Taylor Law. Because we gave money to Flanagan, who sponsored a bill to remove LIFO from NYC teachers only. You know, stuff like that.

I give to COPE. I started when the UFT seemed to be holding tough on APPR. In fact, I invited someone from UFT to my school to speak to a meeting. He showed up an hour late and managed to sign up only me and one of our delegates. But he told us that Michael Mulgrew was very smart, and that we would get our raise and contract. Why? Because otherwise Bloomberg couldn't have his APPR.

When we got the APPR without the contract or the raise, many members approached me and asked me to bring the guy back. They wanted to shout him down. They wanted to beat him up. They made suggestions unfit for a family blog. Anyway, from that day on, I've given five bucks from each paycheck to COPE. Sometimes I question what it's used for, but I figure as a chapter leader, and as a blogger with the odd disparaging word here and there, I need to keep up my street cred. (Or something.)

Now, though, I'm thinking about the 2017 NY State Constitutional Convention, you know, the one where they can rewrite all the rules and stop paying our pensions and make us all eat cat food and stuff. I'm thinking maybe COPE may be a good way to fight that. I had been thinking about having a drive and asking for support from my members. Then this woman comes along and makes a quite unintentional statement about union values.

Anyway, the woman finishes her speech, and there we are. Five dollar COPE cards for everyone, someone declares, and they are passed out near and far. I go back to text a friend about what I've just seen. I am reprimanded for not filling out the card. I already give, I protest, but evidently it's some kind of activity to create enthusiasm and everyone is supposed to fill out the card whether they give or not. Screw that, I decide, and go back to texting.

The next topic on the agenda is repetitive paperwork. The people who just demanded I fill in a card for no reason whatsoever are lecturing me on how principals make people do redundant paperwork, and how it's totally and utterly unacceptable.

In fairness, there was also a very good speaker on special education who spoke and answered questions very well. You know where I would rather have been for the rest of the meeting? Home playing with my dog.

What if the Unity Gravy Train Is Derailed?

SCOTUS appears poised to deal us a loss in Friedrichs. But what will a loss look like? Will they simply decide that there are no more agency fees? That could be inconvenient for 52 Broadway, which has a machine to maintain. Will they be able to continue to send 750 rubber stamps to AFT conventions? Will they have to stay at Motel 6 instead of the Marriott? Will they have to buy in six packs instead of drinking the $14 beers at the Hilton?

Actually, things could get even more inconvenient. Will union members have to opt in, or opt out? It would certainly be easier if the default position were in. Of course, even in an organization where fewer than 18% vote in elections, some people will manage to get their grubby little paws on a card that saves them $1300 a year. Even if UFT leadership can't deal with people opting out of developmentally inappropriate tests, it's gonna have to face the possibility of people opting out of dues.

Now if the default meant people had to opt in, that would be even tougher. People would have to actually lay their hands on a piece of paper, fill it out, and say yes I want to send Michael Mulgrew $1300 this year. I want to make sure he can bring all of his minions to some convention where they cheer for Bill Gates the week before he attacks teacher pensions. I want to make sure he gets a gold plated seat at the table where he negotiates laws that ensure teachers are rated via junk science. Not sure everyone would jump up and down at that possibility.

Or they could insist on another model, where union ratification votes took place annually. That would mean that Mulgrew, who has never even been on social media, would have to be in perpetual sales mode. That would be a big change for a guy accustomed to interacting only with those who've signed loyalty oaths, a guy generally surrounded by a comfortable entourage with whom he exchanges in jokes, even when in public.

Mulgrew said at the January DA that if we lost Friedrichs, we'd have to spend a lot more time organizing. This left me scratching my head why leadership hadn't spent the last few decades doing precisely that. One answer is they like a system in which members are so cynical and disenfranchised they can't even be bothered to vote, a system in which the actual vote is dominated by retirees who have absolutely no skin in who negotiates contracts for working members. I mean, if people will keep electing leaders who negotiate substandard contracts rife with givebacks, why bother even trying to do better?

Will a loss in Friedrichs wake up the aloof, elite Unity Caucus leadership? That's doubtful. With typical and predictable arrogance, the last Unity handout at the DA declared that Unity is UFT. Who cares if most members don't even know they exist, let alone the fact that they are shut out of virtually all union decision making? We are the UFT, and the overwhelming numbers of rank and file, uninvited and unaware, are not.

What is Unity gonna do when the gravy train can no longer be taken for granted? Do you imagine the folks who sit in Albany steakhouses and send back the quail they bought with our COPE funds are gonna degrade themselves by actually mixing with lowly teachers? We got a glimpse at Unity's idea of organizing at last week's DA. They handed out buttons that said, "Union loud and proud," right before Mulgrew announced we were technically not allowed to wear them at school. I guess I'll wear it to the supermarket, so the woman beside me squeezing oranges can know exactly how I feel.

On the brighter side, those who don't pay dues won't get to vote in union elections, not that they ever did anyway. If we lose 25% of working members, the turnout could be just as pitiful, but will appear inflated since the percentage will come strictly from duespayers.

It's gonna be a new world. One thing's for sure--Unity leadership's love of reforminess and concessions helped embolden our enemies and usher in this nonsense. So much for the smart and visionary leadership Mulgrew's always boasting about.