Happy Independence Day

I wish everyone reading this blog a safe and joyous holiday. We call it the Fourth of July but it's really a day we celebrate liberation and independence. This is something we sorely need, what with a raving lunatic in charge of the country.

On this Independence Day, union is pretty much under assault. In Texas, already a "right to work" state, they're moving to stop payroll deductions for those who choose to remain in the union. Note that this is only for teachers, and not for police officers.

This mirrors actions in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott What's His Name eliminated collective bargaining, except for police and firefighters. He rationalized this with some nonsense about public safety being important, which clearly implies public education is not. It's more likely that he was concerned about being protected when the rabble came out with torches and pitchforks. You know, in North Korea a lot of people go hungry, but not the military.

And this is where we find ourselves on Independence Day 2017. Orange Man is attacking the press as fake news with clips from wrestling, a fake sport. This is what occupies our time and our news. It's nice that we have one day a year blowing up stuff, even though in doing so we drive our canine friends out of their minds. Likely, though, they'll get over it tomorrow.

We, on the other hand, are stuck in a more complicated and long-term mess. Our union is already fragile, and national leaders, having expertly stolen the Supreme Court, are poised to push it off a cliff. Our pensions are under attack from reformies nationally, many posing as Democrats. You can hardly tell whether they are fake Democrats or Democrats are real reformies. While I sadly lean toward the latter, it doesn't much matter because we find ourselves in exactly the same place.

The question becomes not only where do we go from here, but also how bad do things have to get before we rouse ourselves from our indifferent slumber? Take a look at Puerto Rico, just a little bit farther down the road than we are. Over there they face massive school closures, and they've just been told their pensions are no more.

Could that happen here? Absolutely. And how will we face it? Will we continue to put on a tie and ask for that seat at the table? Will we wear a few buttons that say we're Public School Proud? Or will we take to the streets and tell them no more?

Eventually we'll need to move toward the latter, and the sooner the better. A whole lot of Americans are no more awake than we are. 

Right to Citizenship

Here we are in 2017, and I sincerely wish you all a joyous new year. My hopes for the new year are a little muted, professionally at least. For one thing, my union is still run by an insular group of people with astoundingly poor judgment, and no amount of egregious errors will persuade them they've ever made even the tiniest of mistakes. There are a lot of people who will cheer their actions no matter what their implications, and most of them are on the payroll one way or another.

I go to meetings and watch certain people roll their eyes as we speak, but I am nonetheless a staunch supporter of union. Leadership can roll their eyes when we speak, and invent ridiculous excuses for their lack of commitment, but those of us in opposition understand the value of union. That's why we see "right to work" as such a scam. And make no mistake, those who opt out of paying for union services hurt all of us.

The idea of right to work is that no one should be forced to join a union. That idea is absurd because no one is ever forced to join a union. They can opt out, but if they do they still have to pay a fee for services union provides for all. Those services include negotiating on our behalf. Now I will admit that I don't think UFT leadership does a very good job at this. But on the other hand, they keep getting elected and it is not entirely their fault that three out of four UFT members can't be bothered to check a box and walk to a mailbox to vote.

Of course it's your right and mine to disagree with leadership. You may have even seen me doing so once or twice on this space. Nonetheless, union is our right, organizing is our right, and going hat in hand to ask Mike Bloomberg or Rudy Giuliani for a raise is not anything I'd want to do alone. Right to work supporters disagree. They think they should reap whatever benefit there is from union membership and that payment for such benefits ought to be optional.

If that is what's right, that is what's right. In fact, incoming President Donald J. Trump supports "right to work" as well, and he plans to appoint Supreme Court justices who will make it national policy. Now perhaps you believe that is a good thing. Perhaps you believe that Donald J. Trump is looking out for working people when he does stuff like this. If you believe that, I congratulate you, because you are surely in a better state of mind to begin 2017 than I am.

Of course, based on that line of thought, as someone who supports Donald J. Trump not at all, I ought to be able to opt out of paying taxes. It is really inconvenient to see all those deductions on my paycheck. Since I don't support "right to work," since I don't support any Trump position I can call to mind, and since I don't expect him to represent me or anyone I care about, I ought to be able to opt out of federal taxes. After all, Trump seems not to have payed them. The problem is, though, that he still seems to think I should pay. That's unfair, of course.

But aside from the fact that he has one set of rules for himself and another for working people, if I can't be compelled to pay union dues, I ought not to be compelled to pay taxes either. If there is no responsibility attached to being part of one community, why should there be any attached to another? If I can rightfully expect the United Federation of Teachers to work on my behalf with compensation being optional, why can't I expect the same of the United States of America?

The answer, of course, is that people like Donald J. Trump don't want us to organize against ideas that hurt us. They do want us, however, to be compelled to support the very same government that fights against our interests and impedes our right to organize. If you support "right to work," you may as well support more work for less pay. I don't support that, and I therefore don't support the legislative priorities of Donald J. Trump.

But he's out to weaken us and our unions, and there's no way he's gonna let us off the hook for supporting such counterproductive priorities. Because he and his BFFs are so incredibly greedy and selfish, they don't even understand that hurting and discouraging a middle class is not healthy for this country. As long as he doesn't have to pay taxes, he couldn't care less about those of us who do.

If you believe that weakening union via disingenuous policies like "right to work" are the way to go, and you think paying taxes is different in any way whatsoever, you're laboring under a serious misconception. When Donald J. Trump makes federal taxes optional for all of us, instead of just billionaires like himself, then I'll be happy to listen to him extol the virtues of optional union membership.

Until that moment, you know as well as I do that he's moving us back to the 19th century and that we're gonna have to repeat struggles we thought were over for decades just to get back where we were last November.

UFT Leadership--Wake Up or Give Up

I was a little upset at the AFT's early endorsement of Hillary. I had one or two issues with candidate Clinton. But they did a "scientific survey" that asked who knows whom who knows what, and that was it.

Of course no one asked me or anyone I know, but I don't travel in the circles Randi or Mike do. I'm just a lowly teacher who talks to other lowly teachers, you know, the kind who get rated by Danielson and live with the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Michael Mulgrew, like every UFT officer, has never experienced that, so why should he worry?

Anyway, we all know how the Hillary Project came out. We now face a GOP President, Congress, Senate, and any moment now, Supreme Court. This last detail has not escaped the attention of UFT leadership. It appears that, while Friedrichs did not prevail, some copycat will. This will make the United States of America effectively a "right to work" state.

Now "right to work" is a misnomer. Everyone has the right to work. It's just that, in a union shop, you may be required to actually pay into the group that negotiates for you. What "right to work"  really means is "right to not pay dues." It's a right to weaken union, and a right to weaken collective bargaining. In Wisconsin, it's crippled union, as was its intention.

NY State is a bastion of liberalism, more or less, and it is possible that legislation could circumvent it. Of course it's questionable whether our esteemed governor, who ran on a platform of going after unions, would support it. But it's possible with the urging of UFT and NYSUT (among others), NY State could pass legislation that says everyone must pay union dues.

The thing is, there's a bit of a timing issue here. Next year a Constitutional Convention will appear on the NY ballot, and it's imperative we defeat that. Otherwise, folks like our buddy Andrew Cuomo could open up our pensions and make us all explore cat food diets into our golden years. It would be really unfortunate if the two things were to overlap and our enemies could twist our support for union into a campaign against our pensions. Of course that may not be a problem if the Friedrichs copycat doesn't rear its head in the next 12 months.

But there's another problem, and it's more fundamental. That problem is the insidious nature of the loyalty oath powered United Federation of Teachers. We are not an activist-driven union, and in fact we are the polar opposite. A full three fourths of our membership deem it a waste of time to even vote in union elections. Most think about union only when it's time to get a pair of glasses every other year. UFT hasn't done a boots on the ground activity in over a year, and even those are mostly populated by loyalty oath signers shoring up patronage points toward keeping their trips or jobs.

So now leadership has concrete concerns about what to do if they lose the dues checkoff. Predictably, their instincts are completely off-base, trying not to alienate Donald Trump supporters in the ranks. The thinking appears to be, if we're nice to them, maybe they'll volunteer to pay dues when the time comes. That is, of course, ridiculous. It's yet another step in the direction of not taking chances, the same direction that brought us the spectacular and devastating loss of the Presidential election.

Hillary did not stand for universal health care. She did not stand for a living wage for all Americans. She did not stand for free college tuition, and even advanced the preposterous argument that such a move would subsidize the children of Donald Trump (as though they'd even consider state schools). The AFT supported these positions, and no less than President Randi Weingarten ridiculed Sanders supporters as "Bernie Bros" in tweets that stereotyped us as thugs. How primitive of us to want better lives for Americans, to want our brothers and sisters to enjoy the same rights as citizens of most non third-world countries.

UFT is but one local, but it's 28% of NYSUT and controls 33% of NYSUT votes. NYSUT is but one state, but it's the largest delegation in AFT. So make no mistake, we are the tail that wags the AFT dog. Our unwillingness to take stands, to take risks, to mobilize our ranks is deliberate. It concentrates power in the hands of the very few, and they are not gonna relinquish it any time soon. NYPD and FDNY may find the overwhelming majority of their members voluntarily pay dues, but that won't happen with us. The people who sit on the 14th floor at 52 Broadway aren't judged by Danielson and have little empathy for those of us who are.

The fact that they are too cowardly to even utter the name of Donald Trump in a resolution condemning the bigotry he's engendered just underlines how utterly out of touch they are. This bodes ill for our survival as a union. We have a President who urges us to get on social media, but can't be bothered with it himself. We have a President who doesn't bother to answer email from chapter leaders. We have a President who can't even be bothered to sit through his own Executive Board meetings. He walks in whenever he feels like it if he shows up at all. Then gives a little talk, and leaves without even listening to anyone else. How much more out of touch can you get?

If there is any chance of our surviving in a Right to Work United States of America, it's time for a sea change in our sleepy and complacent leadership. Otherwise, it's clear the only thing they value are those cushy offices on the 14th floor. I wonder if they'll be able to pay for them with a 70% drop in dues revenue.

Watch What They Do, Not What They Say

That's the mantra of Norm Scott, and nowhere is it more apparent than in this Facebook post from AFT President Randi Weingarten:

Ok-I am not beyond a selfie with the President.... particularly on Labor Day when he says as he did at the Greater Boston Labor Council Bkfst: "if I were looking for a good job that builds security for my family, I would join a union" 

Now I certainly don't begrudge Randi a selfie with the President of the United States. And the guy has done some good things. While I'd much prefer single payer, Obamacare keeps my daughter (and many others) on a medical plan until 26. Americans don't have to face rejection for pre-existing conditions to acquire an insurance policy. While there should be none, there will at least be fewer bankruptcies on the basis of catastrophic medical emergency.

But on the union front, President Obama has not particularly walked the walk. I mean that in a very literal sense. When campaigning, he said he was going to find a pair of comfortable shoes and walk with labor if it was in trouble. Yet search though he may have, we did not see hide nor hair of him in Wisconsin when there was a popular uprising against current Presidential candidate Scott Walker. I mean, I understand losing stuff in the closet, but he's the President of the United States. I have to assume he doesn't need to run to the mall when he needs a new pair of shoes.

As a teacher, I am now rated by junk science test scores. This is a direct result of Obama's Race to the Top. At a time when states were dying for money, Obama pushed high stakes testing and junk science to a level GW Bush could only have dreamed of.  This has demoralized every teacher I know. The only ones crowing about it are the leaders of E4E, and they aren't teachers anymore anyway. The American Statistical Association is very clear that judging teachers by test scores is nonsense, and the President, along with every editorial board in New York and dozens more around the country, can't be bothered to acknowledge that, let alone respond.

And while it's nice that Obama will be photographed with Randi, now that he doesn't have to worry about re-election or midterms, I haven't seen him fret much about union over the rest of his term. One of the large reasons I voted for him the first time he ran was that he promised to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which would've enabled unionization via card check. It would've prevented a lot of anti-union management from prevention unionization. As far as I can tell, he did not lift a finger to do that, and I voted for the Green candidate rather than Obama mach two.

Right now we are at a crisis. We are facing a SCOTUS decision that will effective render all public unions right to work status. Without automatic deduction of dues, Wisconsin unions have withered and all but died. This will be particularly damaging to a union like UFT that's been hands off and managed top-down. If fewer than 20% of working teachers can be bothered to vote in union elections, what percentage will pay dues?

As bad as leadership is these days, they can be persuaded, and if enough of us crawl out of our collective coma, they can even be replaced. But there's gonna be little hope for that if nothing is done. And as far as I can tell, President Barack Obama has done considerably less than nothing for union over the last seven years or so.

Teaching in a Right to Work State

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From time to time in this space, you may note a disparaging word or two about UFT leadership. There are several reasons for this. One is that leadership has supported a host of counter-intutitive measures that hurt working teachers in its perpetual bid for a "seat at the table." Mayoral control is a biggie. We supported it when it came out, and then, after it was proven an unmitigated disaster, we demanded a few changes. When we failed to get them, we supported it anyway.

There is our support for APPR, which forces teachers to be judged on test scores largely beyond their control. There is our support for charter schools, which operate on a completely different playing field and yet are used by politicians and journalists to undermine those of us who teach all of NYC's children. There is our support for and participation in charter colocation, which reminds me of nothing more than a cancer to public schools. There's our abject failure to support opt-out, and our misguided trust in the Heavy Heart Assembly, Cuomo, Gates, John King, Mary Ellen Elia and the like.

And then there is a rigged election that deprives high school teachers the right to choose its own VP, not to mention the UFT choosing district reps who chapter leaders used to elect. Democracy finds it hard to breathe, let alone prosper, under loyalty-oath driven representation, as the UFT ensures those of us who follow the philosophy of Diane Ravitch get no voice whatsoever in NYSUT or AFT.  

But as we face a real threat in Friedrichs. The fact is, if dues retrieval becomes voluntary, the massive apathy engendered over decades by union leadership will cause massive losses in revenue, and will render collection the number one, if not the only priority, of the leadership that's failed to represent the feelings and struggles of working teachers for decades. Will it become the lot of chapter leaders to skulk around begging people for $1200 a year so Michael Mulgrew can negotiate sub-standard contracts, two-tier due process, and punch us in the face if we don't support Common Core? That's gonna be a tough sell.

On the other hand, it's not a whole lot of fun being in a so-called Right to Work State. Take a look at North Carolina, where teachers can't even make ends meet. The environment is not a whole lot different from that here, in that teachers and public schools are routinely blamed for all the ills of humanity. But the funding has been rolled back to the point where public schools can barely function, and the teachers are on long-term exodus from the state. Make no mistake, that's the agenda of the reformies, and Cuomo would do it in a New York minute of the parents and citizenry were less aware.

Union is our bulwark against this, and we must work to make UFT an organization responsive to those of us who see what's coming. Flawed though our union is, we must work to improve it rather than lie down and watch it be destroyed. As bad as things are, they could be much worse. A lot of us are working to make things better, and I expect to give more detail on that in this space in the coming weeks and months.

Friedrichs can hang over our heads like the Sword of Damocles, but we cannot give up. We cannot become North Carolina. If you think it can't happen here, take a look at Michigan and Wisconsin. No one thought it would happen there either. Because even if we win Friedrichs, that's just cutting one head off the monster. Surely another will grow in its place.

We need to be smarter and quicker than the reformies. Our current leadership has not proven up to the task. One way or another, we are going to help them, whether they like it or not.

You Don't Need the Amazing Kreskin to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

A lot of people are upset about paying union dues. After all, it's a thousand bucks a year or so, your roof needs fixing, and that could make for a hell of a night out. And there are legitimate complaints. For one thing, I'm paying NYSUT and AFT to represent me, but in fact they do not. I represent the largest school in Queens and we get no voice at all. In fact, the only way I could get us a voice would be to sign an odious loyalty oath promising to support whatever I'm told, and if I did that we still wouldn't have a voice.

NYSUT put up a poll asking what we'd like from them. I told them I'd like democracy. My union brothers and sisters from PJSTA essentially said the same thing, but in far greater detail. After all, their locals can't pick who they'd like to represent them because of the UFT's massively huge rubber stamp. UFT-installed President Magee and her newly double-pensioned pals know if they support local representation they'll get booted out just like their predecessors. If it's a choice between democracy and going back to that classroom, we can guess pretty accurately where they're headed.

And yet there is a necessity for union. Though ours is inept, falling for one reformy thing after another, though they've watered down our Contract time after time to save their ridiculous seat at the table, it still protects people, and we still can have a voice where we work. Just about any day I'd rather be union than depend on the tender mercies of Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, and their merry band of fanatical ideologues.

So when I see things like this on Facebook, I know what they really are. How could the union use my money for politics? In fact, it's the union's job to try to influence politics. Anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts. Our union, of course, does a terrible job, picking Thompson four years too late, after he demonstrated his utter lack of conviction by telling the Daily News editorial board that the city couldn't afford to give teachers they raise everyone else got. And in the end, by delaying the raise ten years, the crack negotiators of UFT managedto make sure we didn't get it. They sold out our brother and sister teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve, managing to give back without even getting an equitable contract. As if that weren't enough, they managed to dump the worst pattern in my living memory on every city union. Anyone remember how we felt about DC37 when they dumped the zeroes on us? I do.

What the article is pushing, and it's not at all subtle about it, is right to work, and in California no less. This is a system in which you pay union dues only if you feel like it. While those who push it will tell you it's about your individual freedom, it's really about decimating union so they can do whatever to you and your brother and sister unionists, along with the non-unionists who want representation without paying for it. They don't like all those stinking rules, and would just as soon fire you over a whim as look at you. But some people will be fooled.

Now me, I still pay into COPE, even though I have grave reservations over what the UFT machine does with my money. And I'd probably continue to pay dues even if they became optional for as long as the union could hold out. But that would likely not be very long. UFT members are not like CTU members, and won't hit the streets en masse to support a union President who wants to punch us in the face and push us in the dirt if we touch his Common Core. Few are inspired by people more interested in free trips or patronage gis than doing their jobs, and there are all too many such people.

Since the UFT has enabled mayoral control, since it's enabled junk science and two-tier due process, since it sat silently while almost every comprehensive high school was closed, since it did nothing when Cuomo and Eva Moskowitz betrayed mayoral control under de Blasio it hasn't got a whole lot of street cred with the reformies. That's why they're coming full speed ahead after tenure. 

And don't fool yourself. They'll push right to work in NY in a New York minute. It would be nice for UFT and NYSUT if the most active members in the city and state would stand with them and support them. But it's a two-way street and our leader is not Karen Lewis, but rather a guy who will punch us in the face if we fail to support his favored corporate reforms.

This notwithstanding, it would be smart politics if they simply stopped building brick walls around activists moved by conscience rather than perks. People looking for free trips will not inspire the membership, dispirited and discouraged from decades of nonsense from these very cynical hangers-on.

Are our leaders so juvenile they cannot bear to entertain opinions that vary from their own? Do they really need to conceal themselves inside some massive echo chamber in which their notions are never challenged or even openly discussed? I find when you listen to others, you sometimes learn they're right, adjust your opinion accordingly, and do better.

Look where the echo chamber has gotten us. You don't need to consult the tarot cards to see where it's headed.