Labor targets pols for pushing layoff bill

UFT President Michael Mulgrew and state AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes wrote to labor leaders across the state on April 26 asking them to withhold all financial and political support from two state legislators from New York City who introduced a bill at the Department of Education’s behest that would empower principals to choose on the basis of “merit” who goes and who stays in the event of teacher layoffs.

The bill, which has little chance of passage, does not define merit. Under current state education law, layoffs must be done in reverse citywide seniority order by license.

“That’s the wrong discussion to have,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said. “We don’t want anyone laid off. Our children can’t afford it. Class sizes are already rising.”

Hughes called the bill unacceptable. “There is no substitute for experience,” he said. “We cannot allow employers to diminish the value of workers by using seniority as a means to reduce costs.”

The union made known its anger with the two state legislators.

The bill’s sponsors, Manhattan Democratic Assemblyman Jonathan Bing and Bronx Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr., heard from the head of the umbrella organization representing all New York City public sector unions, asking them to immediately withdraw it.

“Your efforts and ours should be devoted to making sure the layoffs do not occur,” wrote Harry Nespoli, the chair of the city’s Municipal Labor Committee. “It is the seniority system that prevents management from subjective and ineffective decision-making. We take your bill as an effort against all of the unions.”

About 60 educators, carrying protest signs, picketed outside Assemblyman Bing’s Upper East Side community office on April 19. A similar picket is planned at Diaz’s Longwood office in the Bronx.

To fill the $9.2 billion hole in the state’s budget, the governor and state Senate have proposed cutting as much as $600 million in state school aid to the city, which Bloomberg has said could result in the dismissal of 8,500 educators.

Chancellor Joel Klein used a state budget hearing in Albany earlier this year to appeal to state lawmakers to give principals the right to lay off whom they please.

Instead of focusing on whom to lay off, Mulgrew said the real issue was finding ways to fix the budget and increase revenues.

“This focus on whom to lay off is a distraction from finding the dollars that would keep our schools unharmed,” he said.

“We want our members to understand that we protect everyone. This is nothing but an attempt to split younger members from older ones, and parents from teachers,” he told delegates at the April 21 Delegate Assembly.