President's Perspective
Two windows, two wins
Nov 16, 2006 2:34 PM
Randi Weingarten, UFT President
TWTWTW.
There used to be a weekly television program of that name. It stood for “This Was the Week That Was.” I thought of it when I sat down to write this column because this was surely a week worth savoring.
On Monday and Tuesday (Nov. 6 and 7, for those of you reading this a week later), we had two windows of opportunity that we had helped to create: one to improve our civic lives and one to improve our working lives. We seized both.
Tuesday was the day we helped change the face of government, in our state and in our nation. The pundits are crediting the revival of labor as a political force as a key factor in the Democrats winning back the House and Senate. Union members nationwide finally got it. Increasingly on the defensive and often in uphill contract battles just to hang on, they turned out in record numbers to vote in this midterm election. Although, as I mentioned in an earlier column, only 7 percent of the American workforce is unionized, union households accounted for about one out of four voters. And three-quarters of them supported union-endorsed candidates, as compared to only 65 percent four years ago. Nationally and locally, union members saw the connection between politics and their own working lives and voted their economic and social interests.
And the same is true of the tentative agreement we reached with the city/DOE late Monday night. Like the election results, this opportunity wasn’t dumb luck; we worked for it. The bargaining coalition we forged helped create this opportunity. Using the information derived from the summer membership survey, the June Delegate Assembly’s vote to create a coalition, the October Delegate Assembly’s confirmation of our bargaining demands, and the guidance of a 300-member bipartisan negotiating committee, we used the window (and the pattern set by DC 37) to deliver a solid raise with no givebacks and no downside.
Of course, the work this time was quiet, though no less intense. We didn’t march or hold rallies, but the participation in this effort was just as broad and the planning just as careful.
It began when the Delegate Assembly in February, agreed to explore two basic strategies. Having been stonewalled for more than two years last time, we needed a way to engage a now-lame-duck mayor and bring him to the table. The first method we considered, an alliance-building strategy, called for the UFT to form a bargaining coalition with other municipal unions to serve notice on the city that this was not business as usual. The second, a more confrontational approach, involved adopting a No Contract, No Work policy and preparing our members for a bitter and perhaps long strike.
Whichever road we ultimately took, I was convinced that throughout the process we would need a broad-based, multi-party, rank-and-file-dominated negotiating committee to guide us. The Executive Board authorized us to expand the negotiation committee, and virtually everyone who volunteered to serve was accepted.
By June, after union reps and officers had visited hundreds of schools to discuss the alternative strategies, the clear consensus that emerged was to try the coalition route first, and the June Delegate Assembly endorsed that plan of action unanimously.
As the 20 union leaders started meeting during the summer to structure our coalition and our bargaining demands, the UFT negotiating committee worked on a parallel track to put together a member survey that would ensure the demands reflected the needs and desires of UFT members.
But let me cut to the chase. When the city raised some technical problems about bargaining with a coalition, the coalition designated the UFT and the sanitation workers union to be the lead unions to bargain a contract.
Was it sooner than we expected? Maybe to some, but the coalition had given itself a six-month — December ’06 — deadline. So once we got the city to talk, our job was to create momentum for a fair deal.
By late October we had to make a choice. We could try to negotiate a solid, no-giveback deal now that takes us through the rest of the Bloomberg/Klein administration and stops the chancellor from using the contract and teachers as an excuse, while at the same time putting money in our members’ pockets. Or we could engage in a no-holds-barred battle, wherever that would lead, including a very public fight against the demands that Klein had already aired publicly: fire excess teachers, impose merit pay, and get rid of pensions and tenure.
Some people, myself included, are born fighters. Most of our members, on the other hand, are born teachers. They would be willing to take on a protracted fight only if there were no other way to get fairness and respect. So the choice was obvious.
We now have a tentative agreement that meets our members’ major demands: no givebacks and no more time, with a real raise and cash upfront, even before the current contract expires.
By the time you read this, most of you will have heard the basic provisions of the proposed contract; they are detailed in this edition of the New York Teacher, including the entire text of the Memorandum of Agreement. There is, however, one issue I want to highlight.
This settlement is unprecedented because it is 11 months early after two knock-down, drag-out contract battles. That has raised some eyebrows. Understandably so. Our members are not naive. Like true New Yorkers, we are suspicious of things that look too good or too easy. (When was the last time a street-wise New Yorker took the challenge of a three-card-monte game?) So it’s not surprising that people, even some reporters and political pundits, are looking for the catch in this agreement.
Well, there is no catch. It is what it is. And, contrary to some speculation I’ve heard, there are no secret deals. No promises were made to support any politician, any legislation, any future contract provisions or, more concerning to me, any erosion of benefits.
Because the mayor has spoken quite publicly about his desire to rein in health coverage costs, some members have asked what’s coming down the pike.
As you can see by just looking at your current contract, for as long as anyone can remember, and explicitly since 1983, health insurance has been part of a citywide package of health benefits negotiated by all the municipal unions through the Municipal Labor Committee. The only change to that long-standing practice in the new contract is to specify the MLC as the bargaining agent rather than referring to health bargaining as “citywide,” a technical change spurred by recent litigation.
Indeed, the 20 unions that formed the coalition asked (as part of our demands) that the city confirm that it bargains health with all of us together because our combined clout had always stood us in good stead in benefits bargaining.
Last round I said that was the best contract we could get, given the climate. This time, I believe this is a good contract. It locks in solid raises and stability through the end of the Bloomberg era. I urge you to ratify it. And if the Bloomberg administration tries to go after our health insurance benefits, you can bet that all the unions — cops and fire included — will take that battle on with gusto. And just as we’ve won it before, we will prevail again.
And now, with the change in Congress, we have the opportunity to expend our energies and our resources to fight for the things we hold most dear: changing NCLB so we can spend more time teaching and less time testing; securing lower class sizes; and fighting for more professional respect and safer schools. And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the other things our members believe in: decent health coverage and retirement security for all; affordable housing; a fair minimum wage; a path to bring our soldiers home from Iraq; and the means to protect the Earth so our children can live here in health and prosperity long after we are gone.
