Mulgrew shares post-election outlook
UFT President Michael Mulgrew told the Delegate Assembly on Nov. 13 that he’d received email messages from social studies teachers since Election Day with an important reminder.
“They told me that every 40 or 50 years, you have what they call a ‘change’ election that resets the whole base of the country,” Mulgrew said. “And this looks like it will probably be one of them.”
And what exactly will that mean for the UFT, education and other labor unions?
“What it means is we’re headed for a very rough period of our existence,” he said. “We have accomplished a lot over the years, but this administration will try to take it from us.”
Mulgrew said the new administration’s methods are clear.
“The strategy will be to defund, declaw and tie up,” Mulgrew said.
He said he expects the U.S. Department of Labor under the new administration to come at unions with politically motivated investigations and audits, attacks on their political advocacy work and attempts to diminish collective bargaining rights and the ability to organize, Mulgrew said.
“It’s going to get ugly,” he said.
Mulgrew explained that the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the two national education unions, are “going to come under direct attack, probably quickly,” since the laws protecting unions are at the state level.
“People look at us and say we’re lucky, we’re in New York State, which probably has the strongest labor laws in the country,” he said. Still, he cautioned, the UFT’s power makes it a prime target.
Mulgrew also predicted that the new administration will try to weaken unions by attacking dues collection and encouraging members to opt out.
Regarding education, Mulgrew predicted the new administration would slash funding for public schools, push vouchers, rewrite curricula to eliminate culturally responsive elements and try to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.
Mulgrew predicted federal education funding would come in the form of block grants tied to the new administration’s education policy agenda. “I am quite sure that one of the criteria you would have to meet in order to be considered for a block grant is that you have a state voucher program,” Mulgrew said.
Republicans will control the White House and both branches of Congress, which could result in the passage of new laws harmful to unions and public education.
All of which, he said, means the UFT and other unions must be prepared. The UFT, he said, is going to engage the community and elected officials to come together to defend public education and workers.
“We’re going to do this together one step at a time,” he said. “There will be a lot of bad days, but we’re going to have good days, too. It will happen. It’s just going to take us all working together.”