UFT joins RESPECT check lawsuit

In late October, the UFT was added as a defendant alongside the City Council in the Mamdani administration’s lawsuit challenging the council’s RESPECT check legislation, and the union immediately filed a motion to dismiss the city’s case.

The City Council in July unanimously passed the groundbreaking legislation for a $10,000 RESPECT check to UFT-represented paraprofessionals, whose starting salary is $32,798. The title’s meager pay has led to a staffing crisis, with thousands of vacancies citywide.

The law took effect on Aug. 19 after Mayor Zohran Mamdani failed to sign or veto the pending legislation, but his administration then quickly filed a lawsuit against the City Council alleging that the legislation undermines the state collective bargaining law for public employee unions.

In asking the court to dismiss the case, the UFT said the Mamdani administration lacks the standing to sue under or invoke the state collective bargaining law, commonly known as the Taylor Law, which mandates that public employers and public employee organizations agree on how to resolve disputes. However, the union noted in its motion, UFT-represented educators, including paraprofessionals, work for the city Board of Education, now known as the Panel for Educational Policy, which is a separate legal entity from the city.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew criticized the mayor for trying to stop a law that the City Council passed to address a critical shortage by providing a workforce stabilization payment.

The RESPECT check “law has one mission: attracting and keeping enough paraprofessionals in our schools to serve our kids,” Mulgrew said. “That mission is what the mayor is suing to stop.”

Because of the low pay, there are more than 8,000 paraprofessional vacancies this year, based on an unofficial survey the UFT conducted, he said. “This means that thousands of our most vulnerable students are going without the services that they are legally entitled to.”

Meanwhile, Mulgrew said, the law is still in effect, and paraprofessionals will get the first of four RESPECT check installments starting in January. The UFT continues to negotiate with city officials to reach a permanent solution for paraprofessionals through collective bargaining, he said.

However, the legislation provides an interim incentive for long-overdue action in the public interest while seeking the city’s return to the collective bargaining table — legislation Mamdani himself said he supported when he was running for office.

The UFT’s motion references the legal argument made by the City Council — which also filed a motion to dismiss the case — that in instances when the city’s executive branch does not act to address an emergency “and the union has identified a legislative solution that does not intrude on any bargaining rights, public policy strongly favors allowing the impacted workers (and the local legislature) to avail themselves of that legislative fix.” Nothing in the Taylor Law or education law prevents that, the City Council added.

Mulgrew said at the Oct. 14 Delegate Assembly that the Mamdani administration has tried to argue that if there are substitute paraprofessionals working, then those jobs aren’t vacancies that need to be filled. Mulgrew dismissed that argument as absurd. “It’s called a substitute for a reason,” he said. “You need a substitute because you do not have a permanent, and, therefore, it is a vacancy.”