Why New York City teachers are angry
By
G. Dunkel
New York
Published Sep 30, 2005 11:02 PM
The report from a state
fact-finding board sounds great: an 11 percent raise over three years for
teachers. By contrast, the largest city union, District Council 37 of AFSCME,
got barely a 5 percent increase over the same time frame.
Teachers take struggle to New York City Labor Day parade, Sept. 10.
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The Delegate
Assembly of the United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 of the AFT, which
represents 87,000 teachers and 17,000 school staff, voted Sept. 20 to use this
board’s recommendations as the basis for negotiations with the
city.
The billionaire mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, responded that
he would indeed restart negotiations but wouldn’t let a threatened strike
or the upcoming mayoral election influence him. In other words, he will take the
give-backs the report suggests but doesn’t want to grant the raises it
proposes in return.
Many teachers are fuming about this report. Some have
called for a strike, which is illegal under New York State’s Taylor Law. A
union-run blog called it “disgusting, disgusting, disgusting.”
Others said it was “atrocious” and “we were
screwed.”
Looking at the details of the report, one can see
why.
One UFT member pointed out the flaws to Workers World. “Zero
percent for the first year, 2 percent for the second. This means that for the
two-and-a half years we worked without a contract, we’ll get about a
thousand dollars. Not much for New York City.”
To get this, UFT
members will have to work three extra days, 10 minutes extra every day, give up
10 free periods without compensation, forgo the right to grieve adverse letters
placed in their files, take on lunchroom and hall monitoring at the will of the
principal, and take on other administrative tasks, like managing all the tests
that the federal and state governments are now requiring.
The fact-finding
board estimated that only 4.17 percent of the raise was an increase; the
givebacks and extra work funded the rest of the increase.
The UFT held
chapter meetings on the report, some of which got quite heated. The heat made it
to the floor of the delegates’ meeting, which vowed to consider a strike
and also endorsing Bloom berg’s opponent if the UFT doesn’t have a
contract by October.
Since Bloomberg is confident going into the November
election that he will win, the UFT is in a hard position.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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