Randi Weingarten: It's Time To Play Along To Get Along

Just like current UFT President Mike Mulgrew, former UFT President Randi Weingarten is now revealing her true feelings about what her members should be rallying for....and it's not what the rank and file say they want.

UFT "President" Mike Mulgrew

For years here in New York City, the UFT has been the willing partner with the New York City Department of Education in removing teachers from their assignments, keeping hands off while so-called "investigators" lie about members who are alleged to be either incompetent or guilty of various acts of misconduct, and not representing members in good faith in the grievance procedure.

Randi Weingarten on tenure, 2010

Now  Randi, who just won a third term as AFT President with 98% of the vote,  says its ok to compromise and go along with the Plan of education reformers, as she is quoted by Reuters:

Weingarten rebuffed her critics in the union for mistaking collaboration with surrender and said her overwhelming victory in the election showed rank-and-file members supported the move.

But critics say,

"Concessions don't lead to more prestige with the public. Concessions don't win more credibility at the bargaining table. They lead to more concessions."

Critics say Weingarten's willingness to see traditional job protections like tenure disappear and to accept charter schools, merit pay and other changes is a retreat from core principles and plays into the hands of those who want to eliminate public education, privatize government services and curb the ability of workers to unionize."

Source: U.S. teacher union boss bends to school reform winds

Let's remember 2009:

Randi Weingarten and Mayor Mike Bloomberg

 

OCTOBER 29, 2009, 10:28 AM

The Teachers’ Contract Up Close

By ALISON LEIGH COWAN

LINK

Think textbooks are long and dense? Try reading the 165-page contract that spells out the pay and perks for New York City's 79,000 public school teachers.

At the moment, it is a document of some interest for teachers, their union and city officials since it expires on Saturday, just as the mayor's race crawls to a finish.

Does the "education mayor" really need teachers screaming for his head as voters go to the polls?

Since he took office in 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has had a pretty good relationship with the United Federation of Teachers and its bosses, like its former president, Randi Weingarten, in the above photo. Her successor, Michael Mulgrew, said he has a pretty good relationship with the mayor, too, though they have never kissed.

As a document, available here, the union contract is long on boilerplate and speckled with anachronism. (Schools must have pay phones per the contract.) But studded here and there are the kind of nuggets that illuminate the internal workings of the school system.

Appendix A lists teacher salaries, currently anywhere from $43,530 to $100,049. Not stagehand money at Carnegie Hall, but still 43 percent higher across the board than what teachers were making when Mr. Bloomberg came into office.

Page 148 reports that there is a 10 percent premium for teaching agriculture. Who knew?

Teachers in middle school on up cannot be asked to teach more than three classes in a row. Pages 17 and 22.

Junior high school teachers and below are assured five periods of preparation time each week. Teachers who are consistently pressed into teaching during their prep time earn an additional $5,660 per semester.

No elementary school teacher has to collect milk money. Page 29.

And teachers are exempt from copying schoolwide documents, scoring standardized tests or preparing college transcripts. Pages 19, 25, and 29.

Mr. Mulgrew said the work rules were for the good of the system. "Nobody enters this profession without wanting to change children's lives for the better,'' he said, and "we protect things we feel might hurt that process.''

Maybe, dear readers, there are other clauses that catch your fancy. Or maybe you feel the contract is not nearly the kind of benefit-bulging giveaway that some critics have suggested. Either way, if we have missed a point, or are missing the point, share.

Current betting is that the teachers' union will hold out for 4 percent raises, in line with what other local unions have won for their workers. Almost no one expects an announcement until the election is in the books.