UFT's Tom Brown kept declaring how happy UFT retirees are. I maintain it is Retiree Advocate retirees who are the happiest because we know we are figthing the machine that wants to change our healthcare and enjoying the battle. To me, the Unity crowd does not look all that happy. Maybe a bit depressed over the possibility RA can win the chapter election and their gigs at the UFT.
Check out the updated Retiree Advocate web site: https://www.retireeadvocate.org/
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| Unity Caucus with Murphy leaflet. |
The notion that Murphy is an independent thinker is absurd on its face. Clearly, the Unity notion of serving the union means fawning over Michael Mulgrew and stroking his fragile ego. (In fairness, Murphy is quite good at that.)...Murphy is a “guardian of civility.” Let’s first address the fact that it’s not true at all. Murphy shows blatant contempt for opinions that vary from Michael Mulgrew’s. He refuses to let passionate members speak at meetings. Then he marvels that members shout at him. (Why do people raise their voices when Tom doesn’t allow them to speak? Go figure. It’s a great mystery.)
The Tom Murphy/ UFT Unity Campaign: Hubris, Insinuation, Misdirection and Lies
https://arthurgoldstein.substack.com/p/the-tom-murphy-uft-unity-campaign?
Paras on agenda
Retired Para Chapter chair Shelvy Young Abrams is being handed a big role in the Unity RTC unit -- to try to organize and mobilize the 7k para retirees into a force of resistance to the growing influence of Retiree Advocate and she has a chance since few retired paras have gravitated to the opposition. The whys are worth examining -- maybe at an ICE meeting.
Tier 6 -Suddenly (I'm Tier 1 - I say, Smirking)
It's nice to hear how many great things we've done over the decades. Congratulations. So if we've done so well, and everyone should be in Tier 1 but we'll take Tier 4. How did we go from Tier 1 to Tier 6? Or even Tier 4 to Tier 6?
- fumfering" --> "A Yiddish word meaning to "mumble", most often used to mean to be evasive; can also mean to putter aimlessly or to waste time."
Daniel, in a brilliant feat of investigative reporting, lays waste to them with this post on The Wire. Here is a segment.
Mulgrew, and his Unity Political Machine, did nothing to STOP Tier 6.
They rolled over when it was proposed in 2011. And when finally enacted in 2012. Now, we are left to pick up the pieces. Struggling to glue back and fix the damage they allowed to happen.
Lost in Mulgrew’s trademark verbal acrobatics and rhetoric about trying to FIX Tier 6, along with his snail’s pace, piecemeal lobbying campaign, is the fact that he dropped the ball. We’re here because he failed to organize us to use our collective union power to STOP the agenda to deplete our pension benefits.
We were NOT caught off guard. Bloomberg and Cuomo telegraphed their Tier 6 intentions. It wasn’t a surprise. It was a long time coming.
For the ten months before its passage in April of 2012, there were no organized UFT rallies. No large scale, coordinated lobbying campaign coming out of 52 Broadway. Not even a single UFT resolution was passed against it by the executive board or delegate assembly during the year before Tier 6 was enacted. Next to nothing in Mulgrew’s web communiques to members before — and only after the legislature passed the new pension reform.
There was no major UFT-centered action, mobilization or pushback whatsoever to STOP TIER 6 — which still threatens the financial futures of a generation of educators today and has led to a mass exodus within our profession.
You’ll find little to nothing in the mainstream press archives containing any public remarks by Mulgrew against Tier 6 prior to its passage. No prominent mentions about it on our union website during this time. He skirted his fiduciary duties and let Dick Ianuzzi and Anthony Pallotta of NYSUT be the primary mouthpieces to speak out against the proposal while the UFT communicated little about a ‘Stop Tier 6’ fight. All while it posed an existential threat to our UFT union family.
In fact, in early 2012, when Mulgrew shared his annual January testimony to Albany’s legislature about the proposed budget, Mulgrew only dedicated a small fraction of his time to say he only had “strong reservations” about the “idea that we need a new pension tier.“
Strong reservations about the idea? That’s it?
That’s it. Mulgrew shrugged.
Unity insiders have confided, in hindsight, that they believed Mulgrew when he told them behind closed doors that the defined pension benefits were in jeopardy. They say there was a sense of inevitability about the looming draconian changes and so they maintained a business as usual posture.
Perhaps Mulgrew miscalculated that if Albany gave Bloomberg what he wanted, Bloomberg would finally negotiate contracts with the city’s unions once again? If so, the gamble failed miserably as Bloomberg left office while the city’s labor contracts, including ours, remained expired.
Even in more recent years, we’ve heard folks like UFT treasurer and TRS teacher-member Trustee, Tom Brown, continue to downplay the severity of the Tier 6 giveback, as evident in a 2022 executive board meeting where “Brown and other Unity-elected members made the argument that Tier 6 was essentially fine, better than what (the mostly non-unionized) rest of the country has, and that improvements are being made anyways.”
Brown went on to falsely claim that “Tier 6ers don’t have ‘less net compensation’ than Tier 4ers.”
After Tier 6 passed in April of 2012, Mulgrew, to his credit, refused to receive an award with Bloomberg and Cuomo at a SOMOS gala, shortly after. Something about the optics of attending a party and being really mad.
Daniel follows in the footsteps of the great James Eterno, who in March 2012 nailed the Unity leadership on Tier 6 with this post on ICE:
No spin from NYSUT or Leo Casey or President Mulgrew on the legislation to stick anyone hired in April or thereafter with a Tier VI pension...No spin from NYSUT or Leo Casey or President Mulgrew on the legislation to stick anyone hired in April or thereafter with a Tier VI pension...What about those COPE contributions? We don't seem to have much influence with the legislature these days.
It struck me that in 2012 James talks about those who were about to be hired. Now over half are in Tier 6 and have been hired since then - think of the massive turnover in a dozen years.For those yet to be hired, the legislature and governor wiped away virtually all of the pension gains we made over the last thirty years. A new teacher or new state employee will have to work until they are sixty three to receive a full pension which will only be 55% of final average salary according to what I read. Final average salary has been increased from the average of the last five years of employment instead of three.
I remember when I started working and all of the people who were on Tier I told those of us who were on Tier IV how horrible our pension was. Now we will have to face the Tier VI people and tell them they are in it for the real long haul if they want to make teaching a career. It is the same for other civil servants across New York State.
