The Day the Sea Came; UFT's Saddam Plan; UFT's response
the UFT's plan would force teachers to declare their preference in public. That would let pro-union teachers lean on their anti-union peers, creating just the kind of "intimidation" of which the union is always accusing management.Then, unions will have a better shot at taking over more charter schools - even if many of the teachers oppose them.
This is not democracy. It's thuggery.
The charge that card check organizing is a public election is thus nonsensical. What the Post really objects to in card check recognition is the opposite of what it claims: far from being public, the identities of card-signing union supporters are not known to anti-union employers until the union is certified, when it is much harder to fire or intimidate them. How interesting that the Post would decry as thuggery procedures that provide the protection of secrecy to union supporters. The psychoanalysts will find a rich lode of material in that formulation.
UFT's Saddam Plan
NY Post Editorial
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/58049.htmNovember 22, 2005 -- New York City's teachers union is launching a war on teachers.
No, not on its own members - on charter-school teachers who have escaped the union's clutches.
The United Federation of Teachers can't stand charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run - and, by the way, seldom unionized.
So it's gunning to get even.
As the state nears the 100-school cap on charters (imposed at the union's behest), the UFT is offering a deal: It will support extra schools in the city if charter-school teachers are stripped of their right to a secret-ballot vote on unionizing.
The UFT would prefer the teachers' votes be counted in public - you know, Saddam Hussein-style - so that it'll know who its enemies are.
Pressure can then be brought to bear on those who don't want to . . . fall into line.
The union claims it's not attacking charter-school teachers, it's protecting them - because they're being prevented from unionizing.
Nonsense. True, teachers at charter schools aren't automatically represented by the UFT by law, as are teachers in traditional public schools. But charter-school principals aren't allowed to bar union organizers - or to retaliate against teachers trying to form a union.
If 51 percent of teachers call for a vote to unionize, the school's administration gets a chance to respond, then comes the secret ballot vote. And everyone lives with the outcome.
It's as easy as that.
What seems to irk the UFT is that so few charter-school teachers have chosen to organize under this system. Of 79 charters, the teachers at only five have chosen to unionize.
Why? Because charter-school teachers, by and large, chose to work at these innovative schools specifically to escape the poisonous, bureaucratic culture at union-driven traditional schools.
Indeed, they've given up job security, immunity from firing and cushy union-shaped schedules to work as pioneers at these startups. Their schools demand much of them, but also give much back in terms of turning kids' lives around.
But the UFT's plan would force teachers to declare their preference in public. That would let pro-union teachers lean on their anti-union peers, creating just the kind of "intimidation" of which the union is always accusing management.
Then, unions will have a better shot at taking over more charter schools - even if many of the teachers oppose them.
This is not democracy. It's thuggery.
The UFT's idea should be treated accordingly - that is, squelched.
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The NY Posts Theatre of the absurd
Filed under: General Leo Casey @ 6:20 pm
Only the editorial writers of the New York Post could stumble unintentionally into a script for the theatre of the absurd, as it did last week with this editorial, UFTs Saddam Plan. According to the brilliant political minds who pen their editorial page prose, the UFTs proposal for card check union organizing in charter schools is tantamount to the authoritarian rule Saddam Hussein inflicted on Iraq for decades. That will certainly come as news to the states of Illinois and California, which have card check organizing for all public employees, as well as the states of New York and New Jersey, which have card check organizing for not-for-profit and private sector employees not covered by the NLRB. But it does not surprise us that the adolescent editorial staff of the Post finds the law of Iraq under Baathist rule indistinguishable from the law of California and New York under Republican governors.
Let us dispose of the issue of card check union organizing, which we discussed recently at some length. The long and short of it is that the Posts claim, the UFT would prefer the teachers votes be counted in public you know, Saddam Hussein-style so that itll know who its enemies are, is such a gross misrepresentation of what card check recognition involves that it is simply impossible to believe that it is an error made in good faith.
All organizing, both traditional ballot and card check certification, requires the union to demonstrate it has the support of teachers in the school by having them sign authorization cards declaring their support. In traditional ballot organizing, the union must sign up a minimum of 30% of the teachers; after validating those cards, the labor board sets dates for a certification campaign and election. At the end of the campaign, the union must secure a majority of the ballots, and withstand legal challenges from the employer, in order to be certified as the collective bargaining representative. In card check organizing, the union must sign up a majority of the teachers outright, whereupon it is automatically certified as the collective bargaining representative.
With the growth of professional union-busting outfits, such as the infamous Jackson Lewis law firm which recently entered the New York Charter School arena, American unions have found that the traditional ballot certification provided antagonistic employers with many opportunities for thwarting the democratic will of employees to organize from firing and otherwise intimidating the publicly identified union supporters who had signed cards to holding up the certification of a positive ballot in years of legal appeals. By contrast, card check recognition allows the union to keep the identity of its supporters secret and protected, until their cards are actually counted and the union is certified at which time the union is in a much better position to protect them. Moreover, since the card check procedure is much simpler and more straightforward, it is considerably harder to tie up a positive union vote in the courts. For these reasons, unions are increasingly turning to card check recognition in their organizing.
The charge that card check organizing is a public election is thus nonsensical. What the Post really objects to in card check recognition is the opposite of what it claims: far from being public, the identities of card-signing union supporters are not known to anti-union employers until the union is certified, when it is much harder to fire or intimidate them. How interesting that the Post would decry as thuggery procedures that provide the protection of secrecy to union supporters. The psychoanalysts will find a rich lode of material in that formulation.
A few words must be dedicated to a Post rhetoric which compares the UFT to Saddam Hussein, and union organizing to bloody, totalitarian rule. Its very appearance is an inevitable by-product of the degeneration of the Post, a once great newspaper that has turned over its editorial page to historical and political illiterates. James Wechsler and Murray Kempton, two great warriors against totalitarianism who graced the editorial pages of the Post in its glory days, would have used their columns to condemn unequivocally the diminution of the struggle against authoritarian dictatorships with such juvenile antics. One looks in vain for a similar voice of integrity today.
The real Saddam Hussein and the real Iraqi Baathists jailed, tortured and murdered Iraqi teacher unionists. Teacher unions have always thrived in democracies, and always been targeted as enemies of the state by authoritarian regimes on the left and on the right, from Castros Cuba and Maoist China to Pinochets Chile and apartheid South Africa.
The real UFT and the real AFT have been the strongest supporters of democratic Iraqi and Kurdish teacher unions, and the most steadfast opponents of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime. Would that the US government had always been equally steadfast.
The real UFT and the real AFT have a long and proud history of opposition to Fascism and Communism, and have provided critical material aid to democratic unions, such as Polands Solidarnösc, struggling for the freedom of their peoples.
Only a newspaper with cavalier disregard for such matters of great democratic principle could publish UFTs Saddam Plan on its editorial page.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 5:04 PM
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