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loose ends
June 23, 2009
A new UFT-city labor deal, but no mention of the ATR pool
Mayor Bloomberg and UFT President Randi Weingarten announced a tentative contract deal last night, just in time for Weingarten’s announcement Wednesday. The agreement would roll back pension benefits for newly hired employees, but preserve benefits for current teachers. It would also scrap the two work days before Labor Day that were added to the work year in the last contract negotiation.
Not mentioned in either Bloomberg’s press release or Weingarten’s e-mail to teachers (sent late last night and obtained thanks to a helpful reader): the small matter of the $81 million-a-year Absent Teacher Reserve. That’s the pool of teachers who are the losers in the system’s new hiring market — but haven’t been able to find positions at schools.
The union and the city struck a deal to try to drain the pool in November, but the number of reserve teachers stayed basically the same.
This appears to be Weingarten’s penultimate loose end before she leaves the city to work at the national teachers union full-time. The final deal she must announce: A contract agreement with the union-represented Green Dot charter school in the Bronx, which officials are unveiling this afternoon.
Here’s how Weingarten described the new citywide labor agreement in an e-mail to teachers, followed by Bloomberg’s press release:
The city press release, courtesy Liz Benjamin:
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June 23rd, 2009 10:58 am
This is garbage. The Agreement is been released as a “pension Agreement” instead of a Contract agreement as it really is. There is no money salary or raises mentioned for the next 3 years.
Your union has NOT gotten you a raise to combat the cost of living increases. The Police men did. The Fire people got a raise. DC 37 got a raise. Your union doesn’t think you deserve one.
Randi Wiengarten (& Co.) will collect a full teacher’s pension from the NYC DOE, a pension from the UFT, And a pension from the AFT. yet the union member who pays over $1100 a year in dues has reduced benefits to union pensions. Great Deal, Huh?
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Brother and Sister union members—VOTE NO to this contract! we can do better! We deserve better! And we the members deserve more respect from our Union!
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June 23rd, 2009 11:17 am
H Alan,
No this is a Pension Agreement, unless you know what is going on please stop speculating. What would your solution be to OUR crisis? And by OUR I mean all people not just the Union we are apart of. Now this is not an attack. I have 18 years in the system and know it all to well. Take this for what it is and try and look at the bigger picture.
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June 23rd, 2009 11:18 am
This is a terrible deal for future teachers. All that NYC unions do is give and give each time there is a downturn in the economy and when things are going great and the city coffers are loaded, union workers get a lousy 3% raise. That’s what happened in the mid-seventies and that is what is happening now. The UFT members should not go along with this plan, it’s a bad deal.
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June 23rd, 2009 3:28 pm
Why should teachers be able to retire at age 55 with a pension, when most other people have to work until they’re at least 65. The reason we don’t have more funding for schools is because more and more of it is going to pay for people who are no longer working in them.
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June 23rd, 2009 3:45 pm
Because teaching is hard work. It’s physically, emotionally and mentally demanding work. You try standing on your feet all day and then going home and grading homework and reading essays, night after night.
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June 23rd, 2009 4:13 pm
Gideon, any time you think you can handle 25 years in a classroom, I invite you to give it a try. My spouse is a teacher, and after endless complaining by me about how easy she had it, she told me to do it myself. Now that was an education.
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June 23rd, 2009 4:37 pm
I’ve been a teacher and a principal and believe me I know how hard it is. But I think students would be better served if we invested our limited funds in changing the working conditions for teachers rather than spending so much on benefits for people who retire at 55. What if we expected teachers to work until they’re 65 like most other people and instead put the saved money into hiring more teachers and reducing student loads for all teachers. Perhaps at the end of their careers we could have veteran teachers become mentors and coaches to other teachers.
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June 23rd, 2009 5:14 pm
Re pensions. It ain’t so simple.
But at the risk of over-simplifying (and side-stepping other valid angles), my take - as a former Tier I retirement employee in another state - is that when a prospective employee evaluates the compensation package, he or she is evaluating the combination of pay, benefits… and pension. On the employer side, the consideration is: pay ‘em less now, but more down the road.
Mid-game, employers may find it worthwhile to lure higher-paid 55-year-olds into retirement so as to replace them with lower-paid 25-year-olds (even adding on a possible sweetened retirement lure).
I’d rather see us
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June 23rd, 2009 5:15 pm
(oop)
… cut cut cut the Tweed budget. -
June 24th, 2009 1:18 pm
As a parent, I find it difficult to understand how eliminating important new school year preparation time benefits anyone. I see it as severely compromising the quality of students’ return to the classroom after the summer months off. I don’t know of any other professional who simply walks in to perform complex work with no preparation time and with no advance consultation and planning with colleagues and administrators. In the end, it seems that this ill-conceived compromise will serve only to make the first week of the school year more stressful and unproductive for everyone. But in particular, the message our children receive is that their learning is not very important since no one needs to prepare for their transition to a new grade.
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June 24th, 2009 5:49 pm
My answer to the concerned parent “pre planning” before I leave on Friday I already have my yearly curriculum plan and my week one activites already written up. All my photocopies and materials are in place. I just have to reach to school 30 minutes before the children on the first day (note i do this everyday) to put the activity on their desks. The quality of students’ education is therefore NOT being compromised by the elimination of these two days.
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June 25th, 2009 4:14 pm
[...] Like NYC, Providence apparently has a new contract agreement between the city and union leadership (pending a rank and file vote). It doesn’t seem very different than the current contract, a little more money, a little bigger co-pay, etc. Given that the RI education commissioner can apparently override parts of the contract now by fiat, I wouldn’t expect much reform to come through the formal contract negotiation process. [...]
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September 4th, 2009 11:22 am
[...] So why the change? After the city and the United Federation of Teachers agreed to roll back pension benefits for new hires, the city agreed to get rid of the two workdays before Labor Day that teachers had been required to work. [...]
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September 6th, 2009 5:43 am
Wow everybody, it’s Labor Day! I’m enjoying my extra day off, and I am planning to doing something fun that will probably involve a moto trip and seeing something new in Hillview I haven’t seen yet.
You write new post on a Monday at the labor day? … HaPPy bLOGGiNg!
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