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retirement incentive

June 11, 2010

Last year’s cue-card incident cost UFT’s political chief his job

by Elizabeth Green, at 6:47 pm

Remember that time when we caught the teachers union prompting City Council members with cue cards? Barraged with criticism, then-union president Randi Weingarten said she regretted the lobbying tactic and pledged on television to “make some changes in the union.”

I never figured out what the changes were — until today. After the incident, Marvin Reiskin, the union’s political director, retired. He was due to leave at the end of the year, anyway, but the retirement happened a month or so earlier, my source told me. His replacement was Ireland native and former teacher Paul Egan.

There were other changes, too. Now, political moves can’t happen unilaterally. A new chain of command dictates who needs to approve certain actions.

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  • NYC Teacher

    Duh…who didn’t know what happened? Wake up Miss Green!

  • Anonymous

    Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh I love Irish accents! :) But this is News why? Even those of us in the UFT don’t really care much who works there.. why would anyone else?

  • Green Hornet

    It took an education reporter on the NYC beat a year to figure this out. Sounds like you are ready to step up to the New York Post.

  • http://TheTruth Sam Gold

    Marvin Reskin was a Puts was he ws district rep in District 20. He never told the truth. I guess the truth finally caught up to him.

  • Jik Young

    He was a Putz and he talked out of his neck sideways. Reskin should have left 10 years ago.

  • I noticed that…

    I still feel that this political tactic, although it had good intentions, was an embarrassment for the UFT.

    As as a nationally recognized union, we should never resort to any unscrupulous behavior. I always wondered why the union’s members that deal with political action didn’t meet with the selected city council members privately to discuss the issues and concerns at hand and to have these meaningful conversations away from the media.

    I truly hope that Paul Egan will look at Marvin’s faux pas as a lesson that he will never engage in for the sake of the union and its members.

  • Lisa Donlan

    This is news?

    With the greatest respect I have to ask- Elizabeth, why dredge up this incident in the form of a (non) story, now,  when there are so many truly newsworthy  topics to cover?

    Did you cover the shameless mayoral control battle waged by astrotruf groups like Learn NY, that bussed in parents, provided T-shirts and printed signs to hearings and rallies?

    I am not sure if I ever saw a story on the thousands of petitions and post cards brought in by paid organizers to charter lotteries to be used to convince lawmakers that charter parents wanted mayoral control- to govern all the other schools, that their children do not attend?
     
    How about the pizza, buses, t-shirts and signs provided at the PEP hearing this winter?
    The scripts provided to parents and small children that used the same sound bites, to promote charter schools?

    Surely these heavy handed tactics are as worthy of news coverage as the UFT’s efforts of a year ago.

    If you are looking for story ideas, I would love to see a educrat/reformer finance or career web, connecting the dots of the various self-proclaimed ed reformers and their financial backers, the Bloomberg bureaucrats and political operatives as they create and fund new organizations and political and pr campaigns.

     Many readers are just amateur observers, but I bet many could start a few strands, if you need some suggestions on where to start!

  • Green Hornet

    This was not even worthy of a story a year ago. Every political department for every entity (union, corporation, advocacy group) has discussions with and gives elected politicos talking points. They do that every day. If these talking points had a bullet-point before it instead of a question mark after it we never would have this discussion. The only reason why this came out was because some back bench city councilman wanted to make points with the New York Post.
    To bring this back up on a slow summer news day and hurt a great trade unionist like Marvin should disgust any citizen.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Lisa,

    For Gotham Schools to do the kind of reporting you suggest might lead to some discomfort their funders, no?

  • Lisa Donlan

    Right Michael.

    There is no 4th Estate.

    GS, NYDN, WSJ, NYP, NYT… even many academics, CBO’s, think tanks, policy shops, public interest groups, etc.,  have bills to pay, need access to sources and data, so can not take strong stands or scratch too deep beneath the surface and risk offending their advertisers, funders, owners, sources, golf buddies, business associates…

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Hello Lisa,

    Precisely. That’s why unions, for all their many shortcomings, are seen as so dangerous and are axiomatically opposed and undermined. As self-financing working class organizations, they are harder to dominate financially, and have the potential to create independent analysis and political movements.

  • Elizabeth Green

    I want to set something straight here. We do not give in to demands by our financial supporters –nor do they make them. The greatest thing about our supporters is that they respect and admire our editorial independence.  

    You hold us to a high standard, and we appreciate that. It’s also fair to worry about conflicts of interest, and I worry about them, too. But I honestly do not feel that we’ve compromised ourselves. In fact, I’ve never felt so free to write what I see as true in my (admittedly short) career thus far. 

    Finally, just a reminder that we literally will not be able to continue to pursue the story ideas our smart readers suggest without the resources to pay our rents and health insurance bills. Please become a GothamSchools supporter yourself by clicking here: http://gothamschools.org/donate/. A contribution of any size makes a difference for us.

  • Lisa Donlan

    Elizabeth,

    Your points are all very well taken!

    I am sure Bill Perkins, Shelly Silver, Robert Jackson,  Rosie Mendez, Leonie Haimson or the many electeds and advocates, parents and community leaders who get called shills for the UFT whenever they take a position that contradicts one held by this administration, would echo your clear conscience and right to take a stand on its merit.

    And gee- it almost sounds like you journalists could use a union!

     I  hope you’d never have to work for merit pay or face lay offs based on some arbitrary measure that could fluctuate wildly due to elements totally out of your control.

  • http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ norm

    Elizabeth,

    I’m not going to get into the funding issue – you already have my 50 bucks. Can I get you guys to even take a look at the Chicago teacher union elections where a group of young teachers (sorry, not the anti-union ilk of Evan and Sydney which you guys love to cover so much) in the heart of Duncan/Obamaville have revolted against a Randi Weingarten like union sell-out leadership and captured 60% of the vote? Wasn’t 50 enough? Tell me how much and the check is in the mail.

    By the way, you didn’t catch that long-time UFT political operative Brigid Rine who worked under Marvin and his predecessor Tom Murphy, took the immediate initial hit. She was taken off the beat though she kept her job (in Unity Caucus you have to be dead for 3 years before losing your job). She may have resurfaced under Paul Egan, who some people like and others say is a bull in a China shop. I think Paul’s Irish brogue is very useful in the political world.

    By the way, apparently UFT COPE contributions are down and they are sending out the troops, including Egan to squeeze people for more money so the UFT can continue its stellar record of political successes.

    By the way – you Gotham guys and gals want me as stringer covering the AFT convention in Seattle in my usual impartial manner? Promise, I won’t call Randi and the Unity 800 revelers nasty names.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Elizabeth, Taking your comment about Gotham Schools’ funders lack of editorial intrusiveness at face value leads me to believe that they they have no need to impose their views, since you have largely internalized their point of view.
    Whether it’s the “Chalking It Up” quote, the over-reliance on anti-teacher slanted coverage and diatribes in the Times and tabloids, superficial and uncritical reporting of anti-union front groups, or under-reporting of alternative views, this site, for all its usefulness, must be consumed with a cup of salt.

  • Peter

    A year later, recounting events again ?? must have been a really slow day. The disdain that city legislators have for the chancellor and the mayor knows no bounds, and the union should take pride when legislators ask for specific school related queries.

    What’s interesting in Chicago is that the loser originally beat an incumbant president to win the job. Chicago teachers face layoffs and losses in benefits, whether the new leader can stem the blood, or, open the wounds time will tell. In NYC, I seem to remember Mulgrew just received 91% of the vote.

  • Smith

    This was a perfectly legitimate political activity reported as a scandal. If I remember correctly, Common Cause said there was nothing wrong with what the UFT did.

  • Socrates

    I love all the union folks on here trying to bully Elizabeth into doing for them what they accuse her of doing for her donors. Those of us who don’t fetishize the status quo think Elizabeth is too much in your camp, while those who do think she’s too much on our “side.” Sounds like she’s doing a pretty good job of staying neutral.

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