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UNION NEWS
Bickering and disruption every month
Partisan bickerings continue to disrupt monthly Chicago Teachers Union
meetings
By Terry Daniels
Pages 1
2 3 4
5 (Continued)
 Membership also entitles
you to elect 27 retiree delegates for the House of Delegates (or o run
for office yourself— next election in January, 2003) and gives you
input that you would not otherwise have into union and pension affairs.
If you are one of the
approximately 9,000 retirees who joined RTAC (Retired Teachers and Career
Service), you may be surprised to know that you are not also a member
of the Chicago Teachers Union. Many retirees do not know this. RTAC membership
through the pension board does provide some programs and information,
but union membership is not one of the perks.
The meetings do vary
in the intensity of their seismic tremors, but most of the previous six
meetings of this school year have presented a ground-shaking show. While
the January meeting was characterized by a new politeness from the old-guard
opposition toward the new leadership, the February meeting showed that
this honeymoon was to be short-lived.
The compromises offered
by the newly elected PACT leadership (ProActive Teachers and Other School
Workers) to the UPC faction have not been met half way. The UPC wants
it all their way or no way, as was evident at the February meeting.
The axis of evil for
the schools used to be Daley/Vallas/Reece. I can’t put names to this
new axis yet.
The UPC will rise again?
Gerry Adler, retiree
delegate (who won the election despite Reece spending big union monies
in a letter campaign asking that members not vote for Adler), holds the
following view: “We will not make the UPC members do penance for
the sins of their former leaders, and that is the point at which we are
willing to compromise with them.”
However, the new union PACT leadership has gone much further than that
in situation after situation in its willingness to compromise with and
extend the proverbial olive branch to the UPC delegates in the house.
The UPC faction has
shown no reciprocal spirit of compromise. To review some recent past examples:
When the union leadership put up a PACT candidate (Rosemary Finnegan)
and a UPC candidate (Patricia Knazze) for two pension trustee spots needing
to be filled, the UPC (who are still in the majority in the House of Delegates,
in proportions not representative of the majority of the union members
who voted in PACT) rammed through a motion to replace the PACT candidate
with a second UPC candidate (John O’Brill). No compromise slate for
them. Unfortunately for them, the PACT candidate Rosemary Finnegan won
the election over O’Brill anyway.
Chagrined at the outcome,
the UPC tried to have the union president censured for what they called
not adequately publicizing the House endorsement of the two UPC candidates.
While they admitted that the information was in the union paper, the Chicago
Union Teacher, the UPC said that it was not placed prominently enough.
Failing in their attempt
to have the union president censured, they made a motion that House endorsements
of pension trustees would be publicized by a letter being sent to every
union member (an expenditure of approximately $10,000 the union leadership
wanted to avoid in its push for austerity) and that there would be an
advertisement on the front or back cover of the union newspaper.
Motion in committee
This motion was referred
to the Publicity Committee (of which I am a member). I watched Debby Pope,
the editor of the Chicago Union Teacher and union liaison for the committee
and a UPC committee member work out a compromise motion. The compromise
motion said a letter would be mailed to each delegate announcing the House
endorsements of the pension trustee candidates. Delegates would be directed
to post or publicize this letter. The advertisement for the endorsements
would be placed prominently in a half-page ad in the union newspaper,
but not on the front or back covers because of the set format for those
pages.
After the compromise
was struck, I raised my hand and moved that the entire motion be rejected.
After begging for, and finally getting, a second on my motion (I had to
remind people that they easily had the numbers to vote my motion down),
I spoke to my motion with here deleted expletives, but saying words to
the effect of, Why would I want to advertise the endorsements for pension
trustees of people in the UPC, people who have traditionally and historically
given away my pension monies, monies never again to be recouped, whenever
the Mayor and the Board wanted.
My motion lost in committee
as was expected. But so did the compromise so carefully worked out in
committee between the UPC member and publicity committee union liaison
when the amended motion came to the floor of this House meeting.
Pretending that the
issue was that members wouldn’t know who the best candidates were
to protect their interests if they didn’t get individual mailings,
and saying that $10,000 was not a lot of money to spend on that important
cause, the UPC managed to have their way. Not only did they manage to
mandate that the union spend the money to promote what they hope will
be their candidates, but they were able to add to the motion the words
“and any other ways the executive committee sees fit.”
Of course, this fight
of theirs was based on their hope to continue to ram their candidates
through in the House and their need to have a published “endorsement”
in order for their candidates to win in any election where the entire
membership in the schools votes.
During debate, Tina
Beacock of Kennedy High School made the point that we were arguing over
which teachers, not if teachers would be protecting our pension interests.
The issue for the UPCers
was not that teachers’ interests would not be protected as they speciously
argued, but that the UPC candidates wouldn’t get into office when
the membership voted, the same membership who had voted out Reece and
the UPC, and had voted in PACT. I say again, “Why would I want people
who have historically given away my pension monies to be endorsed for
pension trustee, let alone elected?”
Other examples of the destructive partisan warring the UPC is willing
to wage will be recounted later in this report when I get into the chronology
of this February meeting.
What do UPC candidates — and UPC members — stand for?
It’s admirable
to me that President Deborah Lynch and the new PACT union leadership are
to such a great extent reaching out to the UPC in a spirit of cooperation
and are more than extending the olive branch, so to speak. Debbie Lynch
keeps saying we’ve got to be one union. However, how do you compromise
with people who are not remorseful for the part they played in Reece’s
shameful collusion and active collaboration with Mayor Daley and Paul
Vallas, policies devastating to teachers and other union members?
The UPC members are
not apologizing for the mistakes of the past and their role in supporting
the sell-out union misleadership of Tom Reece. Reece gave the store away
— the whole store, and they supported him.
How do you continue
to call yourself UPC if you are pro-union? When people call themselves
neo-nazis today, are they distancing themselves from Hitler? Not that
I’m comparing genocidal war criminals to union misleaders who have
destroyed the schools and the careers of so many teachers and other union
members. But you see the point I’m making about what’s in a
name and an affiliation.
I ask if the UPCers
have even tried to distance themselves from the company union of Reece.
Or is the name of the game pure opportunism and power politics? Is the
UPC saying, “We were in power once and feeding at the trough, and
we want to be there again? We’ll destroy the union if we have to,
rather than not be in power?”
I say, “How do
you not disavow an affiliation to a group that did so much harm to school
workers and schools?”
The UPC members seemingly
are not apologizing for the sins of their past leaders. On the contrary,
they remain brazen apologists for Tom Reece and company and their collaboration
with policies that effectively destroyed education in Chicago for the
last six years or so, despite the public relations spin Daley and Vallas
put on the “reforms.” Education was put on hold while the test
prep and test numbers game and pretense went on with the help of expensive
consultants who further wasted the teachers’ time and energy and
tax dollars. Maybe despite what Adler says — and the spirit of cooperation
and outreach that Lynch is promoting — we should ask the UPCers to
do penance.
How the former UPC union leaders gave away the store — let us
count the ways.
I would like the following
items brought up at every possible opportunity when UPCers gets up in
the House to promote another opportunist candidate of theirs (especially,
when the union constitution clearly says it is the call of the Executive
Board), or when motions moved for acceptance by the Executive Board are
amended for the pure pleasure of power politics and disruption. (See the
later examples given of what went on in the House.)
If the UPCers defend
the Reece administration, that means to me the UPC are apologists for
pension raids. Why was this not stated by any PACT activist at the microphones
in the debates at several House meetings, first on the endorsements themselves
for pension trustees, and then at this February meeting on the advertisements
for those endorsements? Maybe the reason is the spirit of cooperation
the new PACT union leadership is fostering. We’re bending over backwards
to work with the UPCers, but as we all know, there is a danger to bending
over backwards.
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5 (Continued)
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