May, 2005, House of Delegates Meeting

By Theresa D. Daniels

The House of Delegates convened at Plumbers Hall, 1340 West Washington Blvd., on May 4, 2005. The visitors were seated in their balcony, the delegates and the CTU (Chicago Teachers Union) staff members were on the floor of the hall while the sergeants-at-arms wandered the aisles without visible agitation, and the officers with their attorneys held the stage. God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.

Merkel must not know how riveting these meetings can be, and of what earth-shattering importance they are to the lives of many. No matter what the season, to many delegates, there’s always a bouquet of spring fragrance in the air here, with its attendant whiffs of fertile soil as well.

Union is petitioned for elections to be done by mailed ballot

A trumpet was sounded by the heavenly cohort when Sandy Finkel, delegate at the Franklin Magnet School, submitted 2,000 plus signatures (at least 275 more signatures than required) on a PACT (Pro-Active Chicago Teachers and School Employees) petition for a referendum on whether the union should use mailed ballots and have an outside firm conduct in entirety all union elections.

Finkel presented President Marilyn Stewart with the signed petitions towards the end of the pre-meeting question period and asked when the referendum would be held on this question. Stewart answered that teachers and others would vote after the Rules/Election Committee verified the validity of the signatures.

All of the teachers’ unions in the major cities do their elections by mailed ballot, leaving the CTU to be one of the few who has not stepped up to this improvement of modern times upon Chicago’s traditional system of Vote early, and vote often.

Why does the UPC leadership fight against the mailed ballot?

The present UPC (United Progressive Caucus) union leadership, just like the old UPC, has fought the idea of the mailed ballot, despite the fact that the parent organization of the union, the AFT (American Federation of Teachers), recommended that the CTU go to the mailed ballot after the AFT upheld the hotly contested and close election of 2004 which ultimately installed the Stewart administration.

The AFT weighed in with their endorsement of the mailed ballot despite their close ties with the old and the “new” UPC. For example, the attorney for the UPC, Larry Poltrock, had to take a leave from his job with the AFT while the AFT investigated the election of 2004.

Reminiscent of the Bush/Gore debacle in Florida where Bush got appointed president by the court, the AFT said that while there were election irregularities, there weren’t enough of them to overturn the results.

This election sported a 560-vote margin of victory. Especially for some offices won by less than a 300-vote difference, the 900 plus unaccounted-for ballots—not to mention other irregularities, such as questionable signatures and unprecedented voting by personnel absent from school on election day—could have easily reversed the outcome.

The AFT, however, did not allow a new election to go forward as had been voted by the Rules/Election Committee, and they appointed the Stewart administration. The AFT did say that the CTU should go to the mailed ballot to avoid future accusations of vote fraud.

Know your history: Merely two court-won election safeguards finally stopped the UPC decades-long victory train in 2001

After winning election after election for decades, the UPC finally lost a union election to Debbie Lynch and PACT in June, 2001, only after Lynch won a victory in court to have the vote totals published school-by-school and to have an accounting of all of the ballots printed. The court said that the number of ballots printed had to be known, and that all ballots had to be accounted for in the final election tally.

The UPC union leadership had argued that if the Board knew how a particular school had voted, there could be retaliation (???). They also argued, as they continue to do, that it would be too difficult to account for all printed ballots in the final tally of the election.

[The present union leadership used the mailed ballot in its recent elections to fill vacancies for delegates in such units as city-wide teachers and clerks, but still did not use the double envelope safeguard that ensures confidentiality for the voter and makes the ballot more tamper proof. The outside envelope confirms voter eligibility and ensures that no one can vote more than once. The inside envelope ensures voter confidentiality. The last retiree election in January of 2003, for example, had to be done over again when it was discovered that 175 counterfeited and fraudulent ballots reputedly with votes for UPC candidates had been sent in.]

UPC thwarts attempts to secure the mailed ballot for union elections

The UPC’s appointed Rules/Election Committee defeated the motion of former elementary functional vice president, Judy Dever, for a mailed ballot when she made that motion in that committee last fall. She had been re-appointed to the committee by the UPC when they came into power, after she supported their position on the election and announced to the media after a canvassing committee meeting that only 30 votes were in question.

Dever, now retired, cited the fact that even the AFT supported the mailed ballot for the CTU since it would eliminate many election irregularities and charges of fraud. When Dever and former retiree delegate Jerry Adler tried to pass out leaflets promoting the mailed ballot at the Delegates Workshop this March, they were kicked out by the union chieftains.

UPC says Chicago teachers and support personnel not savvy enough for a mailed ballot

In the argument they always use against the mailed ballot, the UPC leaders and faithfuls say that the mailed ballot would disenfranchise the teachers and other members because the voters just wouldn’t vote. They cite the complexity of the ballot as a deterrent, and say the voter turnout would be very low.

The proponents of the mailed ballot maintain that Chicago teachers and other personnel would welcome the mailed ballot as a way to secure the integrity of our election process, and like union members of other major cities, CTU members would adapt and master the mailed ballot process. If the first such election showed a lower turnout of voters, future outcomes would only improve, they argue.

The UPCers also say that the Union has difficulty getting the correct addresses of many members, even though the makers of motions for the mailed ballot always outline the many recourses the members who don’t receive their mailed ballot would have so that they would get their ballot in time to vote.

Debbie Lynch nominated for high school functional vice president

In the Items for Action on the May meeting Agenda, the Executive Board recommended the approval of the following motions: “A. Approve that the recommendation be presented to the Board that the termination date for PATs [Probationary Assigned Teachers] be extended, so that benefits continue throughout the summer months. Such extension will avoid a break in service for tenure purposes. [The motion was approved.]

“B. Approve the rules for the nomination of High School Functional Vice President. [Approved]

“C. Nominations of High School Vice President [sic] candidates from the House floor.” [Deborah Lynch from Gage Park High School and Alex Illich from Kennedy High School were nominated.]

The high school delegates present at the June House of Delegates meeting will elect one of the two candidates by voting at the meeting. Each candidate will be given a minute to speak at the meeting before the voting takes place. The results of the vote will be announced at the end of the meeting at the New Business section of the Agenda.

A chance for Lynch to speak at House meetings and counter the charges made against her administration

Especially for the sake of checks and balances, it would be interesting to see Lynch elected as high school functional vice president so she could speak at the microphones at the House meetings and present another side to the one-sided views and information presented from the stage.

Let’s hear the other side of the so-called Lynch deficit debate. Let her speak to the issues of pensionability, 5 + 5, the contract regarding PATs, residency, the partnership agreement (which the UPC leadership is belatedly getting on board with, though a timelier entry would have kept schools from closing), the medical benefits, and the many other issues that need to be addressed in a far more balanced way.

So much of what we hear from the stage at the meetings, and in the written communications we receive, both in the letters and the Chicago Union Teacher newspaper, sounds so much like very early campaign propaganda, that the situation already seems to call for giving equal time.

The UPC leadership achieved some benefit extensions for the teachers they’re calling “fired”—It’s a good thing, but not the new thing they pretended it was

From the very beginning of the House meeting, the delegates were repeatedly told that Vice President Ted Dallas was waiting to hear by phone the results of the negotiations at the strategic bargaining session with the CBOE (the Chicago Board of Education) about the PATs and TATs (Temporary Assigned Teachers) “scheduled to be fired at the end of the school year.” The session had concluded just that day, President Stewart said, and hopefully we would be hearing some very good news soon.

So it was a very dramatic when the call came in and it was announced with great fanfare that the Board had agreed to continue the health insurance and dental coverage for those members through August 31, the same as had been done every year by the Lynch administration. Also, a PAT who obtained a position on or before October 31 would not have any interruption in working toward tenure.

The PAT conundrum—An easy three years blaming Debbie Lynch for everything

Lynch faulted the Stewart administration for, in her words, “terrorizing the PATs, FTBs, and ESPs with the lie that they would have no health insurance over the summer.” She says that each year her administration, and prior administrations, successfully negotiated to extend those benefits for displaced personnel.

The Chicago Union Teacher newspaper stated in the May issue, as were also words to the same effect stated from the stage at the House meeting, “The power was given to principals to fire PATs and TATs at will under a provision of the contract negotiated by the administration of former President Deborah Lynch in the fall of 2003.”

Lynch stated in response that it was the old UPC contract language (Article 39) that provided that any decision to discipline or discharge a probationary teacher (is within the exclusive discretion of the principal and/or the Board.”

When is a “hearing” not a hearing

Lynch said that contrary to the Stewart letter, it has always been and is the case that only tenured teachers have real “hearings.” The word “hearing” has the legal connotation, she said, of being a legal forum where a teacher can challenge the principal’s decision, present evidence, and present witnesses.

Lynch declared that the so-called “hearings” for probationary teachers were never more than kangaroo courts, pro forma conferences, a meeting with Board personnel where the decision of the principal was rubber stamped and upheld. The Union could never fight the decision, but could only challenge the procedure for PATs. The “hearing” was all they got, according to Lynch, and it took just 15 days to get rid of an FTB [just as under the Stewart team’s “restoration of due process hearings”].

“Fired” used by the union as a scare tactic for political reasons

Lynch said the use of the word “fired” is also used as a scare tactic. The media uses the word “fired” to sensationalize, but the union leaders know better, she said, and should not mislead or alarm their members for political purposes.

In a very matter-of-fact way, she said, “The Union is lying and the Sun-Times in factually incorrect when they say these teachers are ‘fired.’ They are ‘displaced’ and can be hired at other schools. Last year there were 800 displaced and almost all of them found jobs. This happens every year. The contract this year helped these teachers get early notice to find other jobs.”

She cited page 183, Article 43—18 of the Contract as establishing a joint Board/Union committee that was to work out all the steps a principal would take to evaluate and help a teacher. Lynch added that the UPC must have been asleep at the switch to not have continued the work begun during the Lynch administration on this committee.

The PAT policy is not to be used for positions lost by budget cuts

There are principals admitting that these are budget cuts they have been ordered to make, and they are writing recommendations for the teachers displaced. If these are budget cuts, Lynch said, then they must be done by seniority within the building. Also, she said, the PAT policy cannot be applied to displacements for budget reasons. Lynch charges that the Union is not challenging this abuse of the policy by the Board.

Within the past three months, Lynch reported, PACT filed two ULPs (Unfair Labor Practices) with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board against Stewart for her team’s refusal to enforce the agreements forged by the PACT administration on 5 + 5 and on PAT protections. She accused Stewart of taking the same positions as the Board and not enforcing the Contract.

Lynch’s erstwhile attorney, Kathy Koenig, has stated that a possible legal recourse for the “no reason” displacements or the displacements with no consideration of seniority could be the clause in the contract that says there can be no arbitrary and capricious abuse of the contract.

The delegates received in their April meeting packets a copy of the “Dear Probationary /Temporarily Assigned Teacher” letter signed by Marilyn Stewart and dated March 10, 2005, which said the CTU and the Board had reached an agreement which restored due process hearings to all PATs and TATs who received an unsatisfactory rating, but the procedure described was only in regard to evaluations and only for probationary teachers affected mid-year. It did not apply to those displaced at the end of the year.

This letter not only explained the procedure the principal would have to follow, but also explained in the final paragraph, the benefits to these teachers that were in the new contract, such as that they must be notified 30 calendar days before the end of the school year as to whether the teacher would be reappointed for the following school year by the principal.

Lynch’s give-back to the Board

To put 4,000 FTBs on the tenure track, Lynch said she accepted the Board/Union joint committee for teacher development and the PAT policy, in which she agreed to the language which governs all the teachers in the state (state law on tenure). She said she was trying to correct an old injustice. In the past an FTB of seven years, for example, could be displaced before a PAT who had only one day teaching experience. The FTBs she said had been left twisting in the wind since 1972.

She countered the myth about the FTBs affected by the contract being uncertified. She said in actuality only 300 of the 4,000 FTBs were uncertified. The rest were certified and sitting in true vacancies, yet not appointed and never on the tenure track until this year, Lynch said.

Lynch told me proudly that beside the 4,000 put on the tenure track by the last contract, last summer 1,500 more teachers came in on the tenure track, as will all future hires. Some of the PATs displaced at the end of this school year will have achieved tenure with which to go to the new jobs they find.

Union fails to inform and guide delegates of schools with pending cuts

According to Lou Pyster, former director of research under Lynch, the number of cuts ordered by the Board for each school was available through the Freedom of Information Act at least weeks that he knows of before the cuts were announced.

Pyster questioned why the union hadn’t given a “heads up” to the schools. Lynch stated, “The union gave the delegates at these schools no information or guidance.”

Blame Debbie some more

Lynch has been blamed by the UPC at one executive board meeting for no Teacher Appreciation Day this school year, yet, she says, there was a Teacher Appreciation Day each of the years of her administration, and the Stewart team should have negotiated for the one this year.

Lynch was being blamed from the stage for not fighting for the pensionability monies owed the teachers for Years 2, 3, and 4 (whereas Year 2 was the only year in question), but when the grievance Lynch and her attorneys had filed won this past January, she says the UPC tried to take credit for it all.

The Board made our union chiefs look good—what did the UPC promise or give away in return for the favor?

The Stewart team has not said what they had to give the Board as quid pro quo for this extension of the benefits, as the Board is not known to do the right thing just out of the goodness of its heart. Time will have to reveal the give-back, hopefully not a pernicious one. Though not fighting Renaissance 2010 does immediately come to mind.

And when it came to the Board, the UPC always gave big. Remember the first wave of hundreds of veteran tenured teachers “honorably discharged” by CEO Paul Vallas through Mayor Richard M. Daley’s reform? Former President Tom Reece at that meeting where the teachers were fired told the Board in his plea on behalf of the teachers that it was the best Board ever.

The old UPC leadership gave up city-wide seniority by having what former union officers Tom Reece and Pam Massarsky called a secret strategy. He bargained out a contract that he and his stallworths rammed through, and when in his secret strategy he went to court to redress the union’s lost rights, the judge said that since the union had bargained under the amendatory law, it was too late to contest it in court.

An indication of how sincerely the union was then fighting for its rights came when James Alexander, then-delegate from Carver, later PACT financial secretary, asked Reece when high school teachers would get some relief [from the reform travesties]. Reece couldn’t have sounded more like Vallas when he said, “When you raise the scores.”

The UPC leaders say we can see their contracts, but when we try, we can’t—What are they hiding?

In the last moments of the official question period which was allowed to happen for the second meeting in a row now, Sandy Finkel of Franklin School made one of those motions that had the UPC hopping to cancel or cut off the question period with calls for quorum or adjournment—whatever will fly—as they did for four of the eight House meetings this school year.

Finkel’s motion was that copies of all Union employees’ contracts be made available to any member requesting them. The motion was seconded and President Stewart, unwittingly, immediately put it to a vote without following the parliamentary procedure of Roberts Rules of Order which these meetings are to follow.

The Yea’s had it and the motion passed, except that it hadn’t been preceded by the obligatory speech of a speaker for it and a speaker against it. However, the UPC attorney hurried to president’s side to say that it was an illegal motion to begin with. The UPC position is that any motion they don’t like is an illegal motion.

One position that the UPC maintains is that the House approves the contracts when it approves the budget. The budget, however, does not itemize the outrageous benefits the UPC has traditionally given itself and deliberately obscures how very much the new union leaders are making off with our union dues for themselves and their friends.

The UPC used this argument to arbitrarily cancel the motion made by Devon Morales, then-delegate from South Shore High School, that the House must be the one to approve any contract over $100,000. The motion passed overwhelmingly only to be wiped out by the leadership on spurious grounds in the Union newspaper and in future meetings.

The UPC also ingenuously quote from a letter by Debbie Lynch’s attorney, Kathy Koenig, which states that these are private contracts between employees and a private organization, so confidentiality must be observed. However, they do not include the ending of the letter which allows any and all to come and view the contracts, as the UPC did.

[Our dues pay their salaries. Our salaries and benefits are public. What is all of this “private” stuff in the face of that?]

But the Lynch administration had nothing to hide in this regard, as it had cut as much as contracts would allow (contracts signed by Reece after his election defeat) many of the unconscionably obscene perks that officers and staff had gotten under the UPC.

According to a leaflet published by the CEEC (Chicago Educational Employees Caucus), and verified by other sources (though no one has been allowed to see all of the contracts to date), the UPC has reinstated to the officers and staff many of the perks removed by the Lynch administration.

Lynch had saved $320,000 a year by removing the 21% paid annuity for the field reps and officers on top of salary and paid pension contribution. Another $80,000 was saved by the elimination of the union-paid 7% Credit Union Account. $135,000 a year was saved when the $18,600-a-year expense account per field rep was eliminated and replaced by a car allowance and an expense procedure that required credit card or cash register receipts. Elimination of the Christmas bonus saved $32,000, and it is a fact that the Stewart administration reinstated the bonus this past holiday season.

After the leadership declared the Finkel motion illegal, Stewart and Vice-President Dallas repeated the mantra that all members had to do is submit a written request and make an appointment to see the contracts, and they would see them.

The Contract was snatched from Lou Pyster when he tried to take notes

I rose to the mike with the point of information that Lou Pyster, after four written requests and numerous calls, had finally been granted an appointment in April to see the contracts he’d been trying to see since October.

Pyster was not shown the contracts of the field representatives, nor the consultants, nor the assistants or coordinators or publicist or attorneys, nor of the clerical staff who reputedly earn as much as $81,558 with many perks.

He was only shown the officers’ contracts, and when he tried to take notes (as they wouldn’t give him a copy), Coordinator Nick Cannella snatched the contract away from Pyster and the viewing was over.

My point of information was cut off by the officers on stage who called my point of information out of order, and the sergeant-at-arms was snatching the microphone out of my hand. But luckily I was using my teacher voice and could be heard, nonetheless.

No transparency to this administration, no transparency to the officers’ contracts

Jan Morgan-Wulf and Sandra Finkel went through the process and were shown again only the officers’ contracts on May 26th. They were allowed to take notes, but these were contracts that didn’t reveal much.

It appeared that the officers’ pension contributions and annuities (amounts unspecified) were paid by the Union “to the extent the law allowed,” that perhaps their medical insurance premium was paid for them too, as well as disability insurance and $50,000 AFT life insurance. It looked like the business-related expenses were without a limit, though they had to be approved and with receipts. [In the old UPC days, it is reputed, the receipts were often handwritten, with the same receipt used month after month.] Because the officers worked year-round, they had five weeks of vacation and 18 holidays plus a natal day (birthday) holiday.

The contract assures them that they will be notified of any conflicts or any derogatory correspondence, that they will have an opportunity for written rebuttal, and that both documents will be placed in their personnel file and can be viewed by them upon written request.

The contract also promises the officers that they would share in any improvement they get for the membership.

Cannella must know where the bodies are buried

A goodly number of times during this contract viewing, Cannella reportedly reiterated that he had been around the longest, and added ambiguously that “they” [the ubiquitous “they”] needed to come to him.

When Morgan-Wulf finished taking notes as fast as she could, Cannella said to her, “Why didn’t you just get Lou’s notes?”

She told him she had heard that he had snatched the contract away from Lou when Lou tried to take notes.

Cannella replied, “Well, I didn’t want to be there all day.”

Let’s table this budget at the June meeting until we understand the hidden contract perks

The six-page budget presented by Certified Public Accountant Paul Merkel at the May delegates meeting will be up for discussion and debate prior to the vote on whether to approve it or not at the June delegates meeting.

Possibly, the House should not approve the budget until there is some acceptable transparency to the perks and benefits that this administration has granted itself and its friends. Perhaps a motion should be made to table the budget until there is full disclosure of all monies paid the Union employees out of our dues.

The Reece-appointed and –contracted field representatives gave thousands of dollars toward the election of UPC candidates in the last election, and the union members need to know to what extent they have been rewarded. Many field reps also sat on their hands and gave the members little or no service during their protected tenure on the job. In this budget, the benefits for the field reps have increased by $600,000 over last year’s budget.

The benefits of the administrative employees have increased $200,000 over last year.

Vice President Dallas turned the House against the first Lynch budget for too many cuts to salaries and perks

Why, Vice President Ted Dallas himself, when he was the delegate from Wells High School in September, 2001, made a motion that a special meeting be called to approve the budget the Lynch administration proposed. He and other UPCers didn’t like the austerity budget that the Lynch administration proposed with cuts to the salaries and perks of officers and others. Lynch was forced to come in through the back door to make any cuts, which she later did with close to a million dollars in savings. In a fiery speech, Dallas convinced many delegates that they would be getting less service with the Lynch budget.

Now the UPC budget has too many cuts in member services

Now in 2005, the worm turns, and an analysis of the UPC budget indicates that the members are indeed getting fewer services. The UPC traded three employees less for the Quest Center and two less lawyers in return for more money for their employees.

They now hire only three lawyers of the five lawyers that Lynch had. In addition, she had an outside criminal lawyer. The UPC has budgeted one million dollars for legal expenses this year instead of the $1.5 million they had budgeted in 2001. Definitely cutting services to the members. Under Lynch, legal services were budgeted at $1.5 million.

The UPC has budgeted fewer sessions for training delegates. Way less service. This time for real.

Under Lynch last year, the field staff had $673,000 budgeted for their benefits, while the UPC has now budgeted $1,184,000 for the field staff benefits, a jump of $600,000. Allotted travel expenses rose by $100,000 and are now up to $360,000. Clerical benefits are up by $200,000 (up from $760,000 to $960,000 almost a 25% jump) though salaries didn’t go up by much. “Members need an accounting,” Larry Milkowski of Carver Military Academy said.

Retirees still getting stiffed, and I don’t mean dying like flies

Perhaps the UPC union leaders never intend to retire while they’re in the money. The officers’ contract makes them promise not to take pension while in office. There are, however, a number of field reps collecting pension and salary too.

I always say that if you’re lucky enough not to die on the job, you too will become a retiree.

Retiree meetings went unannounced in the Chicago Union Teacher for both April and May of this year. Nor was the retiree luncheon announced for June 29th at the Merchandise Mart Holiday Inn. At the last retiree meeting, Retiree Functional Vice President Jackie Mooney urged retirees to write John Ostenburg, editor of the union newspaper, and complain.

I also find it outrageous, that while the retiree group is entitled to three more delegates, and all other groups with vacancies like the city-wide group and the clerical group have had their nominating meetings and are having their elections, the retirees have been told arbitrarily that they cannot hold theirs until just before the retiree delegates’ terms are up in January, 2006.

The UPC made up a concoction about how the by-laws say that the nominating meeting must be held where the maximum number of retirees have the opportunity to attend. Illogically, they go on to assert that therefore the nominating meeting must not be held at one of the regular retiree meetings (where almost a good 200 attend), but at the Christmas luncheon where there are more in attendance. So far, so good, but then what’s wrong with the June 29th “Summer Fest” Luncheon?

The UPC is only insisting on the Christmas luncheon in order to deny the retirees as long as possible the three more voices they are entitled to in the House of Delegates. Why the retirees could have been filling vacancies at the last Christmas luncheon. Since 21 of the presently elected 31 delegates were PACT-endorsed, is the UPC afraid of more PACT voices in the House?

Is it because the UPC is playing at partisan politics that they are denying the union the expertise of the retirees? The retirees were shut out of the delegates training workshop weekend and lobby day. The retiree newsletter remained unprinted by the union leaders all year, though now there is a promise that it will be printed inside of the union newspaper four times during the year, and more if necessary. Doesn’t it look like we need to take back our union?

Willie Scott is alive and well and attending meetings as a retiree delegate

Rumors of Willie’s death, as they say, have been greatly exaggerated. It was reported to me by two people that Willie had died, and I announced it for the moment of silence at the House meeting.

Later that evening, I called his home to see if I could do anything for the family. I found myself talking to Willie who told me that it was Alvin Scott, said by some to be the “winningest” football coach, who had died. He coached at Simeon High School. Willie and Alvin were friends, and some people thought they looked alike, Willie said, and therefore the confusion.

Willie had me touch his hand at the next retiree meeting we attended. It was warm. No, our membership numbers are not fluctuating so wildly that we can’t count how many more delegates we retirees are due.

Happy Trails to You for the summer as this is the last report till next September when Substance resumes publication

So much more happened at this meeting. I feel I could write tomes about these meetings. Some of it would be romantic and swashbuckling, some of it otherwise. But, Gentle Reader, I fear I may have already strained your patience with so much verbiage, so enough for now. Don’t let any of this get you down, for this too shall pass. Happy summer!