6:02—Secretary Howard Schoor calls us to order.Minutes—Approved.
LeRoy Barr, along with all officers, is not here—Schoor reports 300 CLs were trained at Rye Hilton, including operational clauses, hopefully live soon. Paras celebrating 50 years of UFT representation. Will be celebrated this year. 28,000 paras now in union.
Kate Martin Bridge—There was MLC meeting on single payer. What is happening with this legislation. Where do we stand?
Jeff Sorkin—Not much to report. Legislators presented they wanted to work with MLC—is being considered.
Schoor—Unions want to know what the effect is on us. 2% of whatever raise we’d have gotten goes to our health care. Very expensive program, we want to know state can afford it. Most probably should be federal program. No position on it yet because we don’t know what it’s going to say. We’ve already paid for our health coverage.
Reports from districts
Sean Rothkowitz—SRP event in SI.
Legislative Report
Schoor praises Paul for CL training.
Paul Egan—Sunday fire alarm went off and building was emptied over burning bagel. No one hospitalized. We need to finish early because Eagles playing Redskins. Chelsea won.
Tish James will be AG, will resign as public advocate. Mayor must fill it, will be special election. Will declare on 3rd of January. At least 9 declared candidates. Will have ten days to fill petitions. 1500 signatures a day. No party will be helping, may shake out a few people. Election will be at end of February, and will be repeated in September.
We are going to try and have four town hall meetings with candidates. Have set Queens meeting 13 December, Manhattan 18. Will be two more in January. At DA in January we will debate and endorse. That is goal.
In 2009 many City Council seats will be term limited. We have analyzed districts. If every UFT member turned out and voted and rest of pop. turned out in regular numbers, we would win all 51 seats. We can influence things. More people stay at home than vote in this country. When de Blasio won primary, turnout was 18%. That means only 9% of Democratic vote was needed to win. We have great opportunities.
Would like UFT members to run. Looking for viable candidates who can raise money. City council has matching funds. We’re looking for people who want to run and will pair them up with advisors. In some case we may have multiple UFT members looking to run. Imagine if we had 26, who could decide on next speaker. Imagine what we could do.
Happy to have conversations and put people in touch with consultants. Would like 15, 20, 26 candidates.
Election Committee Report—Amy Arundell—Have proposed election calendar. Formed committee at last meeting. Have met once. Have various reps. Put forth for your approval.
Plan to mail ballots March 25 and count April 17. Asks for approval of election notice.
Schoor—Will committee come to us later with other things?
Arundell—Correct. We will come back to you after future meetings.
Passes.
Schoor—40 candidates minimum for slates.
Michael Mulgrew—Fully expecting attack on union in May and June. Empire Center just released report on NYSUT. May and June there will be a campaign against us.
We averted a difficult situation with NY Presbyterian. Was not dropped from Blue Cross. Good for 43 months There are basically 5 hospitals in NYC. None of them deserve non-profit status. If they did not settle, they would’ve come looking to us, at worst in 43 months.
We are among handful of people who still have premium-free health care. It is endangered. What we did last spring was very smart. Number one issue in last election was health care. We work day in and day out to protect and fight for it, but we should not take it for granted.
There will be many more fights over the next year. We can use buying power of entire city health force. Few people running institutions worry about patients. They worry about bottom line. That needs to change.
300 CLs in Rye. Nice group of brand new CLs. Did presentation on operational issues, which go into effect December 5, in two days. DRs will be trained on Wednesday. Think these through, can be tool for empowering workshops. Asked CLs to strategize on how to use this to empower and organize. We want workforce to say there is better way to support children if we have right supplies, workspace, etc.
There will be many trainings over next month. Will be rally on Wednesday against Spectrum. Have decided they want to fight union as multinational corporation. Labor, governor, many elected officials demonstrating against Spectrum. Were UFT retirees marching today.
Single payer—We are in support of single payer for United States. If we enact this in NY State it will blow hole in budget public schools will not recover from. 100 billion dollar hole in state budget would be largest ticket item.
Was piece in NY Post saying they don’t and we don’t support it. Post doesn’t support it because they don’t support working people.
As for public funding, for elections. it’s 3-400 million budget item. Can we support it? No. These are my opinions, not union’s. My tax money going so political crap can come to my house?
Janella Hinds—Saturday third annual bowling event with students in temp. housing. Had phenomenal time. Gave them money for holiday shopping.
Karen Alford—Saturday there were new members here. Classes in Zumba, yoga, mindfulness, diet. Helped to de-stress. Lego came and middle and high schools revolved around robotics.
Shelvy Abrams—Thanks people for November 3rd, SRP recognition day. Many paras showed and were acknowledged. Great to see members celebrated. Expects everyone in room to buy table of ten at Hilton.
We are adjourned. 6:40
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