NEA: Politics is more than voting.
Ed Week’s Stephen Sawchuk has written a lengthy review of some of the big issues confronting the NEA in the face of the assault by Republicans and many Democrats on public sector unions. It comes in the form of a report on last weeks Representative Assembly in Washington, DC.
Go all the way down to the last four paragraphs of the article to a discussion of a debate and vote on New Business Item 4.
It concerns the role of the Uniserv staff. These are the paid folks that work with elected local presidents and teacher region leaders. They mainly assist in bargaining and contract enforcement.
In the IEA at least, the Uniserv staff do a pretty good job at this.
But when it comes to mobilizing membership around political issues
UFT’s creaky wheels are being pushed.
Go all the way down to the last four paragraphs of the article to a discussion of a debate and vote on New Business Item 4.
It concerns the role of the Uniserv staff. These are the paid folks that work with elected local presidents and teacher region leaders. They mainly assist in bargaining and contract enforcement.
In the IEA at least, the Uniserv staff do a pretty good job at this.
But when it comes to mobilizing membership around political issues
UFT’s creaky wheels are being pushed.
From Brooklyn:
I’ve been a member of the NYC public school teacher and a member of the UFT for 12 years. I don’t hear from my union very much on issues of the day. Occasionally I get a robo-call encouraging me to vote for this or that Democratic candidate. A few times they have mobilized a contingent in a city-wide anti-budget cut demonstration. But during the past few years, I haven’t heard a thing. During solidarity protests with Wisconsin teachers last year-the UFT was nowhere to be found. This past fall when unions organized a solidarity demo with Occupy Wall Street, the UFT nominally supported the march but didn’t mobilize it’s members. I ended up just going on my own without a contingent. Even when it comes down to our own contract which has been expired now for over two years, the union hasn’t called upon the membership to do anything at all.
All around the union however, people are moving on educational issues. Smaller activist-teacher
