AFT convention low points - Substance News:
AFT CONVENTION NEWS AND ANALYSIS: Do AFT locals need an anti-bullying contract clause when facing national leaders? Randi's 'You're more beautiful when you're angry' smiles fall flat when dozens of her 'thugs' push, shove and manipulate the physical spaces in both Common Core debates
George N.Schmidt - July 14, 2014
44-25. RESPECTFUL WORKING ENVIRONMENT. The following behaviors are inconsistent with a respectful working environment and are impressible: (a) verbal abuse, which includes, but is not limited ot, obseene, threatening, humiliating or intimidating language; and (b) non-verbal abuse, wich includs acts that are threatening, humiliating, or intimidating. Individual , group, or school-wide meetings shall not be utilized to threaten, humiliate, or intimidate bargaining unit members..." (Agreement between The Board of Education of the City of Chicago and Chicago Teachers Union Local 1 American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO. July 1, 2012 - June 30, 2015.
After being part of the largest convention committee meeting in the history of the American Federation of Teachers and then been part of the floor debate before the 3,000 delegates and visitors to the July 2014 AFT convention, I was left with a couple of related things on my mind: Bullying and B movies. And it wasn't just because the Chicago delegation was housed in the historic Biltmore Hotel, where more movies have been made and scene shots than at any other hotel anywhere. The behaviors we were watching from some people with lots of power reminded us why we had put an "Anti Bullying" article in our new contract (won by our Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012) and could easily be traced in many cases to the B movie wannabeism that soaks rooms in cliches and dead metaphors. Our anti-bullying language may have saved the convention from some embarrassing moments. Only George Orwell's Politics and the English Language can save us from the clichés and dead metaphors.
There were three things that kept clinking in the back of my mind while I sat through the Common Core debates at the 2014 convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Los Angeles from July 10 through July 14.
Above, at the Friday night forum on "Social Movement Unionism", the president of the New York City local of the American Federation of Teachers went back to his textings, while the president of the Los Angeles local (far right) was explaining how the new leaders of the teacher union in the nation's second largest city was taking power (they took office on July 1) after winning an election based on the model of unionism that had been improved in the Chicago Teachers Union. Karen Lewis, the president of the AFT local in the nation's third largest city listened to Caputo Perl, while Michael Mulgrew had better things to do. Substance photo by Norm Scott.The first was how silly the loyalists of the AFT leadership were on the floor of the debates. Most of those who were the silliest came from the massive delegation from New York City, but there were others, from the traditional loyalists in other locals (many of which have been decimated because they woke up too late to the fact that you can't compromise with aggressors -- and corporate school reform and its various test implementations (including Common Core) has been an aggressor for more than 15 years.
After being pushed around both in the committees that decide the fate of the convention resolutions and then in full view of many of the 3,000 delegates and visitors during the convention's general sessions, several people from the Chicago delegation -- all of them women and every one of them a union leader who is still a classroom teacher -- complained of being bullied, almost always by a male delegate from New York City.
