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so much for the labor union's funeral

1/30/2019

 
by Dana Milbank, The Washington Post

​Something funny happened on the way to the labor movement’s funeral.
When Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his antilabor colleagues on the Supreme Court handed down the Janus v. AFSCME decision last June, unions braced for the worst. The American Federation of Teachers expected it might lose 30 percent of its revenue after the high court gave public-sector workers the right to be free riders, benefiting from union representation but paying nothing.
Instead, the 1.7 million-member union added 88,500 members since Janus — more than offsetting the 84,000 “agency-fee payers” it lost because of the Supreme Court ruling. And the union has had a burst of energy. There has been a surge of high-profile strikes by teachers’ unions in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Rallies, pickets and local campaigns mushroomed by the hundreds. The union has tallied 11 organizing wins since Janus, tripled its “member engagement” budget from 2014 and nearly doubled the number of voters it contacted in 2018.

“Alito put his thumb on the scales of justice for the anti-union ideologues,” says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “It was a wake-up call to everyone. Everybody got engaged.”

Labor leaders ought to thank Alito — and send chocolates to the Koch brothers for bankrolling the anti-union court case. Their brazen assault, combined with President Trump’s hostility toward labor, has generated a backlash, invigorating public-sector unions and making a case for the broader labor movement to return to its roots and embrace a more militant style.
Unions had become ossified, serving as member-service organizations that offered workplace representation and collective-bargaining assistance but not much fire. Now, the existential threat posed by Janus hasn’t materialized — membership has held steady — and, instead, has spurred a renewal of activism.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees feared it could lose 30 percent of its revenue. Instead, the AFSCME reports that for every member becoming a free rider since Janus, it has gained seven new members. It has continued to notch organizing wins (220 since July 2016, resulting in more than 22,000 newly organized members). It has also trained more than 25,000 activists over the past three years to spread the union gospel.

“Folks were writing our obituary. They thought this was going to be our death knell. They failed,” Lee Saunders, AFSCME’s president, crows. “They overreached. Now we’ve got the momentum. We’re organizing like never before.”

Back in February, when the case was argued, I suggested the justices beware the unintended consequences of their actions, lest they revive labor militancy. Alito expressed no such worry. In his scornful majority opinion that jettisoned decades of precedent, he dismissed the “loss of payments” that would be “unpleasant” for unions.

Now, in the wake of Janus, we see that there wasn’t as much anti-union sentiment in the workforce as right-wing groups supposed. Many of the agency-fee payers, the ones whose free speech was allegedly compromised because they were “forced to subsidize a union,” as Alito put it, have become full members of unions instead of quitting. AFSCME reports that 310,000 former agency-fee payers have converted to full membership since 2014. (The anti-union plaintiff in the AFSCME case, Mark Janus, who before the ruling said “I love my job,” quit his state-government job right after the decision and joined a conservative think tank.)

Rank-and-file members, meanwhile, perceiving the threat to the union, have become more aggressive in recruitment. Workplace units have organically launched everything from social media campaigns and town-hall meetings to civil disobedience and full-blown strikes. And union bosses (who had years to prepare while Janus and a predecessor case worked their way through the courts) redirected resources from member services toward organizing, engagement and high-impact community campaigns.

The overall result: Instead of the feared 30 percent drop in membership, public-sector unions held their own in 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. There was a total decline of just 83,000, or 0.7 percent.

Labor is still a long way from healthy, and more legal threats could blunt the renewed momentum. Lawsuits attempting to force unions to refund agency-fee payers retroactively could be ruinous. But the renewed energy following Janus points the way forward for labor: Success is to be found not in reinvention but in returning to its combative origins.

“The Koch brothers and their team . . . expected us to hide under the bed and shake in our shoes,” Lily Eskelen García, president of the National Education Association, tells me. Instead, “We stood up on soapboxes and stages and painted picket signs.”
​
The NEA had projected a loss of as many as 200,000 members, based on previous drop-membership campaigns. Instead, the 3 million-member union is actually up 13,935 members year over year — and the increase in membership among new teachers is particularly encouraging.
Credit the Kochs, and Alito, for that. Says García: “They shook us out of some complacency.”

NY legislators OK bill to change teacher evaluations

1/29/2019

 
ALBANY — State legislators approved a bill on Wednesday to alter New York’s teacher-evaluation process, continuing a fast pace set by the newly minted Democratic majority in the Senate.
Along with teacher evaluations, the Senate and the Assembly approved the so-called “Dream Act,” which would allow state college-aid programs to cover children of adults who are in the country illegally. The Senate also passed a measure Wednesday to make the state’s 2 percent property-tax cap permanent, but the Assembly hasn't approved it.

The teacher bill was not only a high-profile issue in the 2018 legislative session in Albany but also a factor in union campaign spending to successfully end Republican control of the Senate.
The bill would end the mandate that ties teacher evaluations to students’ scores on certain standardized tests. But even supporters acknowledged it doesn’t completely unlink exams and evaluations, leaving 50 percent of a teacher’s appraisal to some measure of student performance. That prompted some critics to say the bill would have little practical impact.

The exact measures would be a subject of school board and teachers’ union bargaining. Supporters said the bill, at minimum, puts the issue back in local officials’ hands.  “We are returning evaluations to local control and saying the use of assessments will be best determined at the local level,” said Sen. Shelly Mayer (D-Yonkers), sponsor of the bill.  At issue is a 2015 law, championed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, that required 50 percent of teachers' annual job ratings to be based on their students’ test scores on state standardized tests.  But the fact that half of an instructor’s appraisal will be based on some sort of test or assessment had some lawmakers grumbling that the bill was less than advertised. 

“I liken it to the Charlie Brown cartoon where right as he is about to kick the ball, it gets taken away,” Assemb. Edward Ra (R-Franklin Square) said during the Assembly debate.
Others said any bill ending the link between assessments and evaluations would be likely to be vetoed by Cuomo. So they voted for this one, saying it’s the best practical step they could take.
“Let’s face it, if we completely repeal [the law], the governor will never stand for it and we could be moving on to something worse,” said Assemb. Andrew Raia (R-Huntington).
Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island) called the bill “making another mistake” and Sen. Robert Jackson (D- Bronx) vowed to introduce a bill to change the 50 percent requirement. But they voted for the bill.

The Senate approved it, 60-0; the Assembly, 125-6. Assemb. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-St. James) and Ra were the two Long Island representatives who opposed it. A Cuomo aide said the governor's budget proposal, unveiled last week, includes a teacher-evaluation initiative that matches the changes contained in the Senate-Assembly bill.

Andy Pallotta, head of the influential New York State United Teachers, referenced the 2018 elections in applauding legislators: “After some lawmakers turned their backs on New York teachers the last legislative session, our members stood up, raised our voices and sent them packing. Now, we have consensus on the need to x this system.”
A leader of the “opt-out” test boycott movement said the bill, if signed by Cuomo, would have little impact.

“This absolutely doesn’t remove standardized testing from the evaluation system,” said Jeanette Deutermann, of Bellmore, chief organizer of Long Island Opt Out, a regional network of parents and educators.

“We’re not saying it has to be absolutely removed, but 50 percent is absolutely too high,” she said.
The bill to make the state's 2 percent property-tax cap permanent sailed through the Senate, 59-2. There was virtually no debate, with only a few senators speaking in favor and voting quickly.
"The purpose of this bill is to give taxpayers some certainty," said Sen. James Gaughran (D-Northport), the bill's sponsor. He said the cap "isn't perfect" and his long-term goal is to boost state aid to schools "so as to reduce the reliance on the property tax, because it is regressive."

The Assembly had no immediate plans Wednesday to follow suit on the tax cap, but Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) said it's not a sign the bill is dead. He said Democrats who control the chamber are discussing the proposal. Others suggested it could be lumped in with adoption of a state budget or changes in rent-control laws.

Cuomo successfully shepherded the tax cap through the legislature in 2011, his first year in office. It requires a 60 percent “supermajority” vote for any school district or local government board to raise annual property taxes more than 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. The law does contain some exceptions for local economic growth that don’t count against the cap. Since its implementation, 2 percent overrides have been rare.

Rather than make it permanent, lawmakers have always renewed it a few years at a time. It is set to expire in 2020 but typically has been linked, for practical political purposes, with rent-control laws, which expire this year.

2019 NYSUT LEADERSHIP WORKSHOPS NOW AVAILABLE

1/9/2019

 

BIG CHANGES IN EMPIRE PLAN CO-PAYS IN 2019

1/9/2019

 
​From the files of "don't shoot the messenger," The Empire Plan has adjusted some of the copay fees that we pay out-of-pocket, and raised the level of our combined annual deductibles. Happy New Year.

Some key changes to note:

In-network doctor's visit now has a  $25 copay.
In-network urgent care visit now has a $30 copay.
Emergency Department visit now has a $100 copay.
Enrollee combined annual deductible $1250, per dependent. 
​​

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Great Neck Teachers Association
NYSUT, AFT-NEA, AFL-CIO #2686 | The Cottage • 343 Lakeville Road • Great Neck, NY 11020 
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