The Ever-Shifting Rationales of Michael Mulgrew

They want massive givebacks on behalf of the paras, or they want other union members to give up part of their future raises to give it to the paras, which is just ridiculous.

~UFT President Michael Mulgrew

I’ve heard nothing about the “massive givebacks” Mulgrew refers to. The city’s position is that the para bill circumvents collective bargaining and is therefore illegal. Maybe the city has made this demand. Or maybe they haven’t. (Maybe Mulgrew’s been overindulging the magic mushrooms again.)

Regardless, as far as I can tell, Mulgrew’s never met a giveback he didn’t like. I remember the giveback-laden 2005 contract, and I don’t recall Mulgrew uttering a peep against it.

In fact, wasn’t it this very same Michael Mulgrew who spearheaded the battle to either dump retirees into an inferior Medicare Advantage plan or charge them $190 a month each, to start, if they wished to retain it? Wasn’t it Michael Mulgrew who imposed copays on retirees for the first time ever?

Mulgrew has various arguments, and uses them whenever convenient:

That’s what he told us as we tried to pass 1096. No doubt he’ll trot this out again as we support the newly named 1008. The problem, he claims, with a bill that would make our health care city policy and eliminate his beloved co-pays is it violates collective bargaining.

This argument’s more than a little fishy. First of all, as retirees, we have neither voice nor vote in collective bargaining. Whatever raises are negotiated for rank and file UFT members are not granted to us. His other argument, that 1008 violates the Taylor Law, is equally outlandish. How does the Taylor Law, which applies to strikes, apply to retirees?

Perhaps it escaped Mulgrew’s keen eye, but retirees do not report to work. What would a retiree strike entail? Would all of us get into our cars and drive to schools in which we are not employed? Unity’s arguments are nonsense.

Even more absurd is his contention that his lawyers researched this and came to this conclusion. His lawyers are paid to support his positions, and will use whatever justification they can to do so—even if it’s as ridiculous as this one.

If his lawyers really believe this nonsense, they are beyond incompetent, and we’re in worse trouble than I’d suspected.

In fact, when Mulgrew was pushing a 2014 contract that made us wait four more interest-free years for back pay NYPD and FDNY had received four years earlier, a contract that screwed members who resigned and imposed a crap pattern on the entire city, he famously said, “Back pay is not a God-given right.”

When firefighters and cops got a good deal, we didn’t, and as for being made whole? We got a whole lot of, “Shut up and wait.”

This has been Mulgrew’s MO as he’s championed the para bill. The collective bargaining process is broken, evidently. We therefore have to find a way to work outside of the system. Our clever lawyers (the same ones as before) had supposedly found a way to get money without going through all that sticky, inconvenient negotiation stuff.

It’s curious that Mulgrew thinks he can sidestep collective bargaining and the Taylor Law for members who are currently employed, but not for retirees. More curious still is the fact that Mulgrew has not even bothered to negotiate 1008 so that it’s acceptable to his crack legal team. If he could do it for working paras, why can’t he do it for us?

The answer, of course, is Mulgrew uses retirees to fill gaps. Because Unity takes us for a bunch of shuffleboard-pushing, domino-turning, affable old coots, Mulgrew assumes we won’t notice when we’re being screwed.

Right now, the folks being screwed are paraprofessionals. I’d like to see them get more money. (Regular readers know that when Mulgrew had the chance to give it to them, he couldn’t be bothered. So much for needing to sidestep bargaining.) Mulgrew’s demonstrable avoidance of granting raises via collective bargaining has handed the city a very good case. It was, to be generous, short-sighted of him.

Is this what his lawyers advised him to do? Maybe they’re worse than I’d thought.

That’s an interesting statement. I recall various UFT contracts that tried to sweeten starting salary, or top salary. I don’t recall just how it was done, but I do recall never having been at the place where the big raises were needed. Still, it’s true that Mulgrew has never been one to help any particular group that was short of pay.

A great example is the OT/PT chapter. They’ve been demanding parity with teachers for some time now. A few contracts back, they voted one down, got it sweetened a bit, and voted it up. Last time, they voted it down and Mulgrew did two things—he isolated their chapter, removing them from other bargaining units. Then, he told them take it or leave it—vote for the same crappy contract you rejected or go screw yourselves. The chapter folded. (So much for vibrant unionism.)

As for the paras, the fact is the city gives union leaders the opportunity to give raises to hard to staff positions. Mulgrew chose not to bother, and told the paras they should be happy to get the same non-pensionable bonuses everyone else got, even though their salaries were a pittance.

Mulgrew only determined paras needed “respect” when Fix Para Pay defeated his Unity patronage cult by a factor of three to one.

I will never forget, as an in-service teacher, receiving an email from Michael Mulgrew threatening us with $1500 premiums if we didn’t get the City Council to sell out retirees. Mulgrew had no issue pitting one group of unionists against the other. It was shocking, to me, that he was unaware of the blatant anti-unionism of this act.

Yet he persisted. All of his efforts to diminish care for retirees were givebacks. Look, NYC, we’ll dump retirees into advantage plans. With the money you save, you can raise salaries. If they want to keep real Medicare, we’ll charge them for it. Who cares if they can’t afford it? We Unity members all have two pensions and we’ll be fine.

We’ll charge them every time they see doctors. Who cares if it drives people on lower pensions, like paraprofessionals, to abject penury? Not Michael Mulgrew. And anyone from Unity who challenges his sacred word will be fired, arbitrarily and capriciously. Evidently, that’s what unionism means to Michael Mulgrew.

Michael Mulgrew negotiates contracts that fail to meet cost of living. No givebacks whatsoever should be required for such contracts. Regardless, making retirees pay for them is unconscionable.

This is one of Unity’s cherished talking points. I heard it ad nauseam after the election. This was yet another of Unity’s efforts to get retirees to adhere to their prime union directive—Sit down an shut up. Retirees weren’t buying it.

Regardless, this point was echoed by RTC Chapter Leader Bennett Fischer in a NY Teacher column after the election.

And let’s not forget that Mamdani was the first Democratic primary candidate to go on the record against moving city retirees into a Medicare Advantage plan. “I am firmly opposed to privatization and Mayor Adams’ reckless attempts to strip municipal retirees from the traditional Medicare they were promised and earned,” he told Work-Bites magazine in 2024.

While we’re on the subject of things we ought not to forget, let’s not forget that Mamdani also reversed himself on mayoral control, the day before his inauguration. (Having sat through multiple school closing hearings, it broke my heart when he did that.) He also reversed himself on rental assistance.

Mamdani won’t surprise me again. The surprise here, though, is Mulgrew, this month, acting surprised. Mamdani opposed the para bill as early as last March. Until Mamdani actually brought it to court, I heard not a peep about it from UFT Unity.

That’s the new UFT Unity talking point, evidently. After supporting Mamdani unreservedly, that’s what we get. Mamdani may have looked pretty good compared to Andrew Cuomo, charter-school enthusiast who’s screwed working teachers on multiple levels and occasions. (I thought of Cuomo at every Danielson observation.)

I watched Cuomo, at a UFT forum, declare that Tier 6, which he initiated, was “ancient history.” Of course Cuomo, Mamdani and all the others up there said they supported the para bill. I knew Cuomo was lying. And whatever you think about Mamdani, ultimately, so was he.

We can be at war with Mamdani if King Mulgrew so decrees. We’ll still have to negotiate with him, though. Given Mulgrew’s history, it may not place us in a strong position. Of course, in this case, what does “war” entail? Are we gonna wear blue on Wednesday again? (Surely that will shake Mamdani to his very core.)

I hope paras get more money one way or another. The best way, needless to say, would be a pensionable compensation increase. As I’ve said before, paras need a raise, not a tip.