Melissa Williams, Uncensored: "The game is rigged. It was rigged for two years. We are only now seeing the full force of the abuse of power in a union with one-party rule."
Melissa Williams, shares her experience as chapter leader for occupational and physical therapists under Michael Mulgrew's Unity - the partisan patronage caucus machine that controls UFT leadership.
When members of OTs and PTs for a Fair Contract ran and won the Chapter Leadership in 2021, we ran without much information provided about what the job would entail because (as I have learned very well over 2 years) very few union HR policies and procedures are actually in writing.
At my first solo meeting with union leadership in July 2021, I was asked, “Why did you run?”, and was told “the chapter leader job is what you make of it.”
In fact, our Executive Board was not allowed to make the job as we wanted. The first evidence of that is when we were not allowed to place our own elected members into the PM staff positions (the 12 hours a week of time that was theoretically available to assist the chapter leader). The prior elected chapter leader and PM staffer were allowed to keep the job, but this was not made clear to me until October 2021. I learned by accident when I was “taken out of the sandbox” of the Salesforce HR system (the system with all union members’ information) in October 2021 and saw that the prior PM Staffers had been working for weeks without informing me. I was finally informed in my office, in the next breath after I told leadership that my dad was just put in hospice, that “we don’t just fire people.” If our group would have known that we would not have been able to place our own people in PM staff jobs, I don’t think we would have run.
In my mind it is the equivalent of Mayor Adams being forced to keep all of De Blasio’s former staff. They were both Democratic mayors, but they each have their own ideas and priorities. This idea that “we are all one chapter” and should work together, when there was deception right in the beginning and a pattern of steering people to PM staff on social media to bypass the actual elected chapter leadership was the first of many challenges in our tenure.
Following the advice of Barbara Madeloni, former Massachusetts Teacher Association president who mentored me in the early months of my chapter leadership, “don’t make private beef public because the average therapist doesn’t care,” I did not make public the early undermining of our elected leadership. At the time, I was trying out her philosophy to “stand somewhere while drawing people in at the same time.” Over time, my ideas about this philosophy in the context of the UFT power structure have changed.
The first three months were a whirlwind made worse by the sudden and horrible way my father died in October 2021 due to medical errors caused by extreme understaffing on his dementia unit. There were times in the first six months of my tenure that I didn’t take lunch because I was answering emails nonstop about COVID policies, pivoting to remote tele-therapy, and the mess of the recovery payment issues. Concurrently, I returned to in-person therapy after 18 months of working remotely and dealt with all the normal stressors of being a clinician in a pandemic. I quickly realized that if I didn’t start erecting some boundaries, that the chapter leader job would take over my life.
At this time, I was also told by numerous male, highly paid, full-time union staffers that “the chapter leader job is 24/7.” I countered that with, “but you said the chapter leader job is what I make of it.” I began setting a 30-minute timer at the union office to hold myself accountable for taking a duty-free lunch. I began placing limits on checking union emails on non-union days. The job still took over my life.
Our Executive Board’s successes during this time were to have many members of the Executive Board plus members of the rank and file to present the items on our consultation agenda each month. As much as I don’t think consultation made a significant change in our working conditions, I do hope that the practice of giving average therapists “voice” in consultation continues after our leadership. We also conducted remote meetings with 200 plus attendees each month when the expectation is only 6 chapter meetings a year, not twelve.
This year on top of contract negotiations we ran 12 chapter meetings, a new hire orientation, an itinerant PK meetings, a D75 meeting, and a meeting to unpack the racist comments by the former AOTA president at the AOTA conference this year. The use of remote meetings increased the ability to conduct more meetings and increase access and participation. I also went to numerous Panel of Education Policy meetings, sometimes staying up until 1 AM on a school night to testify about our working conditions.
The winter of 2021 and spring of 2022, our chapter leadership was consumed by understanding the parameters of the payment issues and became drafted payroll experts. I began to see that the pattern of dealing with these types of issues one by one, instead of as a systemic issue, was part of a pattern of UFT leadership enabling the DOE to be negligent in their basic duties to pay people in a timely manner.
One union leader framed it to me as a type of “harm reduction,” but I remain convinced that if leadership continues to enable the DOE not to perform the basic functions as an employer, the DOE will have no incentive to do right by us.
The current Summer 2023 paraprofessional pay issue is a perfect example. I learned that our union leadership tends to play defense instead of offense on these payment issues. After all the many months of work our OT/PT Executive Board did gathering data for the UFT Grievance Department, the UFT Grievance Department failed to pursue the Transfer List 2022 issue, the recovery pay arbitration, or substantively address the months of non-payment some therapists experience coming off of parental leave. The success we had addressing the SEED Payment issues this year is because we showed up at Panel of Educational Policy meetings, Citywide Council of Special Education meetings, and leveraged our relationships with parent leaders.
All of that was achieved outside of the union power structure.
In the Spring of 2022, when I was given the list of therapists who wanted to be on the negotiation subcommittee, I chose Marilena Marchetti, delegate Jen Clavin, Susan Paul, OT vice-Chair Hannah Fleury, Chapter Secretary Rachel Feinsilver, Regional OT At Large Beth Salzman, and Itinerant PK PT, Peter Romagnuolo. Jen Clavin withdrew so OT delegate Mimi Greenberg was replaced as an alternate. When Marilena left the DOE in the Summer of 2022, we were not allowed to replace her. However, the union leadership, without prior consent or consultation, placed two former chapter leaders and an OT PM staffer on our committee as well. This is yet another example of union leadership organizing around the elected leadership of our chapter.
During our many subcommittee meetings we were told by union leadership to “shoot for the moon,” only to have those demands such as the 7th session later weaponized against us by the members of the subcommittee that were paced without elected chapter leadership consent by union leadership. During bargaining, it did feel that we had reached consensus as a group after very careful and thoughtful planning of demands.
The fact that the members of the committee that were placed there without consent are now mischaracterizing what happened at the table seems like it was the design all along. Most of the therapists on the OT/PT bargaining subcommittee did not go to their second and third jobs so they could attend these meetings. Everyone there had a stake in the outcome of our bargaining. Everyone there faced the city when they turned down every single one of our demands. Everyone there could see that the city’s two demands were an attempt to get us to begin servicing charter schools and to maximize our productivity in a way that could potentially displace therapists with less seniority who happened to be payrolled in co-located schools.
At the end of the last session with the city, the UFT staffer who was the leader of our subcommittee said to us, “I hate to say this, but this is an example of effective bargaining.” He stated that sometimes the best you can do is avoid future harm. If the leader of our subcommittee stated that we engaged in effective bargaining, one has to ask themselves what the motivation is of the prior OT/PT chapter leadership as well as current union leadership to characterize our bargaining as rigid in our seeking of pay parity as well as a form of “politics and games” by an “extreme group who has taken over our chapter.”
Our subcommittee took the negotiation process very seriously. The seriousness and good faith with which we approached the process was assaulted by the information we received with the entire 500-person bargaining committee that an optional 9th session was added at the 11th hour without our consent. The explanation given was that “you all said you wanted us to get more money for you and all of this happened quickly.” We were promised that if anything happened in the governance committee that would directly affect us that we would be consulted. That was a lie.
The majority of our subcommittee would have said no to the 9th session because we have been fighting any form of the 9th session since at least 2007. We would have said no to the new rate of pay that is not our regular overtime rate. We were not given that option.
For many of us on the committee, it was an affront to the entire integrity of the bargaining process and formulation of demands. It is particularly offensive when our legitimate concerns are dismissed by comments such as, “We are all adults, just don’t take the work”.
(There is a magic word, ‘no’” without a touch of insight into the irony about asserting that we should exercise our right to say NO in this instance but not when voting down the contract).
Many therapists in understaffed D75 schools who are already pressured to “partially serve” students will now be coerced to perform 9th sessions and it is a minimization of our concerns and a lack of understanding of our actual working conditions to state otherwise.
When this current Executive Board ran, we ran on and were elected on the understanding that we were going to fight for pay parity. There were other members of our bargaining unit who also refused to back down from the idea of pay parity, yet curiously that fact is not being weaponized against them as it is now weaponized against us by union leadership.
In 2018, there was a financial subcommittee where money could be moved around. This time around we were informed that there was no such subcommittee. We were not informed of the extra money from the stabilization fund that was used to give the supervisors a raise until after the tentative agreement was released. Had we known, perhaps the other chapters in our bargaining unit would have also tried to get some of that money which would have resulted in less for supervisors.
I am curious as to why the stabilization fund was not presented to our subcommittee. It fits a pattern of union leadership pitting chapters in our bargaining unit against each other in a zero-sum game. We did not create our bargaining unit, nor do we have control over the fact that union leadership refused to break up the bargaining unit in 2018 and 2019 when they were asked by the smaller chapters in our bargaining unit, just as we now have no control that union leadership is framing it as an “injustice” to the other members of our unit that we voted “No”.
When the information came out about us voting down our contract with 56% voter turnout and 2/3 of therapists voting no, it was immediately presented to us by union leadership as if it was a mistake to exercise our right to vote no. The tone was demeaning and paternalistic.
Union leadership made it very clear that they had no intention of fighting the city on our behalf. A meeting was called by union leadership in which the functional chapter leaders in our bargaining unit were not involved. Instead of inoculating us against fear of a prolonged fight and congratulating us about exercising the only leverage we have under the Taylor Law, a NO vote, the wheels of an unprecedented revote were already set in motion.
It is important to think about what it means in our union to have a “mandate” to lead as elected leaders. Our current chapter leadership won our positions with a wide margin in an election with low voter turnout. Although 200 therapists routinely logged in to monthly Zoom meetings, that is still only about 7% of our chapter. At our two meetings in June 2023 where over 1,000 therapists logged in, that is still only about 25% of the chapter. 44% of our chapter did not mail in a contract ratification ballot.
Despite the words of our union president who accuses current chapter leadership of “politics and games,” a union is a political organization. Politics exist to address social problems. Our lack of pay parity sits at the intersection of women’s rights, disability rights, civil rights, and racial inequality. Every union decision is inherently political and the idea that “politics” is weaponized against our elected chapter leadership is deeply disturbing.
Our chapter leadership led with information we gleaned from the therapists who showed up and engaged in the work of unionism. We lead despite active antipathy, like this post that was written by a caucus whose president is also the Staff Director of the UFT.
The game is rigged. It was rigged for two years. We are only now seeing the full force of the abuse of power in a union with one-party rule.
In the face of a revote, I am stepping down as chapter leader of occupational and physical therapists. The precedent of our union has always been to run votes through the American Arbitration Association and to accept the results of those votes. These are my bare minimum expectations if I am to continue to give my time to a “democratic” organization.
A revote is undemocratic on its face. If our chapter votes no, I will still be a member of the bargaining subcommittee unless union leadership decides to remove me which at this point seems a strong possibility. I am deeply sorry to the therapists who exercised their right to vote only to have union leadership humoring the possibility of a revote, encouraging an email campaign, refusing to perform their fiduciary responsibility to bargain based on our vote, and using a convenient sample of emails to justify a revote to get the desired outcome of both union leadership and the city.
Many therapists who voted no have told me they are going to throw the new ballot in the garbage, and I understand the sentiment. I encourage everyone to exercise their right to vote again to continue to fight for the pay and working conditions of our students and therapists in the richest city in the history of humanity deserves.
At the beginning of my tenure, I wrestled with the question, “how do you stand somewhere and welcome people in at the same time?” After two years, the question I began to ask myself was “how do I stand somewhere, with the mandate of the therapists who elected me, and effectively lead when union leadership exercises their power and control of the mechanisms of communication to undermine me at every turn?” With the current structure of the functional chapter leader job, my answer is that I am unable and unwilling to continue to engage with that question.
It has been posited by the ruling union caucus that I am “taking my ball and going home.” In fact, I am engaging in the regenerative Politics of Refusal.
To paraphrase poet Mira Mattar, this is not a NO, but a YES to “not-this.” Despite my best efforts, to use the language and analysis of my profession, the environmental barriers set up by the ruling union caucus made it impossible to do the “occupation” of chapter leadership in the way I promised in my original campaign statement. It also required me to neglect other areas of occupation in my life, including the role of parent, grieving daughter, and friend in order to perform a job that was not living up to its promise.
The occupational and physical therapist chapter leader represents 2,963 people on two work release days . It is my opinion that the job will be effective if there is a chapter leader or delegate for each borough with dedicated time and pay to represent each borough.
We also need a dedicated group of therapists organizing and mobilizing outside of official union positions at the district and D75 levels. A huge barrier to this work is the fact that up to 75% of us still work second jobs, which is why we fight for pay parity.
Our anger about our pay and working conditions seems to have gotten lost amid this “disorganization” campaign this summer. This conciliatory energy to accept these crumbs is not the energy of the 200 therapists who showed up to monthly meetings the past two years.
I look forward to wrestling with these questions outside of the current chapter leader position after I restore some “occupational balance” to my life. I will have more energy for actual organizing instead of acting as an unwilling enabler of the DOE HR and payroll department.
Thank you for the support of those who elected me over the past two years.
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