UFT's Endorsement Process: Still Broken

Unity’s political “expertise” has become a running joke. UFT members deserve better.

Last Tuesday, Brad Lander defeated Dan Goldman and secured the Democratic nomination for NY10, an outcome virtually everyone following the race had expected.

Well, almost everyone. In endorsing Goldman, Michael Mulgrew and the Unity-controlled UFT leadership extended their dubious record of once again backing an unsuccessful political candidate. And they did so:

a) when every single poll had Goldman behind the candidate that ultimately won — at one point Goldman was polling nearly thirty points behind Lander, and

b) without a vote from the Delegate Assembly, the only body in the UFT with the authority to make political endorsements (unless the Delegate Assembly votes to kick the decision to the Executive Board, which to be clear in this instance they didn’t).

A supermajority of UFT members (71% as of last year) can’t be bothered to vote in our own union elections or care about the impact they have on our compensation, healthcare, and working conditions; so one can’t be blamed for not holding their breath expecting folks to care about some congressional endorsement. But it is an undeniable fact that our Unity union leadership is completely and utterly detached from the will of the members. The rationale Unity has always implicitly leaned on when justifying the perpetuation of their nearly seven-decade rule over the UFT — that Unity possesses special political connections and expertise that the rest of us don’t — has never been more transparently ridiculous.

This is not about A Better Contract preferring one candidate over another. It’s about Mulgrew and Unity being in bed with a political establishment that doesn’t reflect or align with what working people want. It’s about voter dissatisfaction with elected officials on both sides of the aisle being at an all-time high, yet our union leaders failing to read the room or meet the moment.

Case in point: Mulgrew and Unity unilaterally endorsing Goldman when the polls had him trailing by such a huge margin constitutes egregious political malpractice. Contrary to their claims of expertise, time and again these clowns have demonstrated the political equivalent of being unable to find a french fry in a McDonald’s. It’s remarkable that we continue to allow Mulgrew and Unity to flush our money down the toilet on these loser candidates — candidates that, in this case, our UFT delegates didn’t even vote to endorse.

A leader can maybe get away with ignoring the will of the people if they’re competent, or alternatively maybe get away with being incompetent if they listen to what the people want. But to be this criminally incompetent and so obviously contemptuous of what the people who pay their overinflated salaries think is beyond the pale. The fact we as educators continue to allow this sorry state of affairs to persist is precisely why our pay isn’t keeping up, why retirees are fighting desperately to protect their healthcare, and why there is post after post on social media about admin in countless DOE schools terrorizing UFT members and getting away with it. We collectively don’t respect ourselves, so why should we expect anyone else to respect us?

A Better Contract has a different approach to decision making that we believe will start to dig the UFT out of the hole Mulgrew and Unity have put us in. We believe unions are democracies. We believe leaders should listen to the membership. We believe all major decisions — including political endorsements — should be made directly by the members themselves. In an ABC-led UFT, members will have ample opportunity to discuss all sides of an issue before using a secure electronic voting platform to decide what direction the union takes, not unlike how we currently use ElectionBuddy to vote on SBOs.

This is just one part of our platform designed around democratizing and strengthening the UFT to more forcefully stand up to the DOE and City, and it couldn’t come at a more important time. Between chapter elections and contract negotiations, 2027 is going to be a big year. If the notion of members having a direct say over the direction of the union appeals to you, we urge you to follow us on social media and reach out about getting involved.