The elite, privileged, invitation-only Unity Caucus has a stranglehold on internal communications. After all, extending the right to communicate to mere members might imperil those second pensions, and open things up to further losses from an informed electorate. Perhaps, then, Unity members would have to sit with the bootless and unhorsed at those gala luncheons they so adore.

Melissa Williams learned about union communication when she, against the wishes of the Imperial Unity Caucus, mustered the temerity to beat their anointed Chapter Leader in an election. Melissa was elected to represent the OT/PT chapter. Williams learned that she was not, in fact, allowed to communicate with the people who elected her. Unity needed to approve outgoing messages. It’s not about what members want—it’s about what Unity Caucus wants.

More recently, Michael Mulgrew decided to “set the record straight” by trashing those of us who criticized him during this election season. He really, really did not like that I wrote about the re-amortization scheme that would’ve saved the city (checks notes) 600 million a year. He liked it even less when Katie from ABC wrote about it a few weeks later.

Who the hell do we think we are, exposing Unity’s dirty laundry to thousands of readers? Mulgrew has many more thousands of readers, so his trustees, who may never be questioned, wrote up a presentation suggesting we were liars, and prominently displayed our posts (just in case anyone didn’t make the connection). I’d argue that’s blatant electioneering, but you know the Golden Rule—He who has the gold, makes the rules.

It wasn’t enough to simply show this presentation to the Retired Teacher Chapter, show it to the DA, and then go on tour with RTC Chapter Leader Bennett Fischer (also forbidden write his own email) and show it in Florida. He further needed to include a link to it in emails to UFT members.

Michael Mulgrew does whatever he golly gosh darn pleases, thank you very much.

Now I may have mentioned, once or twice, that I’m part of A Better Contract, and that we’re running to unseat Michael Mulgrew and the entire Unity Patronage Cult. It’s a difficult project. For one thing, we really are not a caucus, and we needed to organize and build our slate from the ground up. Once we did that, we needed to find ways to get our message out.

As far as the official UF of T goes, we are entitled to a spread in the NY Teacher publication. That’s been how it’s done as far back as I recall. Here’s the thing, though—I’m 69 years of age, and the most I read physical newspapers is never. I can only suppose members younger than I read them even less.

Now we did submit something, and I’m told it went in. I’ve never seen it. I don’t know whether or not it ever arrived here in beautiful South Freeport. However, I’m certain if it did, my wife or daughter identified it as junk and tossed it with the other flyers and such.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking with fellow union members. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall a single discussion of anything whatsoever in NY Teacher. Even when I wrote about Forest Hills High School in NY Teacher a few years back, no one in my very large school stepped up to mention reading it.

It would make a whole lot more sense to simply allow competing slates to email the membership. I read email, for at least as long as it holds my interest. I always read union email, and I’d guess that anyone interested in union does as well.

So why, in 2025, are we still placing ads in papers that few people read?

This gives an enormous advantage to Unity. Mulgrew can get up at the DA, say I’m not campaigning, BUT—the retirees battling to preserve their health care are violating the Taylor Law and collective bargaining. No, duespayers, you don’t need any stinking explanation. He can trash the lawyer that represents ABC, and then claim to be simply providing information. Then he can write an email about it.

But his opponents have no access, and cannot reach the union as a whole. However, we recently got an email about email. I think it went to the election committee. Someone shared it with me, and I’ve posted it below. They claim, in order to send such an email, it must have a “different look and feel” than a typical UFT email. To set this up, it would cost $4,405.07. Not $4,405.06. They have it calculated to the penny.

That’s a one-time charge. The union can’t pay for it, evidently, because supporting democracy is not a union thing. Go figure. I thought that was fundamental to unionism, but I’ve never been a member of Unity Caucus, so what do I know?

But that’s not all. If you actually need to send out an email, it costs $780.40 per email. That means the email would be actually go out in two weeks. The notice about email only went out the day after ballots did, so that means if you wanted to take advantage of it, many members would already have voted by the time it went out. If you want it sent out in 7-14 days, that would cost $1,170.60. If you want it out within the week, that will run you $1560.80.

But that’s not all. It’s also six cents per email, payable to Salesforce. So there’s $1075.51 more you have to pay. However, if UFT is sending out an email that day, yours will have to wait. Would Mulgrew send email day after day to preclude an opposing slate’s email going out? Past behavior tells me yes, absolutely. He could, and therefore he would.

It’s gonna run thousands of dollars for a slate to actually communicate with the union. That is unless, of course, you’re the Unity Caucus.

If you’re the Unity Caucus, you just send your campaign email out with Mulgrew’s signature below it, and make believe it’s informational. Since Mulgrew is always right, and anything contradicting his word is “shenanigans,” he has the absolute right to contradict them and “set the record straight.” It’s good to be King.

And just in case that fails to sufficiently rig voting, Unity has been “studying” electronic voting for the last decade or two and has yet to come to a conclusion. The fact that three out of four UFT members can’t be bothered to walk to a mailbox is neither here nor there. Why rush?

Rather than enable members to vote on their phones, as PSC members can, Unity sends out the envelopes to be stuffed in other envelopes to be stuffed in mailboxes. And while participation has been abysmal, it’s always worked until last year. That’s why Unity will say absolutely anything in their blogs, and relentlessly trashes ABC. I really shouldn’t be shocked by their absolute lack of ethics or integrity.

Short of enabling widespread voting, Unity will do or say anything.

In fact, rather than permit members to vote in their workplaces, Unity has decided to have voting at UFT headquarters and events, mostly populated by—you guessed it—Unity members. Several have criticized me for not doing anything about this at election committee meetings. First, there would be nothing I could do, as the Unity majority would vote me out lockstep. More to the point, I’m actually not on the committee. But yeah—blame me for your deliberate failures, Unity. Because leadership.

It’s ridiculous, in 2025, that we can’t enable emails in lieu of newspaper ads during elections. It’s ridiculous that we have to spend 4500 bucks for some design when we could simply run a disclaimer. I don’t like to brag, but I’ve been able to read since first grade, and I don’t need a special design. Nor do my union brothers and sisters.

Oddly, when Unity sent out a mailing, their return address said United Federation of Teachers at 52 Broadway. For some curious reason, they didn’t worry that would confuse anyone. When anyone opposing Unity wants to do something, they need to spend 4500 bucks extra so no one gets the wrong idea. That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

It does if you’re Unity, evidently.

It’s simply unconscionable that we don’t do everything within our power to encourage widespread participation in UFT elections. That can change, though.

ABC will work to enable electronic voting, and an activist union, whether Unity likes it or not. Don’t forget to vote!

Caucus email Costs and Scheduling

1. Set-Up

As has been discussed in previous years, for the UFT to send campaign emails on behalf of internal caucuses there needs to be some set-up work. Specifically, the designers need to design a template that has a different look and feel than the typical UFT email so that it is clear this is not a UFT endorsement of a candidate/slate/caucus. Secondly, to preserve the integrity of the UFT email database, our Salesforce Marketing & Salesforce team would need to set-up a standalone opt-out provision so that members could opt-out of internal political emails but not opt out of all UFT emails.

This set-up process involves UFT staff from Salesforce Marketing, IS, and Communications. It is projected this cost would be $4,405.07 total. This one-time cost would be divided among any caucuses/slates that wish to avail themselves of this process. So, for example, should all three caucuses elect to participate in an email campaign program, the one-time set-up cost would be $1,468.36 per caucus.

2. Cost per email

Per email, there are also some nominal labor costs, including proof-reading (anything that is sent from the UFT will be proof-read, the content will not be edited), formatting and the back-end cost of managing the separate opt-out list. This labor cost is projected to be $780.40 per batch email. Note, the UFT Salesforce Marketing department has a policy requiring 2 weeks’ (14 calendar days) notice for an email campaign. They do, however, also work rush jobs. Should a caucus wish to send out a email with less than 2 weeks (14 calendar days) but more than 1 week (7 calendar days), the labor cost is 1.5 times the regular rate ($1,170,60). Should a caucus wish to send out an email with notice of 1 week (7 calendar days) or less, the labor cost is 2 times the regular rate, ($1,560.80). Under no circumstances will a caucus campaign email request be considered with less than 3 business days’ notice.

In addition, there is a Salesforce fee of $0.06 per email sent. With regard to the current request from ABC, this would break down as follows:

Group

# of Recipients

Cost

All Members

179,252

$1,075.51

All In-Service Members

108,306

$649.84

All RTC

46,285

$277.71

All Providers

12,998

$77.99

Accordingly, the cost per email would be the labor cost plus the applicable Salesforce cost. For example, a timely (2 weeks’ notice) request for a campaign email to all members would be $780.40 + $1,075.51 for a total of $1,855.91.

3. Scheduling

Should the UFT have a previously scheduled or emergent targeted email to any of the groups to whom a caucus wishes to send campaign material, the UFT business would take precedent. In that situation, the caucus email would be sent the first available day following the requested day. In addition, unless all part of the same email, we cannot send emails from multiple caucuses to the same group on the same day (e.g., all three slates cannot send an All Member email on the same day).

Additionally, the caucus will need to timely approve the draft message prior to sending.

Finally, it should be noted that, from time to time, there are system failures. As soon as the Salesforce Marketing team is aware of an issue they do a re-send to correct the problem.