ATR issue burning up the digital mediasphere & ATR chapter petition deadline nears

The cause of an elected chapter for ATR representatives is gaining recognition.

Recently the NYC Educator blog discussed the plight of how the UFT denies elected representatives of their own rank in the teachers union, "Mary Ahern on ATRs and UFT Elections".

And James Eterno discussed the issue at length at the ICEUFT blog. His article was timed with ATRs' appeal to the national teachers federation, the AFT, president Randi Weingarten, in "ATR ELECTION APPEAL SENT TO AFT PRESIDENT WEINGARTEN". The teachers union and the federation must stand on principle, not their bureaucratic self-interest.

Please sign the petition for ATR chapter representation. Here's the URL address for downloading a physical copy of the petition. 
No dues without authentic representation! The June 8, 2015 chapter petition deadline is approaching.

Sign the petition for full ATR representation rights in the UFT

As you see from the ICEUFT blog ATRs are struggling for democratic representation rights with our own chapter and our own official chapter leaders and delegates in the UFT. 
Read at ATR ELECTION APPEAL SENT TO AFT PRESIDENT WEINGARTEN on how James Eterno and other ATRs sent a formal appeal to president Weingarten for a chapter after the UFT dismissed the chapter request.

We have been rebuffed after several official appeal attempts going back three years. Here's James Eterno's report from March 24.
UFT Snubs ATRS Again in Chapter Elections; Complaint Has Been Filed with Federal Department of Labor
Please sign the petition to the UFT for ATR representation rights.

( Here is the address for the online petition itself:

Sign a petition for a chapter for ATR members )


Here is the blog posting at the MORE caucus web site:
Petition for the Creation of a UFT Chapter for ATRs


The following petition for our ATR brothers and sisters will be submitted at the June Delegate Assembly - please sign and share!

Petition for the Creation of a UFT Chapter for ATRs:

ATRs have been prime staff casualties of school closures, which are driven largely by high-stakes test scores; the Bloomberg-era Fair Funding Formula continues to be a disincentive against principals' hiring ATRs; the position state in itself is illegitimate and unacceptable: the ATR status is created simply to break tenure and seniority; as ATRs are overwhelmingly over the age of 45, the placing of teachers in this position is age discrimination;

Absent Teacher Reserve teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, and other excessed NYC DOE employees are denied the right to representatives from within their own ranks; they can only vote for chapter representatives if they happen to be working in a school with an election during their rotation assignment;

Denying ATRs their own representatives violates the principle of no dues without representation.

Whereas, the ATR position has now been embedded in the UFT contract in Section 16 of the 2014 DOE-UFT contract, therefore be it Resolved, that the UFT will immediately create a Functional Chapter to represent the interests of ATRs, Leave Replacement Teachers and Provisional Teachers, with borough-level proportionality.

We UFT members ask president Mulgrew for his pledge to create these chapters.

And here's the URL address for downloading a physical copy of the petition. http://morecaucusnyc.org/?attachment_id=4137

This petition to Mulgrew is something that would be good for people to support. It encompasses all excessed staff in all content areas. Shouldn't we be granted a meeting? Staff could have an opportunity to ask a question about their situations or obtain information about the 2014 NYC DOE - UFT contract that they otherwise would not have had.
The union should announce the meeting to every member by their personal email and through the UFT website.

Petition statement to be delivered to Michael Mulgrew, UFT president:

Petition the UFT for a mass meeting to explain the contract's impact on ATRs

We ask you for a mass meeting at UFT headquarters, in the delegate assembly hall, to accommodate all members of the Absent Counselor Reserve (ACRs), the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATRs), other excessed staff or other concerned UFT members, for the purpose of fully airing how the tentative UFT contract will affect excessed staff. 

The ATR part of the contract is a fundamental violation of due process and tenure. We are troubled that there is an expedited discipline and termination process that applies only to ATRs and not to non-excessed teachers. By agreeing to this expedited process you appear to be conceding to the myth that ATRs are all bad teachers instead of educators caught up in school closings and co-locations. 

Principal among our concerns, we wish to have a full enumeration of all actions that would constitute "problematic behavior". 

We are very troubled by your statement, reported in the May 12, 2014 “Wall Street Journal”, that some unnamed panel of hearing officers would solidify the definition of "problematic". How can we be considered as breaking the law if there is no written law or statute? You are trying to get people to agree to a contract whose terms are not yet really defined. 

PETITION BACKGROUND

How can one be considered as breaking the law if there is not yet a written law? Should the fate of teachers' careers rest on undefined legal concepts?