Every Day She Worked, It Got a Little Better

Randi Weingarten was a young attorney working for the United Federation of Teachers' outside law firm back in April 1985 when she was asked to play a key role in the lastoffer binding arbitration of its contract dispute with the Koch administration.

No sooner had the union agreed to the process than city negotiators began a series of maneuvers to undercut its case for pay increases significantly higher than the norm for its members. Less than two weeks later, the administration reached a contract deal with District Council 37 to establish a bargaining pattern, and as the UFT case proceeded, wage deals were also settled with the thirdlargest civilian-employee union and the coalition representing most uniformed workers.

Those pacts allowed the city to argue before the arbitration panel that while there was certainly a need to substantially improve the starting and maximum salaries for Teachers, the pay rates in the middle of the scale should increase by no more than the established pattern to avoid disrupting longtime bargaining arrangements.

Arbitrators Sided With City

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow GOT BETTER WITH AGE: Randi Weingarten, who upon taking over as United Federation of Teachers president received a gift from predecessor Sandy Feldman of a pair of brass balls and a note saying, 'You'll need this,' says her judgment improved with time. 'When people poohpooh experienced Teachers, they have no idea what they're talking about,' she said.

The three-man arbitration panel found that argument more compelling than the UFT's case for a major hike for every step on the pay scale when it issued its award in mid- September. While the New York Times would hail the terms—which improved entry pay nearly 38 percent, from $14,527 to $20,000, over three years and the top rate almost 20 percent, from $34,076 to $40,700—as a breakthrough for Teachers, it was hardly regarded that way by the UFT.

That much was clear at the press conference the union called in reaction to the award. Sandy Feldman, who soon would take the reins of the union from Al Shanker as he turned his full attention to running the American Federation of Teachers, was a noshow, as if anxious to distance herself from the deal.

And Mr. Shanker, while never the picture of mirth, looked gloomier than usual as he assessed its terms. "This kind of salary is designed for people who are not looking to teaching as a career," he told reporters. "It's sort of an attractive beginning, and every day you look at it, it gets a little worse."

It would have seemed like a bad omen for Ms. Weingarten's future working with the union that she was associated with this disappointment. And it explains why, as she recounted in a July 24 interview, "You could have bowled me over when Sandy sent a message to me that she was becoming president and would I want to come and work full-time for the union?"

And so from that inauspicious beginning was launched a journey that undoubtedly cost Ms. Weingarten a more-lucrative legal career but took her on an untraditional path to the top of the UFT, which she has served as president for the last dozen years. At the end of this week, she moves on, just as Mr. Shanker and Ms. Feldman had, to devote all her considerable energies to the national union.

Michael Mulgrew is expected to be officially appointed as her successor this week, but if he is truly to replace her it will take more than a bit of time.

Ms. Weingarten sings the virtues of experience while talking about the trepidation with which she has approached every new assignment she's had over the past 25 years. Recalling the point when Bill Scott, the legendary UFT numbers man and chief negotiator, died midway through the 1990 contract talks, she said Ms. Feldman told her, " 'You're gonna have to fill in.' I gulped hard. Every big job I've ever gotten, I've been humbled and wondered if I'd be able to accomplish it."

'Know What You Know and Don't'

When she expressed her apprehension, she said, Ms. Feldman replied, "'I've watched you. You listen, you collaborate, you know what you know and what you don't know.' ''

The trust that developed between them later led Ms. Weingarten, after two years of resistance, to place herself in a position to eventually succeed Ms. Feldman by becoming a Teacher—part-time over six years, full-time for one semester—even while continuing to serve as the UFT's general counsel.

"My mother taught for 30 years; I agreed to teach and I was scared to death," Ms. Weingarten said. "The reason I reluctantly agreed was that I was convinced I wouldn't be good at it. I didn't know if I had the patience, the moxie or the communications skills. But the job I loved the best was teaching 11th or 12th graders."

Not many Teachers would choose that role over the power that goes with running the UFT, but she said, "When you see kids get engaged in what you're teaching them and they thrive, and then you see them as thriving adults and they say, 'You meant something to me,' there's nothing better."

When Ms. Feldman handed her the reins as president in May 1997, "I guess I was as prepared as anybody is, but there's a big difference between being the president where the buck stops with you, and the day before, when you're not. I knew people had confidence in me, but I knew I had to earn their trust."

She made it a point early on to visit at least three schools each week and hold additional meetings with smaller groups of members to get their input.

But even as she took on the full weight of the UFT presidency, Ms. Weingarten continued in her old role as chief negotiator. She said she sought unsuccessfully to hire several other people to take the job, and acknowledges that the high standards she set for herself might have been imposing for anyone looking to take over that responsibility from her.

A 300-Member Sounding Board

"I think that that totally worried people," she said, "so after a while I just stopped looking." Instead of having a single go-to adviser on bargaining, she looked for maximum input from the rank and file, saying, "If the president was the chief negotiator, I wanted the sounding board of a 300- member negotiating committee."

She continued, "I don't have the reputation of micro-managing people" —a statement some former aides might contest—"but I do have the reputation of being a hard-charger."

Her aggressive advocacy has sometimes produced lazy caricatures of her in the tabloids, but the combination of steady persuasion, tenacity and the flexing of the union's muscles has made Ms. Weingarten arguably more of a powerhouse both in the city and in Albany than her two predecessors. (As formidable a presence as he was in the city's consciousness, Mr. Shanker's involvement in the racially divisive battle over school decentralization during the late 1960s closed some doors to him to which Ms. Weingarten has had entrée.)

The praise that flowed from Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Paterson when she announced a month ago that she was moving on, while wellearned was in no small measure an acknowledgment of her stature as one of the labor leaders who fits within the Establishment because of the UFT's influence in both state and city government.

Plaudits From An Adversary

Perhaps a truer indication of her achievements came from city Labor Relations Commissioner Jim Hanley, who has butted heads with Ms. Weingarten more than once over the course of three different mayoral administrations and is more inclined toward salty rejoinders than gushing tributes.

"We've had our differences of opinion and were not shy about expressing them, although it was always done professionally," he said last week. "She's probably one of the hardestworking people I've ever dealt with. She has complete command of the issues and stays on top of them. And she always lived up to her commitments. A negotiator par excellence and a superb union leader. What more could you ask for?"

In her own valedictory before a packed room of union delegates five weeks ago, Ms. Weingarten summed up her tenure this way: "In an era when the labor movement has struggled, our union has not only endured; it has flourished. In an era when working people are fighting simply to stay in place, we have moved ahead."

None of it has been easy. During her time as the UFT's chief negotiator under Ms. Feldman, there was a bargaining round so frustrating that the union launched a series of critical ads against Mayor David Dinkins—whose election it had strongly supported— during a key point in his re-election campaign.

Giuliani No Picnic

The man who unseated him, Rudy Giuliani, demanded a two-year pay freeze in their first contract negotiation, and when the UFT reluctantly obliged him, the deal was rejected by union delegates, creating a lasting rift between the Mayor and their leaders.

Mr. Giuliani gained a second term in November 1997, three months before Ms. Weingarten was formally elected to the job that she had already been performing for much of the previous year. By then the city's finances had improved significantly, in part because of the major contract savings it had gained from that two-year wage freeze that all city unions wound up accepting, and the explosion of tax revenue caused by the Wall Street boom created the possibility of getting the kind of generous contract Ms. Weingarten was convinced was necessary to improve the quality of teaching here.

The problem was, Mr. Giuliani wasn't inclined to give it to her as the expiration of the UFT's old pact approached in 2000. "It was not in his political interests to make a deal with the Teachers union," Ms. Weingarten said, alluding to his short-lived U.S. Senate run at a time when she was strongly backing Hillary Clinton for the seat. On the other hand, she noted, the then-Mayor made "solid pension deals, solid health deals" with her in her capacity as chair of the Municipal Labor Committee, deals that offered more-tangible rewards to him because they allowed the city to reduce its pension contributions and increase spending elsewhere.

9/11 Intrudes

But as his mayoral term wound down in 2001, she said, they were close to a deal that also included state money to help fund Teacher raises, and she hesitated, convinced that a little more could be squeezed out of the pie. Then Sept. 11 came, the city's financial situation turned dire, and that deal was no longer on the table.

She remarked, "9/11 taught me something," then clapped her hands. "Which is that if you see something that you are able to secure, you close that deal down."

Not long after Mayor Bloomberg took office the following year, she sent a letter to her members telling them it was unlikely that the high expectations they'd held on a contract would be fulfilled. In May, the union released the results of a poll it took of the rank and file about a possible strike. But shortly after that, she reached a 30- month deal raising salaries by 16 percent for incumbent union members and 22.3 percent for new Teachers, assisted by state funding and her willingness to pay for part of the raise by having Teachers work slightly longer each day.

This became a trademark of Ms. Weingarten's negotiations with the Bloomberg administration: squeezing out a bit more in pay and benefits by giving him something he considered essential to improving the school system.

A 2005 deal further extended the workday and added three days to the teaching year while also making it easier to discipline Teachers and ending seniority transfer rights, in return for a 15-percent raise over 52½ months. That deal came under the shadow of a threatened strike vote and after nonbinding arbitration (the union's one experience with the binding kind was all Ms. Weingarten wanted).

A year later, 11 months before that pact was due to expire, she agreed to a two-year, 19-day deal providing 7 percent in raises plus a $1,000 longevity payment to those members who reached five years' service.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein squawked that there were no workrule changes under the pact, but it offered an intangible benefit toward persuading Teachers to make a career of it in the city system: while pushing starting pay to $45,530, it bumped maximum pay slightly above $100,000 by last year. Even adjusting for inflation, it was hard to imagine Mr. Shanker, were he still among us, complaining that the pay scale was attractive primarily for short-termers.

"Teachers are within spitting distance of our suburban counterparts," Ms. Weingarten said last week. "We have to keep up in this next contract."

'55-and-Out' for Merit Pay

She was hardly idle in between negotiations. In the fall of 2007, the UFT reached a deal with the city giving incumbent members the right, in return for additional salary contributions that were particularly light for senior employees, to a full pension at age 55 if they had 25 years of service; the standard became 27 years for future hires. She also persuaded the city to settle a dispute over pension interest calculations by paying a total of $160 million to 40,000 active and retired members. In return, the union agreed to a prime education goal of the Mayor's: an experiment with merit pay, but rather than the traditional model in which individual Teachers were rewarded, the program granted the bonus money to all instructors at participating schools which showed marked academic improvement.

And so over her first six years of dealing with the Bloomberg administration, she had managed to raise Teachers' pay by 43 percent; get an age-55 retirement plan that the union had sought for a quarter century after the 1976 imposition of Tier 3 had compelled members to work until 62 to qualify for a full pension; and, to make the Mayor happy, agreed to a plan which would give Teachers at some high-achieving schools $3,000 bonuses.

The Kid/Teacher Equation

It wasn't that nobody complained: some dissidents within the union objected to the concessions on discipline and the loss of seniority transfer rights, as well as the longer school day. Ms. Weingarten contended that she has been guided by the same principles that Mr. Shanker and Ms. Feldman applied at both the UFT and the national union: "Is it good for kids and fair for Teachers?"

The extra time spent in the classroom was an essential component to boosting pay beyond the pattern for all other city workers. The speedier disciplinary process was a way of combating the perception that the union wanted to protect bad Teachers: one of its key provisions made it easier to remove those accused of sex offenses from the classroom, but with the assurance that if they were ultimately exonerated, they would receive full back pay for the time missed. And the loss of seniority transfer rights was insisted upon by the Mayor and Mr. Klein because Principals had complained about veteran Teachers being able to take spots they otherwise would have given to more-talented or energetic instructors with less time on the job.

Tier 5 Justifications

The most-persistent irritant among the rank and file over the concessions she made involved the 2005 deal in which two of the three additional days they were required to work came the week before Labor Day. Regaining that time off, along with preserving the age-55 retirement right at a time when the two largest state-employee unions agreed to have new members work until 62 before qualifying for a full pension, was what Ms. Weingarten touted as the primary benefit of the Tier 5 deal she reached with the Bloomberg administration last month that reduced the pension rights of future hires.

Even that deal sprouted a grace period: a portion of it reducing the guaranteed interest for those participating in the union's Tax-Deferred Annuity program from 8.25 to 7 percent might not be implemented this year; the State Senate, even while balking at the Mayor's request to renew his control over schools, passed a bill three weeks ago extending the higher interest rate until next July.

She also made that deal, Ms. Weingarten said, with an eye toward the city's fiscal problems and the need to get pension costs under control and "create budget savings that the city and our schools desperately needed."

A Vested Interest in City

The faltering economy and the impact it has to some extent already had on education programs is a reminder that the union has a stake in the city's financial fortunes beyond what is available at the bargaining table. Mr. Shanker, Ms. Feldman and herself, she explained, all had a vision of "public education as the opportunity agent for kids, and the labor movement as the opportunity agent for workers." An economic crisis is a threat on both fronts, which is why she emphasizes the importance of the "Maintenance of Effort" clause governing school funding in the wake of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement.

"When you have to scavenge for a piece of chalk, when you have books [from the Kennedy Administration] when Clinton was President, when you have exposed wiring in classrooms, those resources that have been provided since then have been what's given an opportunity to many poor students who never had a shot at enrichment during the summer or Advanced Placement courses," Ms. Weingarten said.

The Mayor's focus on education and his commitment of money, both for the classroom and to upgrade Teacher compensation, has had a distinct impact even as the union and the administration have often clashed. "Graduation rates are up, the dropout rates are down, the scores on the state's standardized tests are up," she said. "We're going in the right direction."

Which does not mean she's thrilled by what she sees throughout the school system, saying her biggest disappointment is "that every school is not a place where parents want to send their kids and Teachers want to work."

Priorities Too Narrow

Class size is still too high and the focus too great on the standardized English and math tests as the primary measure of academic progress, she said. "We would still have been able to get where we've gotten, even if we were a couple of points below where we are, if there was as much reliance on things like art and music and being physically fit and science and social studies and history. Those are things that engage kids.

"There has to be a better balance between teaching and testing," she continued. "Even President Obama has started talking about how critical thinking has to be part and parcel of a good education system. This is a continuing fight one has to have, making sure there is a well-rounded education."

Even while conservative critics and their editorial supporters rail against the union's clout, the public image of her members has vastly improved. While her top priority when she became president was to "change the economics" of Teacher compensation, she said "what I'm proudest of is a couple of things together: the respect in which Teachers are held today as opposed to 10 years ago [and] what the union has done to reach out. . . we are viewed as part of the community, as opposed to 40 years ago, when we were viewed as being at odds." She pointed to a recent poll showing that 96 percent of parents had a good opinion of their child's Teacher and said that she hoped on a national level to be able to achieve similar results in "so many places [where] they don't get that."

Not Coasting Toward Exit

Ms. Weingarten said she still hoped that in her final days as UFT president she could reach a contract deal on behalf of the 28,000 home day-care workers the union won the right to represent in October 2007. Told that more than a few people were surprised that she was walking away without a new contract for the larger membership to replace the one due to expire in October, Ms. Weingarten gave a slight shrug, the gesture of a professional negotiator not willing to tip her hand.

"There's always going to be another issue," she said.