UFT Announces Tentative Contract with NYC

UFT President Michael Mulgrew and NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.

By Bob Hennelly

UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s working with Mayor Adams to push New York City’s 250,000 retired municipal employees into a controversial for-profit Medicare Advantage health insurance plan appears to be paying dividends for his union’s active members under terms of a tentative contract announced June 13 at City Hall.

Under the deal, it will take a teacher just eight years to attain a $100,000 salary, down from the fifteen years under the current contract.

The accelerated salary schedule includes a one-time ratification bonus of $3,000, a new yearly retention bonus starting in May of 2024 as well as annual salaries bumps ranging from three percent in the first three years, growing to 3.25 percent in the fourth year and 3.5 percent starting in September of 2026.

The announcement comes amidst a national crisis in teacher retention in the aftermath of the pandemic. According to a survey last year done by National Education Association, 55 percent of teachers in a national survey said that they were thinking of leaving their profession.

That same year, New York Stare Comptroller Tom DiNapoli reported that 2.5 percent of the city’s 77,160 teachers had left between June of 2020 and June 2021, in the first year of the pandemic. Close to 3.700 teachers’ employment status was upended over the city’s mandatory vaccination policy.

The attrition rate was exponentially higher for teaching assistants, 15 percent of whom left over the same time frame. Similar retention challenges have been documented across multiple civil service titles. Close to 400 municipal workers, including teachers, perished during the initial wave of COVID.

Under the pending UFT deal, the city will make an annual retention payment starting in May of 2024 that will grow to a yearly $1,000 payout to promote recruitment and retention.

The new top salary for the most experienced teachers hits $151,271 including the bonus, by the end of the proposed contract. “The starting salary for new teachers would be $72,349, including the bonus, by the end of the proposed agreement, up from $61,070,” according to the UFT fact sheet. “The top salary for paraprofessionals would be, $56,761 including the bonus.”

Retro pay will range from $853 to just over $4,000 depending on the job title and seniority.  

The tentative agreement also grants teachers greater flexibility over their administrative and other non-teaching duties while providing a major expansion of virtual learning which officials said would be a boon to both students and teachers. 

“We want to be given respect — we can do the work you are asking us to do, and we don’t need to be micromanaged,” Mulgrew said. “The mayor always says, ‘we want the people we hire to work to be able to do what we hired them for’ — we are not here to feed bureaucracies — that’s what we see in this contract.”

Mulgrew added that teachers “wanted more time to actually do the work that bring meaning to the job and actually helps children…And they want to see that they can live in. New York City and afford it for themselves and their families and we have that. When I started as president 16 years ago for you to make $100,000 in New York City and that was a big problem, and we are losing more and more teachers.”

“I am a blue collar mayor — I made it clear that we were going to ensure that our city employees receive the salaries and benefits that they deserve because I am one of them and I know what it is to fight for a contract to fight for the proper healthcare and the items that you need,” Mayor Adams told reporters.

With the UFT deal, the Adams administration has settled contracts with DC 37, the PBA, representing two thirds of the city’s union workforce. According to Office of Labor Relations Commissioner Renee Campion, the city has yet to settle contracts with roughly 100 various unions.

“This tentative agreement also establishing New York City public school as the first major school system in the nation to offer an expansive virtual learning program ultimately available to all high school students and at least some middle school students,” said New York City Chancellor David Banks.

Banks credited the city’s experimentation with virtual learning during the pandemic with helping students most at risk from dropping out “to continue their course work on the schedule that works best for them.”

The expansion will start during the next school year with 25 percent of high schools eligible the program, expanding to all high schools in the 2027-28 school year.

Last year, the City news site reported that New York City’s graduation rates hit 81 percent the previous school year, about two percent higher than a year earlier. Overall, 86 percent of New York State’s students got their high school diploma, a one percent uptick from a year earlier.  Graduation rates slid in 20 states. 

In 2021-2022 the city saw a six percent decline in student enrollment, but that slide has slowed considerably. “For the first time since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, New York City’s public schools expect student enrollment to hold mostly steady across the five boroughs in the coming year,” reported Chalkbeat last month.