On Monday night, the negotiating committee met with three of the UFT's top negotiators who will be representing us at the table when talks begin with the city to reach a contract. They repeated some important concepts that we have heard before, especially that this process will not happen overnight, and that the union has only so much control over how long it takes. The length of this process will depend upon the positions that the union and the city take and the level of cooperation between the parties, and while they cannot give us an exact time frame, think months, not weeks. They asked us to put together a list of demands that we have for the city so that we can formulate proposed language for a contract. Since we have already tabulated the results from this summer's survey, we were able to discuss the top priorities with the negotiating team in general terms. We have scheduled another meeting with the negotiators, before Thanksgiving, to present our specific demands, and we have also scheduled two more meetings before then to discuss amongst ourselves the priorities of our colleagues and how they should be set forth in a contract.
Throughout this process, the negotiating committee has to weigh the virtues of open communication with the risk of letting the other side know too much about what our desires and priorities are. This website is open to the public, and even if we were to restrict access, I doubt that its contents would stay secret for long. The committee has decided to tell the membership as much as it can without jeopardizing our bargaining stance. I hope that you will understand that when we are being reticent, it is only to help get a better contract for all of us.
I am optimistic that the UFT will get us a significantly better deal than what we have now. The negotiators were eager to listen to us, and they answered questions that some of us have had for a long time. They said that we will be with them at the negotiating table, and I am looking forward to this.
