If you used a computer, watched television, read a newspaper, drove on a highway, or rode the Long Island Rail Road last year, chances are you saw UUP advocacy in action.
We placed TV and newspaper ads, put up billboards and LIRR transit posters, ran a micro-website called SaveSUNY.org, and earned news coverage across the state as we fought for and against issues impacting UUPers.
And if you read The Voice, you got detailed breakdowns of those issues, as well as intriguing “big picture” stories about the effects of state budget cuts on SUNY, its teaching hospitals and its students. You also read interesting stories about our members in action at work, at home and with the union.
Kudos to UUP’s Communications Department for that.
Led by Director of Communications Denyce Duncan Lacy, our communications staff snared a number of prestigious awards last month in competitions sponsored by the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA) and the American Federation of Teachers Communicators Network (AFTCN). Communications Specialist Mike Lisi won the Max Steinbock Award—ILCA’s top prize—for a story titled “Speaking Up for SUNY” in the January 2010 issue of The Voice. You can read more about the awards earned by Lacy, Lisi, Media Relations Specialist Don Feldstein and Publications Specialist Karen Mattison later in this issue.
I’m very proud of the Communications Department for carrying out two of my most important initiatives as UUP’s president: to open up communications with members and to let them know what UUP is doing to help and protect them.
Channels of communication
We’ve developed several outlets to deliver those messages, starting with the magazine you’re reading right now. You can also get UUP updates online via Facebook and our Twitter feed, which can be accessed via our website, at www.uupinfo.org.
Speaking of our website, look for it to undergo a major overhaul in the coming months. Our new webmaster, Lucas Williams, came on board in August and he’ll be making the site more interactive and easier to navigate. If you have any ideas about what you’d like the website to include, call Lucas or share your ideas with him via e- mail at lwilliam@uupmail.org.
While you’re at it, feel free to e-mail or call me or any of the UUP staff. We’d relish the opportunity to answer questions and help in any way we can. And please, take a moment to tell us a little about yourself: where you work, what you do and how we might do more for you.
Contract updates on web
As you may know, UUP’s contract with New York state expired July 1; most of its provisions remain in place until a new accord is reached under the Triborough Amendment to the state’s Taylor Law. We were scheduled to hold our first meeting with the state’s bargaining team on Aug. 25.
Rest assured we’ll be keeping you informed every step of way through postings on Facebook and Twitter, and news bulletins on our website. The website is where you’ll find detailed information on contract negotiations, so keep checking back for the latest news.
9/11: 10 years after
Ten years ago this month, I was scheduled to fly to Buffalo for a meeting, but the flight was canceled.
It wasn’t an ordinary cancelation, not by a long shot. Then again, it wasn’t an ordinary day.
I was set to fly on Sept. 11, 2001.
I’m sure all of you remember where you were and what you were doing that fateful morning a decade ago, as television and radio newscasters broadcasted the unthinkable. That day, 2,977 ordinary people were killed, as were 411 emergency workers who died trying to fight fires and save lives. The America we knew just 24 hours before was gone, forever changed by those heinous acts of terrorism.
It is appropriate to remember the sacrifices made and the ongoing sacrifices that continue to be made as a direct result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In this issue of The Voice, four UUPers who were in Manhattan in the days immediately following 9/11 share their experiences and their thoughts on the 10th anniversary of the worst-ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
A new start
It’s a new academic year and we’ll be facing many challenges, some we’ve seen before and some that we haven’t seen.
As always, we’d love you to get involved. If you’ve been thinking about stepping into a leadership role at your chapter, it’s a great time to make that move. Now more than ever, we need energetic, dedicated unionists to help us take UUP to the next level.
Oh, and by the way, best wishes on the start of a new academic year.
Walter Apple has been hired as UUP retiree member services coordinator. He replaces Anne Marine, who retired in April after 12 years of service to the union and its retiree members.
Apple comes to UUP most recently from a temporary position at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, where he worked as an administrative assistant in human resources. Prior to that, Apple worked for nearly two decades at Aetna, starting out as a claims benefits consultant before working his way up to senior customer service representative. In the latter role, he served as concierge for eight direct accounts, as a mentor to represent-atives to increase performance, and as a liaison for the company’s benefits, eligibility and technical divisions.
“Walter comes to UUP with 18 years of customer service experience in health care and dental,” said UUP?President Phil Smith. “He also is knowledgeable in COBRA, HIPAA, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and short- and long-term disability regulations.
“He will be a great asset to our members who are looking toward retirement and to those who are currently retired.”
Committee on Active Retired Membership (COARM) Chair Judy Wishnia and COARM Southern Tier Region Chair Jo Schaffer were involved in the interview process.
In the closing hours of the legislative session in late June, the Legislature approved a watered-down version of NYSUNY 2020, notable to UUP for what it did not contain: no differential tuition, no public/private partnerships, no sale or lease of campus properties.
The original proposal—promoted under the guise of an economic development package—would have allowed differential tuition rates at SUNY’s four University Centers in Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo and Stony Brook, as well as the establishment of public/private partnerships.
What the legislation did include was maintenance of effort language requiring that state support for SUNY cannot be cut from the previous year’s level. That precludes future budget cuts for SUNY, although that provision could be disregarded if the governor declares a fiscal emergency. The new law also allows an annual $300 undergraduate tuition increase in each of the next five years. UUP earlier declared its support of a rational tuition program in principle.
How we got there
So how did UUP avert what would have been a disaster for both SUNY and the union? UUP mobilized its resources as the original NYSUNY 2020 plan surfaced, including using the media to deliver its advocacy message.
The NYSUNY 2020 plan proposed by the University at Buffalo called for an annual tuition increase of 8 percent to help fund some of the construction costs associated with the relocation of its medical school.
“By seeking tuition and fee increases to implement their plans, UB administrators have made it clear that buildings are more important to them than students,” UUP President Phil Smith said in a news release that fired the first salvo against the plan. He stressed that the NYSUNY 2020 proposals advanced by both the Buffalo and Stony Brook campuses would severely restrict student access by sharply boosting tuition.
Additionally, UUP chapter presidents and members from UAlbany, Cortland, Potsdam, Plattsburgh and Canton helped spread the union’s message to the public through letters to the editor printed in their respective local newspapers. The letters asked state lawmakers to vote against NYSUNY 2020 and in favor of extending the millionaire’s tax, so that part of the revenue could be used to restore budget cuts to SUNY.
“Potsdam and SUNY’s other four-year comprehensive colleges would be harmed by this proposal (NYSUNY 2020),” Potsdam Chapter President Laura Rhoads wrote in her letter that appeared in the Watertown Daily Times. “Once state lawmakers saw that SUNY had another revenue source via differential tuition, they would probably channel state dollars away from SUNY.”
Other letters from UUP leaders appeared in daily newspapers in Albany, Plattsburgh, Ithaca and Cortland, including one from Greta Petry of UAlbany, who shared her personal experience with SUNY.
“My sister and I both studied humanities at Oswego State. My two brothers wanted to be engineers,” she wrote in her letter to the Albany Times Union. “None of us had money for college. My two brothers went to Stony Brook, a university center, for the same tuition Oswego State charged. SUNY leveled the playing field. They are both engineers.
“If differential tuition existed today, my brothers would have been denied access to Stony Brook and to their careers.”
UUP members also sent nearly 1,200 letters, and nearly 2,000 signed an online petition via the union’s website and its advocacy micro-site (www.savesuny.org), urging lawmakers to reject NYSUNY 2020.
“Tuition increases should benefit only students, not the private partners of UB and Stony Brook or the state,” the online letter read. “If the state truly believes that the UB and Stony Brook plans provide real economic benefit, then the state—not the students—should pay.”
Advocacy days added
UUP stepped up its legislative outreach, scheduling a pair of advocacy days in Albany late in the session, including one June 14 just as lawmakers were about to vote on NYSUNY 2020.
“We’re concerned about student accessibility. NYSUNY 2020 is an attempt to deconstruct SUNY,” Oneonta Chapter President Bill Simons said during one of the legislative visits. “Tuition dollars must be kept for students and not used for construction,” added UAlbany’s Marty Manjak.
Overall, 124 UUPers visited the offices of all but three of the Legislature’s 210 members, holding 578 meetings during eight advocacy days over the course of the legislative session.
The passage of the scaled-back NYSUNY 2020 legislation proved that UUP’s campaign had achieved its short-term goal.
“This legislation should demonstrate to all of us that advocacy works,” Smith said. “The bill does not reflect provisions that UUP opposed since the first UB 2020 legislation was introduced several years ago.”
This victory does not mean the union can let down its guard.
As The Voice went to press, UAlbany and Binghamton presented their NYSUNY 2020 plans.
Binghamton is proposing to tap some of its reserve funds—money derived from student services—to help pay for construction of a health and natural sciences building.
“These reserve funds should be used to directly benefit students and not for building construction, which should remain a responsibility of the state to fund,” Smith said. “UUP?will be closely monitoring the situation.”
Financial aid concerns remain
Even though lawmakers listened to union members and rejected differential tuition, UUP has concerns about the annual tuition increase in place for the next five years. The union had asked that any rational tuition plan include an increase in the maximum Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) award to reduce the impact on lower- and middle-income families. The legislation provides that students who currently have a portion of their tuition covered by TAP will continue to pay the same percentage share of their tuition. But the additional funds will not come from the state through TAP, but from tuition revenue collected by SUNY.
“This arrangement reduces the amount of tuition funds available to teach students and hire faculty,” Smith said. “Plus it unfairly places the burden on students and families who are able to pay the cost of tuition for those who can’t afford it.” Smith declared that the state is responsible to cover financial aid and should do so by increasing TAP awards.
“The state should not be able to walk away from its responsibility to fund TAP,” he said.
The good and the bad
Lawmakers also approved a bill making same-sex marriage legal in New York state, something UUP has long advocated.
Still looming is the governor’s proposal for a new Tier VI pension retirement system; it has not yet come up for a vote. UUP opposes and will continue to fight the Tier VI proposal, which would reduce benefits for future public employees.
“We know advocacy works,” Smith said. “And UUP?will keep up the fight to ensure that SUNY remains a premier system for students and our members who work there.”
SUNY state-operated hospitals in Syracuse and Brooklyn have grown with the acquisition of nearby hospitals.
So have the ranks of UUP.
The acquisitions of Syracuse’s Community General Hospital by Upstate Medical University and the Long Island College Hospital (LICH) by Brooklyn’s SUNY Downstate Medical Center have brought more than 700 new members to UUP’s bargaining unit.
“This is clearly a win-win for all of us and the community,” said Upstate Chapter President Carol Braund.
“We welcome and look forward to working with them,” Downstate Chapter President Rowena Blackman-Stroud said.
In July, Upstate Medical University assumed ownership and operation of Community General Hospital, which has been renamed Upstate University Hospital at Community General. Nearly 1,000 employees who had worked for Community General are now employees of Upstate Medical. Of those, about 270 are new members of the UUP bargaining unit.
“For some of these employees, this is their first exposure to union membership,” Braund said. Nurse managers, anesthesia, respiratory therapy, radiology, social work and some clinical pathology staffers would likely comprise the new UUP membership, she added.
Community General began discussions with Upstate in May 2010 after breaking off merger talks with Crouse Hospital. Community General faced the possibility of closure or bankruptcy after years of losing money and a decline in patients.
Like Upstate, Downstate has acquired another campus. In late May, Downstate assumed control over neighboring Long Island College Hospital. Its new name is SUNY Downstate Medical Center University Hospital of Brooklyn at Long Island College Hospital.
Blackman-Stroud said the takeover means about 450 employees who worked for LICH—residents and attending physicians—are now in the UUP bargaining unit. They were formally welcomed into UUP during a “meet and greet” in mid-July at the former LICH campus. Several UUP statewide officers attended the event.
LICH had also been stung by financial problems and faced the possibility of closure prior to its acquisition by SUNY.
Images of two hijacked commercial airliners ramming the World Trade Center that sunny morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Images of grayish billowing smoke followed by the towers’ collapse, first the North, then the South.
Images of thousands of disheveled, disoriented New Yorkers covered in a white soot that seemed to attach itself to everything. Images of anguish: thousands of missing person posters papered across lower Manhattan. Images of heroes aboard United Airlines Flight 93 and at the Pentagon.
And the indelible image of the World Trade Center’s jagged iron skeleton jutting up from the smoldering heaps of rubble.
We haven’t forgotten. We can’t forget.
“How can you possibly work there and forget?” said Laura Terriquez-Kasey, a Binghamton UUPer and a member of the Metro New York 2 Disaster Medical Assistance Team that was at Ground Zero two days after the attack. “Five, 10, 20 years, it impacts you every day.”
“Every time they recovered a body, everything stopped and everyone was quiet,” said David Scholl, an Upstate Medical University UUPer who was deployed to Ground Zero as a member of the New York Air National Guard 174th Fighter Wing. “It was very solemn and so quiet.
All the equipment stopped. It brought tears to my eyes.”
Scores of UUPers like Scholl and Terriquez-Kasey went to New York City in the aftermath of the attacks and were left forever changed by their experiences. Here are four of their stories.
The worst by far
Laura Terriquez-Kasey saw the havoc Hurricane Katrina wreaked with her own eyes.
She’s seen destruction caused by floods, tornados and earthquakes.
But nothing, nothing comes close to the total devastation caused on Sept. 11. “To this day, the odor in the air, everything that occurred is still with me,” said Terriquez-Kasey, a clinical assistant professor and a longtime emergency response nurse who’s been teaching at Binghamton University since 2000. “It’s very hard to describe to people the tremendousness of this.”
Terriquez-Kasey, who joined the Metro New York 2 Disaster Medical Assistance Team just three months before the Sept. 11 attacks, was sent to Manhattan Sept. 13 to set up an emergency response unit—a triage tent at the American Express building just a half-block from Ground Zero—to assist medical staff in treating survivors.
They began providing medical and emotional care to firemen, police and construction workers as the rescue quickly turned into a recovery effort. And while her years of experience as an emergency response nurse served her well, there were times that Terriquez-Kasey couldn’t help but be overwhelmed.
“The people who were responding were in total shock; it was a grieving shock,” she said. “The police officers were having a very hard time coping with what they had to deal with. And we were grieving tremendously for all the losses. There were many a time someone just sat crying on my shoulder, such a profound sadness.”
Terriquez-Kasey returned to Binghamton and began developing what is now the graduate level Disaster Nursing Certificate Program—a direct result of her experiences at Ground Zero. The program is designed to better prepare emergency responders to handle emergency situations.
“Disaster response and issues have changed dramatically since Sept. 11, but that’s probably the only good thing that came from (the attacks),” she said.
One thing’s for sure: The sickening shock and horror she felt days after the attacks have subsided, replaced by a numbness that will never go away.
“You feel it inside,” she said. “To this day, you feel it.”
A horrible way to die
It’s the chaos that Henry “Hank” Dondero remembers most.
Dondero, a retired dentist who’s taught dentistry at SUNY Farmingdale since 1979, spent weeks in the wake of Sept. 11 volunteering with the New York City’s Medical Examiner’s Office to identify the remains of 9/11 victims.
Routes to the office, at First Avenue and 30th Street, were blocked off after the attacks, which made getting there impossible without city-issued credentials and the occasional police escort.
“You’d pass so many checkpoints,” Dondero said. “When you went down 30th Street at night, they had generators running lights. It was like you were at an Italian feast. But it was all business; you were there to do something.”
For Dondero and dozens of other forensic dentists, their business was to examine and identify recovered remains using dental records, police and eyewitness reports, and data from companies at the Twin Towers. As part of the World Trade Center Dental ID Team, he worked eight- and 12-hour shifts in the weeks after the attacks; the dental unit ran 24 hours a day until October 2001 and closed in June 2002.
Dondero, who oversaw shifts as a “tour commander,” estimated that he was responsible for about 100 of the more than 600 identifications made by the unit.
It was a gruesome task, especially in the first few days after Sept. 11.
“You go through a gamut of emotions,” he said. “First, you see someone so mutilated and think, ‘Look what happened to this poor S.O.B.’ The next emotion is self- serving, ‘Thank God it’s not me.’ Then you move past it and say, ‘There is someone I can help by doing this job.’
“It’s something I would have loved to have not done, but I’m glad I did it,” Dondero said.
Dondero said he attends a 9/11 memorial service each year at Farmingdale. And each year, he wears the dental unit jacket issued to him by the Medical Examiner’s Office.
“You can’t forget,” he said.
Lost, not found
He couldn’t save anyone, or help identify human remains, or carry debris from the ruins of Ground Zero.
But UUPer Bruce Jackson had a camera. He also had a mission.
Jackson, a University at Buffalo distinguished professor of American culture, knew that the mementos and memorials to those lost in the World Trade Center attack would soon begin to fade, victims to Mother Nature and time. They must be preserved, caught on film and kept for posterity.
“It’s the stuff that disappears that often tells us about a moment in time,” said Jackson, who shot more than 1,000 photos on film while spending a few days in the city about two weeks after the attacks. “I tried to show what the survivors were doing at that point, and there were still people who were hopeful that loved ones would turn up.”
Through his lens, Jackson captured the hope, sadness, grief and loss that New Yorkers at Union Square and nearby neighborhoods felt in the weeks after 9/11. He walked through Manhattan, photo-graphing the thousands of smiling faces peering from missing person posters taped to lamp posts and building walls, on bus stop shelters and fire alarm boxes in the days and weeks after the attacks. Below the photos were urgent notes hastily scrawled, silent screams from thousands of grieving family members pleading for any information on the whereabouts of loved ones who went to work on Sept. 11 and never came home. In one photo, a Superman action hero next to a small U.S. flag is perched over a sign that reads, “You are our brothers too, and we are proud of you!” A missing person poster for Judy Fernandez, who worked on the North Tower’s 104th floor is in another photo; the weatherworn poster is ripped across the woman’s face. Jackson’s photos were exhibited in October 2001 on the Mainstage Wall of the university’s Center for the Arts. They will be displayed again in 2013, when he debuts a photographic retrospective at Buffalo’s Burchfield Penney Art Center. Jackson said he’s also used the photos as teaching tools in field work and while working on documentaries with students.
The photos echo the anguish felt in New York City in the weeks following Sept. 11. They’re also a constant reminder that everything is different now.
“The consequences of 9/11 are far greater than I could have imagined wandering around Manhattan looking at those sad posters of missing children and mothers, and smelling that air mix of death and electrical fire,” said Jackson.
“We’re a more insular country than we were in 2001,” he continued. “The added security has eroded civil liberties. And now we’re facing an astonishing budget crisis because we’ve been fighting wars on borrowed money.”
New York, New York
David Scholl was wearing his U.S. Air Force camouflage uniform the first time he visited New York City.
It was Sept. 12, 2001.
Scholl, plumbing facilities manager at Syracuse’s Upstate Medical University, was part of the New York Air National Guard 174th Fighter Wing—which made him certain he’d get the call to help aid rescue efforts at the World Trade Center.
The 174th’s original mission—to set up a base camp to treat thousands wounded in the attacks—was scrubbed when rescue teams quickly realized there were few survivors. Instead, he spent the next 10 days assigned to a security detail at and near Ground Zero.
Welcome to New York.
“The first night we did security near a residential area about four blocks away (from Ground Zero) and it was pitch black because there was no power in the city,” said Scholl, who retired from the 174th in 2006. “You couldn’t see anything without a flashlight.”
Scholl and his security team spent a few nights sleeping under the Triborough Bridge, where the rats were the size of cats, he said, laughing. While on the job, they caught a pair of Michigan-based photographers dressed as firemen trying to sneak in to Ground Zero for a closer look, he said.
“Something struck us funny about these two—the captain was very young and the firefighter was very old,” he said. “So the cops cuffed them and left them there to show anyone else who wanted to sneak in what would happen to them.”
But the laughs were few and far between during those days, especially at Ground Zero, which Scholl described as a “war zone.” He was able to get a bird’s-eye view of the site from a nearby building.
“What was really eerie was that you could see all the damage to the surrounding buildings,” he said. “There was a unique, putrid-type smell in the air and there was this white dust that people were covered in.”
These days, Scholl said he feels a mix of pride and sadness when he thinks about 9/ 11 and his experiences at Ground Zero.
“In Iraq, our soldiers are dying to protect what we started to do back then. A lot of those soldiers were kids in school in 2001, and they’re doing what my generation was doing: fighting for the flag and our freedom. And that’s a good thing.”
Communications Specialist Mike Lisi told UUP’s story—and won a prestigious international labor award in doing so.
The International Labor Communications Association (ILCA) Max Steinbock Award honors the best labor story written in the previous year. It is named after a longtime ILCA president.
Lisi’s winning entry, “Speaking up for SUNY” (January 2010), right, describes the impact that state budget cuts have had on students, parents, faculty and staff on SUNY campuses.
In all, UUP’s membership magazine The Voice and advertising campaign brought home four ILCA awards, including two first-place honors and one third-place finish. And in late July, the AFT Communicators Network (AFTCN) announced its list of communications award winners, and UUP won three first-place awards and one second-place award in the national competition.
“We are very proud of Mike for helping UUP spread the word that SUNY cannot withstand further cuts and still maintain its mission of offering a quality, affordable education for all New Yorkers,” said UUP?President Phil Smith. “Mike and the rest our award-winning Communications team have proven themselves time and again as outstanding writers, editors, producers and graphic artists.”
The union’s 30-second TV ad, “What do you say?” earned top honors for electronic media. The ad featured students, parents and business owners warning that state budget cuts to SUNY threaten quality and access, and put an undue burden on students and working families. The ad aired on broadcast and cable TV stations in Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Long Island, New York City and Syracuse prior to the April 1 deadline for enactment of a new state budget. UUP?Director of Communications Denyce Duncan Lacy oversaw production of the ad campaign.
Also awarded in the annual competition were Media Relations Specialist Donald Feldstein and Publications Specialist Karen L. Mattison.
Feldstein earned a first-place award for Best News Story. “The work never stops: Professionals provide continuity at SUNY?campuses” (March 2010) told the of a dozen UUP members who work around the clock to keep the University running smoothly all year long. In the same category, Mattison picked up a third-place award for a November 2010 article on the “One Nation March” in Washington, D.C.
UUP earned top honors for Best News Article for the same piece that won Lisi the Steinbock award, and another first place for Best Profile for Lisi’s article “UUPer brings Grammy gold to Purchase” (February 2010).
The union also won first place for Best PR Activity for the 2010 TV and print ad campaign “What do you say?” and second place in that category for its “Don’t be Fooled by the Act” news-paper and billboard campaign opposing the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act. Both ads were edited and directed by Lacy.
— Karen L. Mattison
UUP members mark Labor Day
Labor Day, the annual national holiday to honor the contributions of the American worker, is being observed with activities by several UUP chapters.
The Oneonta Chapter is having its annual Labor Day luncheon and meeting. It features an open forum where members can ask about upcoming contract talks and the budget outlook for SUNY.
“The Labor Day program is a vehicle for recruiting new UUPers, energizing current members, sharing information, and increasing UUP’s visibility on campus and in the community,” Oneonta Chapter President Bill Simons said.
Also on Labor Day, UUPers from the Upstate Medical, Cortland and ESF chapters are set to march in the annual Labor Day parade at the New York State Fair in Syracuse. Downstate Medical Chapter members will also be on the march, taking part in the annual New York City Central Labor Council parade. The parade takes place Sept. 10—the Saturday following Labor Day—in midtown Manhattan.
— Donald Feldstein
AFT Secretary-Treasurer Cortese to retire
After more than four decades as a labor and education leader, AFT Secretary- Treasurer Antonia Cortese has retired.
“Toni’s fierce dedication on behalf of our members, her expertise on education issues, and her commitment to advancing children’s issues both here and abroad have laid a strong foundation for our union,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “Her invaluable contributions will be greatly missed, but we wish her and her family the best in her well-earned retirement.”
Cortese—who was a NYSUT vice president from 1973 to 2004—first became involved in the union shortly after starting her career in Rome, N.Y., as a fourth- grade teacher and school social worker. She served as an AFT vice president from 1974 to 2004 and as executive vice president from 2004 to 2008, and has been in her current position since 2008.
NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi hailed Cortese as a trailblazer.
“Who we are as NYSUT is the direct result of the tireless work of NYSUT’s founding officers,” he said. “Toni blazed the trail and created the path we are all able to walk down as we chart a course forward. Her work for NYSUT and the AFT has set a high standard we can only hope to achieve.”
Take the AFL-CIO’s ‘Real or Not’ quiz
AFL-CIO leaders have come up with a unique way of letting people know the extent of anti-family, anti-worker legislation proposed by lawmakers around the country. They’ll quiz you.
Dubbed “Real or Not,” the eight-question quiz challenges visitors to www.realornotquiz.org to see if they can guess which bills have been proposed. The intro reads: “You’ve heard about the bald-faced attempts by state legislatures to eliminate collective bargaining, turn down job-creating funds from the federal government—while 25 million people are unemployed or underemployed—and empty public schools of teachers. We’re talking, as one governor eloquently put it, ‘bat-crap crazy.’ See if you can guess which loony legis-lation is real and which one we made up.”
Stick around until the end of the quiz to find out how to hold lawmakers accountable.
UUP was contacted by the state in July to begin the process of contract negotiations.
As The Voice went to press, UUP and state negotiators tentatively scheduled Aug. 25 as their first meeting date.
UUP President Phil Smith and Chief Negotiator Jamie Dangler of Cortland held a joint meeting Aug. 11 of the union’s Negotiations Team, Negotiations Committee and chapter presidents to provide information about the negotiations process and to address questions from chapter leaders.
As negotiations proceed, chapter leaders will be provided with updates for distribution to members, and information will be regularly posted to the UUP website (www.uupinfo.org). Click on the “2011 Negotiations Information” link under Latest Information on the right hand side of the UUP home page.
Meanwhile, the Team continues to meet to discuss specific strategies on a number of issues previously outlined by the membership.
UUPers should feel free to contact Dangler at contract@uupmail.org for further information or to submit questions or comments.
“Don’t you think we deserve respect?” UUP President Phil Smith asked nearly 1,500 unionists as he addressed a June labor rally at the Capitol in Albany. “Our members at SUNY teach a lot of valuable lessons. Among them is respect. But how can we educate our students about respect if we ourselves are not respected?”
Members from UUP, the Public Employees Federation (PEF), NYSUT and other unions attended the rally organized by PEF.
The rally—one of a dozen conducted across the state the same day—came in response to the threatened layoffs of state workers if state employee unions didn’t reach an agreement on terms and conditions of new labor contracts with the state. PEF later reached agreement on terms of a tentative five-year contract.
From state budget battles and bitter contract negotiations, to fighting to protect members in the classroom and on the job, Bill Simons has faced his share of challenges over the years.
So it made sense to see Oneonta’s longtime chapter president offering advice to new and returning UUP leaders during a panel discussion on what to expect as a new leader, one of several seminars held during the union’s two-day New Chapter Leaders Orientation in June.
“You don’t have to be an expert on everything,” said Simons. “You have good people around you. Keep calm in the eye of the storm.”
“My advice is to persevere,” added Buffalo Center Chap- ter President Mike Behun. “Work around the impediments you face.”
Simons and Behun were two of a handful of seasoned UUP chapter officers who led the June 20-22 orientation; 15 new chapter presidents and vice presidents representing 13 campuses attended the event.
A mix of former and first-time leaders were there, including David Ramsey (Cobleskill), Walter Kim Hartshorn (Plattsburgh), Carol Gizzi (Stony Brook HSC) and Peter Brown (New Paltz). Fred Kowal, UUP’s former statewide membership development officer and Executive Board member, was also at the presentation; he’s back as Cobleskill chapter president, a post he held through most of the 1990s.
A number of new faces also attended: Mark D’Arcy (Alfred), Andrew Koenig (Buffalo HSC), Dean Reinhart (Buffalo State), John Lawless (Empire State College), Solomon Ayo (Farmingdale), Jeriluanne O’Bryan-Losee (Morrisville), Jeffrey Miller (New Paltz), Maureen Curtin (Oswego) and Michael Walker (System Administration). “We need strong, younger individuals to take over for the people who have accomplished so much before us,” said Reinhart, Buffalo State chapter’s new vice president for professionals. “We need to find people who will lead the union into the future.”
Learning the ropes
New leaders took part in breakout sessions for chapter presidents and vice presidents and got an overview of the union’s contract with New York state. But the highlight was the panel discussion, where veteran UUP leaders talked about their experiences as chapter leaders and shared strategies and words of wisdom with new leaders.
Purchase Chapter President John Delate led the discussion, which featured Behun, Simons, Farmingdale Chapter President Yolanda Pauze, Upstate Medical University Chapter President Carol Braund, Stony Brook Chapter President Arty Shertzer, and Rob Compton, Oneonta’s vice president for academics, as panelists.
“It’s been a great learning experience, learning about the challenges we’ll face and how to handle those issues for our members,” said Ayo, Farmingdale’s new vice president for professionals. “You realize that you’re not alone out there.”
That’s why union leaders are tapped to teach the forum, said UUP President Phil Smith.
“The orientation for new leaders is best led by people who have walked in those same shoes,” he said. “Our people have been there before and they are the best teachers.”
Recent retirements and reassignments have changed the makeup of the NYSUT labor relations/field services staff assigned to UUP.
The following people comprise the union’s labor relations team:
Director of Staff Susan Bloom Jones was promoted in January following the retirement of Martin Coffey. Jones has worked for NYSUT for nearly 33 years and served as a labor relations specialist (LRS) at UUP since July 1998.
Associate Director of Staff John Marino stepped into the job in July after 11 years as UUP’s elected statewide vice president for professionals. He brings to the job a vast knowledge of the UUP contract, as well as hands-on experience with negotiations and grievance procedures.
Following the retirement of LRS and former UUP member Jack Procita, and the reassignment to K-12 of LRS Heather Sponenberg, UUP welcomes three new LRSs.
Patrick Domaratz is assigned to the UUP chapters at Brockport, Geneseo and Morrisville; Lynda Larson is assigned to Farmingdale, Old Westbury and Stony Brook HSC; and Peter Ludden is assigned to ESF, Oswego, Upstate Medical and Utica/Rome.
They join Maureen Seidel (Albany, System Administration, Cobleskill and Empire State College), Lisa Willis (Brooklyn HSC and Stony Brook), Kathy Falcetta (Canton, Plattsburgh and Potsdam), Bill Capowski (Maritime, New Paltz, Optometry and Purchase), Tara Singer-Blumberg (Buffalo Center and Fredonia), Ed Giblin (Alfred, Buffalo HSC and Buffalo State), and Darryl Wood, a former UUP member and Binghamton Chapter president, (Binghamton, Cortland, Delhi and Oneonta).
Twenty-five years after tragedy struck her family, Upstate Medical University Chapter President Carol Braund finds her smile again every year when a high school student accepts the scholarship named after her late daughter.
Pamela Braund was just five days away from starting college at Penn State, where she planned to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher. But that dream and her life ended tragically Aug. 19, 1986, when she was killed in an auto accident.
Though her life was cut short, her name and spirit live on a quarter of a century later in the form of the scholarship that bears her name. The Pamela Braund Memorial Scholarship was first bestowed in 1987, and is awarded annually. The one-time $1,000 scholarship goes to a graduating senior from Fayetteville-Manlius High School—Pam’s alma mater—pursuing a major in education at a four-year college.
Braund proudly attends the annual ceremony at the high school where the scholarship award is presented.
“I have found that meeting the recipient and learning where they are going to school and what area they want to teach helps briefly to fill the huge void in my life that losing a child can create,” she said.
Braund recalls how the accident devastated her family, and had a profound impact on her friends and their families.
“The outpouring of emotional support and financial support was incredible,” Braund said. “As we became aware of the extent of the giving from friends, business acquaintances and professional friends, we talked about how to best use these gifts in a way that would reflect Pam’s great love of people.”
In the months following Pam’s death, Braund said her family and friends talked about the teacher that her daughter aspired to become, and the impact she might have had on public education.
“It became clear that a positive way to acknowledge our huge loss would be to establish a scholarship to be given to someone that might become the teacher that she had wanted to be,” she said.
— Donald Feldstein
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