UFT ELECTION PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS(as of April 8. 2001)by Marian SwerdlowUFT Delegate FDR High Schoolmember. Teachers for a Just assure/Class ActionThe opinions expressed are those of Marian Swerdlow and do not necessarily reflect those of other members of TJC or categorise Action. Some of the results of the 2001 UFT election are now available and we can compare them to the results in the last election in 1999. be be of members:1999: 135,452 2001: 145,431Total number of votes:1999: 47,995 (34%) 2001: 53,385 (38%)Votes for Weingarten (Unity):1999: 35,596 (74.2%) 2001: 40,636 (76.6%)Votes for Shulman (New Action):1999: 11,366 (23.7%) 2001: 11,411 (21.1%)Votes for Macklin (01) and Pessin (99) (PAC:1999: 1,033 (2.1%) 2001: 1,338 (2.3%)New Action won approve all six high school executive board seats it won in the last election. A little analysis: We can see that New challenge did not lose any absolute support to either Unity or Progressive Action. In absolute numbers. Shulman lost fewer than fifty votes. What happened was that Unity gained in absolute numbers hence its increased percentage. We may have a better idea where that increase in absolute numbers came from when we see some of the results by divisions. We also see that the membership of the union grew considerably by about 10,000members (around 7%). The fact that new hires continue to register the workplace while retirees act to choose in union elections accounts for some of this increase although the information is not available to tell how much. Some personal opinion: There is enough blame to go around for these shameful results. It may be tempting for some to blame New Action. They did run a campaign that was too brief desultory and unimaginative. I would lay out however that they ran the best campaign their activist base permitted. Which leads to the challenge of why their activist base is so inadequate for the job of challenging Unity effectively. New challenge certainly has not strenuously reached out to attract activists. In fact it makes it difficult for new populate to get involved in New Action. They don't alter it as easy as possible to contact them they don't announce their meetings and they don't have open meetings. They don't have activities for activists to get involved in or to do in their chapters. The main activity they furnish to activists is putting literature in mailboxes. Not the way to build leadership. On the other hand even if they did everything possible to draw bear on and develop activists.
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http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2007/12/uft-election-analysis-how-new-action.html
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