A Statement on the UFT Delegate Assembly from Camille Eterno, UFC Candidate for UFT President

Robert’s Rules states in the Introduction that Henry Robert based his rules of order on the United States House of Representatives and they were then adapted to other bodies such as labor unions, corporations, church groups, co-op boards, etc. because some congressional rules could not be applied to different kinds of democratic assemblies. The congressional principle of fairness for both the majority and minority was a main priority of Henry Robert. 

The DA in its present state is much closer to a one-party state that glorifies its leader, Mr. Mulgrew, than a democratic assembly.

Let’s compare the Delegate Assembly to the U.S. House of Representatives: Imagine a Congress where there was an hour and 45 minute session during which Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke from the speaker’s chair for an hour on virtually every major issue that could come before the House, and then had her assistant Steny Hoyer speak for a few minutes, next Speaker Pelosi took questions mostly from members of her own party for 15 minutes, and then in the very short time when House Resolutions were finally up for debate, Pelosi called on Representatives who were also on the Speaker’s payroll. Would you call that a fair system? That’s what we have at the DA basically. It’s much closer to a one-party state that glorifies its leader than a democratic assembly.

It is called parliamentary law because it is based on the British House of Commons. I have been to the House of Commons, and you can watch it in the USA on television. Every time someone from the government speaks, the opposition is then allowed to give their view. Even though the Conservatives have a huge 95-seat majority, questions are asked in rotating order between the majority party and the opposition parties. All reports, debates, and question periods follow this format. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson cannot speak for an hour without opposition Labour leader Kier Starmer getting equal time. The speaker is completely impartial in the House of Commons (and in the US when she is presiding from the speaker’s chair).

The UFT’s DA needs basic fairness of equal time for the majority and the opposition.

Robert’s Rules specifically say that the chair must be impartial, but at the DA, the president gives a marathon report where he is obviously partisan on virtually all of the issues that the union faces and then answers questions, often from members of his own caucus, so he pontificates some more. This deliberative body, which had a great history in the 1960s under Charles Cogen and Al Shanker, when there were real debates, has been reduced to listening to a chair abuse his authority by endlessly filibustering and relegating debate to often symbolic resolutions for a few short minutes at the end of each session with the president usually calling on members of his own caucus. The UFT’s DA needs basic fairness of equal time for the majority and the opposition. Robert’s Rules says the president should say the least, not the most. The UFT runs its business in a way that even Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un could recognize as opposed to Jeffersonian democracy.