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They’re putting the “ad” in adversary.
The teachers union launched a $1.1 million television ad campaign yesterday that blasted Mayor Bloomberg’s record on education — a sign of how strained the icy relationship has gotten.
The 30-second United Federation of Teachers spots, which accuse Bloomberg of playing politics in talks over a new teacher-evaluation system, are slated to run until Jan. 17 — the state’s deadline for districts to strike a deal or else lose $250 million in education aid.
“If there was ever a way to force somebody to not come to an agreement, it’s to run ads calling them bad things. What kind of strategy is this?” Hizzoner said on his weekly radio appearance. “And they’re not stupid. They know what they’re doing. So they’re deliberately trying to keep us from having a [deal].”
The city Department of Education filed a complaint with the state’s employment board last week accusing the union of failing to negotiate in good faith — mostly by insisting nonmaterial issues move to the forefront of talks.
In a letter to the agency yesterday, UFT President Michael Mulgrew insisted that such issues as setting limits on the amount of paperwork given to teachers were relevant to the current deal and to the general teachers’ contract — which expired in October 2009.
The union also blasted Bloomberg for likening UFT leaders — and their failure to represent the wishes of their members — to the leadership of the National Rifle Association.
“Most [teachers] are not in sympathy with the union . . . It’s typical of Congress, it’s typical of unions, it’s typical of companies, I guess, where a small group is carrying the ball and the others aren’t necessarily in agreement,” Bloomberg said on the radio. “The NRA is another case where the membership . . . doesn’t agree with the leadership.”
In a statement, Mulgrew called the remarks, in the wake of the Newtown school-shooting massacre, “completely inappropriate and a demonstration of how difficult he can be to deal with on any issue — much less one as complex as a new teacher-evaluation system.”
Bloomberg made a similar link between the structure of the two groups back in April 2007, after the union had staged a massive rally to protest the latest of several reorganizations of the school system.
“You always do have the problem of a very small group of people who are single-issue focused having disproportionate percentage of power,” Bloomberg said of the union at the time. “That’s exactly the NRA.”