United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten last week abruptly declared that she was pulling out of a subsidized-housing agreement with the city.
Under the plan, teachers would’ve been eligible for 200 below-market apartments in a two-building Bronx complex.
The project, developed by the city’s Housing Development Corp. and overseen by the city comptroller, was to have been substantially funded via the teachers’ pension fund. But Weingarten, after strongly endorsing the project in October, reversed course and canceled the fund’s $28 million contribution to the plan.
Now, “affordable housing” is an altar before which every New York politician reflexively genuflects, so the UFT’s backing away from the deal may seem surprising.
It’s not.
The city-hired developer, Atlantic Development Group, apparently won’t be using unionized construction workers.
No union labor, no deal, says Weingarten: “This is what the labor unions should be doing for each other: We should be standing up for each other.”
Ironies abound.
First, it clearly doesn’t occur to Weingarten that using non-union labor is a major reason developers can build “affordable” apartments.
Secondly, and more significantly, she is imperiling a project that is beneficial to her teacher constituency for the “greater good” of the broader labor movement.
Why would she do that?
Well, “solidarity” rhetoric aside, it’s because the UFT presidency isn’t the only office Weingarten holds.
She also chairs the Municipal Labor Committee – an umbrella group of more than 100 city unions.
As a result, 200 or so teachers may lose out on inexpensive apartments and – if the project falls through – several jobs won’t be created at all.
All in the name of union fidelity.
The biblical adage says that a man can’t serve two masters; Weingarten has proven its wisdom in spades.