UFT Elections – Functionals
“Functional” as a division requires some explanation. I’ll get some of it right, but I find it complicated. Functional Chapters are organized across schools, by members’ function – or job. Guidance Counselors, Paraprofessionals, Secretaries, Speech Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Nurses, etc.
Are non-DoE chapters “functional chapters”? I don’t know. I do know that when I say “our contract” I am excluding functional chapters – there are separate contracts for other titles.
In any case, since “functional” actually covers a range of titles and locations, lumped together, the votes there are more of a composite, giving guesswork a larger role in analysis.
These numbers look different from the teacher divisions. The total number of votes has not consistently declined. Unity’s totals have not consistently declined. There’s a significant unexplained blip from 2007 to 2010 in raw opposition vote.
JD2718 
could the Unity drop this year be due to OT/PT votes?
Hard to tell, but unlikely. Unity’s teacher vote fell 14% from 2016 and rose 18% from 2013. Their functional vote fell 6% from 2016 and rose 39% from 2013.
More OTs and PTs might be voting, but there are 2000 more Unity votes than 6 years ago. Where’d they come from? That’s new members (which functional chapter(s)?) Or Unity doing something different (what, exactly?)
As I wrote, it’s pretty resistant to analysis without knowing additional information.
How did E4E’s Michel Loeb do?
I hope you took the over.
25.
Now we know how many supporters E4E has. I’m thinking that the para vote may have come in big for Unity and paras are the biggest functional chapter.
Is there a reason for a big jump in para vote for Unity this time? There are enough potential votes there to explain the change, but without a big reason, that doesn’t make sense. I’d look at which functional titles have seen growth. Nurses?
Do non-DoE titles vote functional?
A reason for a jump in para voting for Unity could be their contentment with the current contract, which gave paraprofessionals a lot of things they had been seeking. Paras now have almost identical due process guarantees to those already enjoyed by teachers, such as letter-to-file removal after three years and protections against automatic removal from assignment and payroll while under investigation. Paras are also very happy with their new longevity increases (paltry as they seem to me).
Another interesting thing is that teachers in District 75 are also grouped in with the functional vote. I don’t know why that is, or what affect that has on the overall voting, but there it is.
Paras did have a big contractual gain, but I didn’t see the huge campaign to turn out their vote based on that.
I’m betting on something else, perhaps newly represented members or titles….
The para campaign took place during the contract vote and carried over.
That’s possible. Still strange that we did not see it.