By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was direct with city teachers demanding $3.8 billion in retroactive raises: “It’s just something the city can’t possibly afford.”

Bloomberg has consistently opposed labor deals with the city’s 100 plus unions if the agreements contained retroactive raises, Gotham Schools reports, and he reiterated his position when introducing his final $69.8 billion budget as mayor.

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Bloomberg said retroactive raises for teachers would total $3.8 billion next year and $1 billion per year after that.  New York City teachers have been without a contract since 2009, when then American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten decided to delay negotiations in hopes of securing a fat raise for teachers, Gotham Schools reports.

The city’s other unions signed deals with 4 percent raises, but the AFT held out for more. The economy then declined and pay hikes became an impossibility, Bloomberg said, according to the news site.

“The teachers union took a bet. Thank you, Randi Weingarten,” Bloomberg said.

Weingarten, now the head of the national American Federation of Teachers, couldn’t help but bark back.

“It is so sad that the Mayor would actually try to blame everyone but himself for his budget choices and for a recession created by Wall Street recklessness,” Weingarten said, Gotham Schools reports.

The irony is the American Federation of Teachers has resisted signing a new contract with the city since 2009, partly because of differences with school leaders over how teachers should be evaluated. The city wants to increase accountability and use student test scores as one of several components of teacher evaluations, while union leaders aren’t interested in raising the bar.

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The union’s resistance meant there wasn’t a teacher evaluation plan in place to meet a state deadline, resulting in the loss of $250 million in state aid.

That wouldn’t cover the unrealistic $3.8 billion in raises the AFT is after, but it certainly would have helped.

The union’s take-it-or-leave-it, self-centered mentality has cost its members more than once in the past, so we wonder why union leaders seem to be employing the same unrealistic strategy this time around.

We suspect the union’s real plan is to hold out while working to elect a union-friendly mayor in November. Then contract negotiations would go much easier for the AFT.