Dont let the the UFT fleece taxpayers via teacher-aide bonuses

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council are going to war in court over payments to Department of Education paraprofessionals — even though they agreed on the issue not long ago.At a 2025 press conference where the 200,000-member teachers’ union endorsed him, Mamdani touted his support for giving paraprofessionals $10,000 checks.Last month, the council unanimously passed the union-driven and branded “Respect for Paraprofessionals” bill, at an expected cost of $325 million.Mamdani, however, didn’t sign or veto it but instead let it become law automatically, citing concerns about its legality.Hours later, his lawyers ran to court to block it.Whether paraprofessionals deserve more pay isn’t the issue.

Virtually everyone can agree that they do very difficult work, and a starting salary of about $33,000 doesn’t go far in the highest cost-of-living city in the nation.What’s at stake goes to the heart of how the city hires and pays its employees.Under the state Taylor Law, public employers and unions bargain collectively over wages, benefits and work rules.Collective bargaining is imperfect, but it’s the lawful process.The United Federation of Teachers’ members, which includes both teachers and paraprofessionals, agreed in 2023 to a contract that did little to address paras’ low pay.The 2023 contract, for example, cut the time for a teacher to earn a $100,000 salary from 15 to 8 years.

But it didn’t revise the paraprofessionals’ pay scale.UFT President Michael Mulgrew reasoned that paras could get more only if teachers took less — a tradeoff the union has declined.Instead, it’s sought to strike a better deal for its large teacher membership and then separately have the council boost salaries for the paras.The trouble is, in sidestepping collective bargaining, the new law threatens to open the door to multiple ways for unions to win pay hikes.Once they finish bargaining with the mayor, they’ll run to the council and negotiate additiona...