{"id":6128,"date":"2018-10-16T10:16:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T14:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multi.nycnewsnetwork.com\/nyceducationnews\/?p=6128"},"modified":"2018-10-16T10:16:48","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T14:16:48","slug":"money-contract-nyc-teachers-raise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nycnewsnetwork.com\/nyceducationnews\/money-contract-nyc-teachers-raise\/","title":{"rendered":"More Money in Contract for NYC Teachers, But Is It a Raise?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted on Chalkbeat<\/a> by Philissa Cramer<\/a> on October 12, 2018<\/p>\n

The contract deal that New York City and its teachers union announced Thursday<\/a> looked like good news for teachers\u2019 paychecks: The starting salary for new teachers would exceed $60,000 by the end of the contract term, and all union members would get annual pay increases.<\/p>\n

But as educators worked to make sense of a proposal that union officials were asking them to move forward just 24 hours later, some union members began to raise concerns.<\/p>\n

For one thing, the average annual raises fall below the 2.8 percent that the federal government has identified as matching the rising cost of living. When inflation exceeds pay increases, workers effectively experience pay cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWait. The negotiated contractual increases are going to be LOWER than the government\u2019s own 2019 COLA increases?\u201d one union member wrote<\/a> on the union\u2019s Facebook page. \u201cAre you kidding me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city economy is growing at a rate of 2.7%,\u201d James Eterno, a retired teacher who once ran a quixotic bid<\/a> to unseat United Federation of Teachers chief Michael Mulgrew, wrote on his blog<\/a>, referring to the economic growth rate reported<\/a> for the second quarter of this year. \u201cThe prosperity of the last ten years has passed us by.\u201d<\/p>\n