President
RANDI WEINGARTEN is president of the United Federation of Teachers, the nation's largest union local representing 201,486 men and women. She is also a vice-president of the American Federation of Teachers and of the New York City Central Labor Council (AFL-CIO) and heads the city’s Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), an umbrella organization for 100-plus city unions.
From 1986 to 1998 Weingarten served as counsel to UFT President Sandra Feldman, taking a lead role in contract negotiations and enforcement and in lawsuits in which the union fought for adequate school funding and building conditions. A teacher of history at Clara Barton HS in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, from 1991 to 1997, Weingarten helped her students win several state and national awards debating constitutional issues.
Elected as the union’s assistant secretary in 1995 and treasurer two years later, she assumed the UFT presidency in 1998 after Feldman became president of the AFT. She was elected to her first full term the following year and re-elected three times since. Under Weingarten’s leadership, salaries of UFT-represented public school employees have increased by 43 percent.
Weingarten and the UFT have fought to make sure teachers are treated with respect and dignity, have a voice in the education of their students and are given the resources they need to succeed in the classroom. Weingarten has promoted the professional growth of teachers and other educators through more than 350 school-based UFT Teacher Center sites.
Weingarten sees her role as an advocate for students as well as for union members. Her passion as leader of America’s largest union local is to make every school a place where parents want to send their children and educators want to work.
The UFT, under Weingarten, has expanded its outreach to parents and students. Each year the union awards more than $1 million in scholarships to needy high school seniors, and Dial-A-Teacher, its after-school homework help program helps tens of thousands of students and their parents each year.
The union has worked tirelessly with parents and community allies to make sure schools are safe and adequately funded. After a 13-year battle, during which Weingarten was arrested for leading a protest in Albany, the state’s highest court ordered the state to expand aid to New York City’s public schools. In January 2007, Gov. Spitzer proposed, and the Legislature approved, education finance and accountability reforms that are slated to boost statewide school funding by $7 billion a year, including $5.4 billion for New York City. Among them is a requirement, championed by the UFT, to significantly reduce class sizes in all grades.
Weingarten has led UFT members into areas of reform rarely embraced by more traditional teacher unions. Eager to return the charter school movement to its original purpose of enabling educators to create schools based on classroom-tested best practices, she spearheaded the opening of two union-operated public charter schools in East Brooklyn, N.Y., and has partnered with Green Dot schools to start another in the South Bronx.
As MLC chair since 1998, Weingarten coordinates labor negotiations and bargains benefits on behalf of the unions’ 365,000 members.
Weingarten holds degrees from Cornell University and the Cardozo School of Law. She worked as a lawyer for the Wall Street firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan from 1983 to 1986. She is an active member of the Democratic National Committee and numerous professional, civic and philanthropic organizations.
Born in 1957, Weingarten is a resident of Manhattan.
