Albert Shanker, A Passionate Teacher
Nov 9, 2004 3:52 PM
A labor leader of wide scope
Shanker believed that teachers across the nation have common problems and common goals — and would always be more effective working together. In 1972 Shanker and Buffalo teacher Tom Hobart brought about the merger between the New York State AFT affiliate and the rival NEA state affiliate. The new union — New York State United Teachers — is now the largest statewide union in the country. Shanker served as NYSUT's executive vice president from 1973 to 1978. Today, 25 years after its inception, that merged union, the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), is the most influential education organization in the state — the premier voice for teachers statewide.
"I remember Al in those days. He was magnificent," recalled NYSUT President Tom Hobart. "Many people were dead set against merger. But Al took it upon himself to travel the state, meeting with teachers from both organizations, and convincing them that it would be in the best interests of teachers to be in one organization, working in unison rather than fighting each other."
Hobart added that after the merger, newspaper editorial boards warned that teachers were now too powerful. "I don't know how powerful we actually were, but there sure was a perception we were," he said, illustrating with this story: New York's new governor, Malcolm Wilson, had not been a friend to public employees. But when Wilson addressed the NYSUT convention in 1973, he surprised everyone by throwing his weight behind reducing the probationary period for teachers from five to three years, and for a dramatic 15 percent increase in state aid to education.
Once at the AFT, Shanker led the merger talks between that organization and the larger NEA in an effort to create a more powerful national voice for teachers and for children. Although initial attempts failed in the early 1970s, a few years ago he helped revive the goal of forming a single national union that would wield more clout than the two unions could separately; considerable progress had been made at the time of his death.
As an education ambassador at large, Shanker traveled the nation and, indeed, the world. But he was as passionately committed to democracy as he was to education and he also took an important leadership role in that international arena.
He headed the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Committee for many years and helped dissidents in Eastern Europe, many of whom were teachers, to bring down communism. The AFT strongly supported Lech Walesa's Solidarity Movement and the Charter 77 group in Czechoslovakia. The AFT sent its best organizers to Chile to work with teacher organizations opposing the repressive Pinochet regime, building pressure for free elections and the restoration of democracy. In South Africa, the AFT strongly supported anti-apartheid democrats and trade unionists. He also brought the full power of the AFT to bear on the countries and companies that exploit child labor.
In 1993 Shanker became the founding president of Education International, the worldwide teacher union federation formed by merger of the International Federation of Free Teachers' Unions (IFFTU), to which the AFT belonged, and the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession, to which the NEA belonged.
