Retired Teachers Chapter News
Help expand the influence of our chapter
Oct 29, 2009 5:39 PM
RTC Executive Board members (from left) Frances Brown, Angela Reformato-Solomon and Ed Johnson are working on strategies to tap into the talents of more UFT retirees.
The Retired Teachers Chapter’s remarkable membership of 53,000 dwarfs most other union retiree organizations in the country. While we have a strong core of active and involved retirees — the pillars who built the UFT into a powerful political force — and have accomplished a great deal, we always can do better.
Members of the RTC Executive Board, who have recently returned from leadership conferences in Washington, D.C., and Albany, are about to undertake a campaign to capitalize on the energy, intelligence and commitment to social, political and economic issues of many more of our retirees. The outreach, we hope, will expand and activate the untapped potential power of the chapter.
RTC Executive Board members Frances Brown, Ed Johnson and Angela Reformato-Solomon, who are working on strategies to tap into the talents of more UFT retirees wherever they live, have deep roots in the union and the school system.
Frances retired recently after 33 years in the city system, using the UFT career ladder to move from paraprofessional to elementary school teacher in the South Bronx. She has 15 years experience working in the union’s Political Action Department.
“My goal,” Frances said, “is to bring paras, nurses, lab technicians and all our members into the fold, into more active participation in meeting all the challenges that lie ahead.”
Ed sees the need “to bridge the gap between in-service and retirement and to form a coalition with more punch to fight for health care reform now, and for broader social justice issues in the future.”
He spent close to 40 years in the classroom — most of those years at Franklin K. Lane HS — and is using his chapter leader experience to help new chapter leaders work with district representatives. At the AFT conference in D.C., he discovered, “Other locals always cite the RTC as where they want to be, but I know we could be even better.”
Angela has her eye on new retirees and in-service brothers and sisters who are getting ready to retire — the 55-to-65 age group. “It’s time for the baby boomers who were union leaders in their in-service years to become activists and leaders in the RTC in their retiree years,” she noted.
Angela was a math teacher for 16 years and a guidance counselor for 23 years at New Utrecht HS, winding up as guidance counselors chapter leader. As a new resident of one of four new 55-and-over communities in Somerset, N.J., Angela has discovered scores of retired teachers there who she’s eager to bring into our very active New Jersey section.
That’s how many of our RTC sections around the country got started. In Las Vegas, former UFT Vice President Richard Miller continued building a UFT powerhouse that turned a red state blue. In Florida, where retirees are legion, Coordinator Marna Davidson shaped them into a political force locally and many members have been elected delegates to Democratic national conventions.
There are many places in the country where enough retirees live to get together socially, politically or on whatever grounds meet their needs. We hope to be able to encourage all sorts of interest in getting together through our new outreach campaign.
The AFT has researched some interesting statistics that we will be considering as we build our campaign. A profile of AFT retirees — we are UFT, AFT and AFL-CIO retirees, and members of the Alliance for Retired Americans — finds that:
- 31 percent of retirees are under 65;
- 20 percent have been retired for three years or fewer;
- retirees become active to have impact on issues that affect them personally;
- most retirees are likely to be asked to participate in specific political action; and
- retirees are least likely to be asked to volunteer time for community service, mentoring or helping struggling teachers.
We are eager to find out what your interests are and how we can serve those interests and build union activism among our wide network of retirees. We all realize the many, many important challenges we face now and will continue to face in the struggle to improve our schools and restore social, political and economic justice that has been so badly eroded over the past years.
We need all the voices we can get to speak out in meeting those challenges. We will reach out to you in the future. We hope you — all 53,000 of you — will help us build a stronger chapter.
