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Honoring a proud history
Nov 12, 2009 12:42 PM
1,200 connect UFT’s origins to today’s battles at annual celebration
UFT President Michael Mulgrew addresses the 1,200 who attended Teacher Union Day.
[For more photos, go to the “Teacher Union Day 2009” gallery]
A sense of history, continuity and pride pervaded the UFT’s Teacher Union Day on Nov.1 at the Waldorf Astoria as more than 1,200 union activists gathered to honor their colleagues and leaders.
The annual awards ceremony commemorates the union’s Nov. 7, 1960, strike for union recognition, something then common in the private sector but held by few municipal workers. It was a strike against the city that went against the odds and that few thought could be won.
When UFT President Michael Mulgrew asked how many in attendance had been present at the big fight nearly 50 years ago, some 30 veterans stood up to thunderous applause.
Cupping his hand to his ear, Mulgrew listened as the founders, scattered across the cavernous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel ballroom, called out their names, so he could single them out one by one for recognition and thanks.
Mulgrew drew a direct connection between the battles fought by these union founders and the battles fought by today’s generation of union activists to protect public schools.
Mulgrew asks the union’s founders in the audience to stand so they can be recognized.
The UFT had formally been founded earlier that year, but, he said, “It was that strike that made us a union.” It would be two years and a second job action that closed a critical mass of schools in the city before City Hall would agree to bargain on a contract that Mulgrew said “protected children, too.”
“They stood up when they saw something was wrong,” Mulgrew said. He called for the same kind of “collective activism” today.
Noting that the union faces great challenges to the profession and from the hard-hit economy, Mulgrew said, “We need activists to go to Albany and fight for a better budget and we need activists to defend our profession because we can’t allow the so-called education reformers to dictate an agenda that has everything to do with standardized test scores and nothing to do with what children need.”
Everyone stands to applaud as the founders are announced.
Paying tribute to a union lifer
by Dorothy Callaci
What you see is what you get with Bob Astrowsky. He’s all union.
"Most of my life has been the union — hours and hours and hours,” he remarked, looking back over 46 remarkable, productive years, after receiving the Charles Cogen Award at Teacher Union Day on Nov. 1.
He even attributes his distinctive beard to the long hours he was locked up as part of the 1975 contract negotiating team so that he never had a chance to shave.
“It’s the way I do things, he said. “I always get totally immersed in what I do.”
From his work with emotionally at-risk children in so-called “600 schools” — which were similar to what we know today as District 75 — in his earliest years, through his years as a guidance counselor, chapter leader, District 3 representative, Brooklyn borough representative and assistant to the UFT president and his present role as UFT assistant secretary, he’s been a “people person,” good at calming irate and upset members, angry parents and recalcitrant principals.
Astrowsky prides himself on being able to deal with difficult people by using his guidance counselor skills. “There’s no magic wand to wave,” he explained. “I’m a good listener and that’s sometimes all people need.”
UFT President Michael Mulgrew in his introduction of Astrowsky for the union’s highest award, spoke of hearing “We love Bob” from everyone, everywhere. “I don’t know how he does it,” he added. “To do our work doesn’t always make us loved.”
The union became his family.
“The best people in the world,” he said. “Whatever I’ve done, I’ve felt the support of everyone.”
That includes his partner of 20 years, Yvette Geary, who, as a former district representative herself, understands what the union job requires. And Astrowsky isn’t considering leaving it any time soon.
Referring to an op-ed in that day’s Daily News that blasted the Department of Education/UFT contract, Mulgrew asked members: “Are you ready to educate the community that people go into this profession to help children and make it clear that our contract protects children? Because we are the ones who protect class size; we are the ones who adapt the contract to individual school needs; and we are the ones who make sure that teachers have a voice in what goes into the curriculum.”
Arguing that unity will be critical in the coming months and years, Mulgrew told members in the audience that “as long as we work with each other, we talk with each other and we educate the community, we win.”
The awards ceremony was the touchstone of the day.
“Teacher Union Day is a day to acknowledge and thank our colleagues for maintaining the fine traditions of this union,” said UFT Vice President Aminda Gentile, chair of the event.
Bob Astrowsky, the UFT assistant secretary who began his career 46 years ago as a guidance counselor and subsequently served in numerous union leadership roles, was honored with the Charles Cogan Award, the union’s most prestigious award, given for a lifetime’s exceptional work with the union [see “Paying tribute to a union lifer,” at right]. The award is named for the union’s first president and leader of the 1960 strike.
Evelyn DeJesus, a former chapter leader at PS 216 and now Manhattan borough representative, received the Jules Kolodny Award. In accepting her award, DeJesus noted that “Jules Kolodny was a man of responsibility who had the wisdom to know we were advocates for children. So do I.”
Walter O’Leary, a special education teacher and the new District 75 representative, received the Sidney Harris Award for work with special education students. O’Leary called the award “the career highlight for any special education teacher.”
The Backer/Scheintaub award went to Richard Mantell, the District 18 representative, who recalled his father’s advice to him when he started out as a teacher to seek out the “three most important people” in the school: the custodian, the school secretary and the UFT chapter leader.”
Mantell said that he told chapter leaders in his district, “I’ll be a lightning rod. I don’t care. I’ll take on anything for you.”
Sterling Roberson, the former director of school safety and new vice president for career and technical education high schools, won the David Wittes Award and Chris Proctor, the union’s industrial hygienist who was on the front lines of the union’s efforts this spring to protect members and students from swine flu, won the Audrey Chasen Award.
Outstanding chapters and chapter leaders were honored with the Ely Trachtenberg Award.
Other honors went to members for their long service as chapter leaders, 50 years of teacher union membership, and advancement to new titles.
A principal and chapter leader in each borough were also honored for collaboration in the service of their school’s students.
