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Not for teachers only
Despite its name, the United Federation of Teachers is a union of 200,000 working people who are committed to improving the lives of New Yorkers in many different ways. Most, but not all, provide education, child care or health services for adults...
The Feldman Years: From labor union to union of professionals
The current school-budget crisis is no surprise to many veteran city public school educators. Fiscal turmoil seems to assault our schools every 15 or 20 years. Typically, teachers are called upon to save the day and, for the sake of the children...
The Weingarten years
As the UFT’s fourth president, serving from 1998 to 2009, Randi Weingarten led the union through a period of economic instability, two contentious city administrations and mounting attacks on the labor movement and public education. She relished...
Albert Shanker: Prophetic reformer
If a controversial topic is dominating the education debate today, it’s probably something that Al Shanker proposed decades ago
Finding common cause: The early years
The irony is stunning. As the UFT prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Department of Education has announced its plans to close the school where the first stirrings of teacher unionism began here almost a century ago.
Class struggles: The UFT story, part 9
In the fall of 1961 a column appeared in the UFT’s newspaper, The United Teacher, under the byline: Albert Gordon. The writer, a social studies teacher from Brooklyn’s Samuel Tilden HS, told of his arrest the previous summer and his month-long...
Class struggles: The UFT story, part 8
Not far from the UFT’s Park Avenue South headquarters, Al Shanker sits stiffly in the study of his apartment. Physically, he’s not himself.
Class struggles: The UFT story, part 7
Roger Parente still gets up early. Only these days it’s to get in a game of tennis before the stifling mid-day heat of the Southern California desert sets in. Approaching 70, Parente is surprised how well a decade of retirement has agreed with him...
Class struggles: The UFT story, part 6
For Milton Pincus, the decision to call off the November 7th strike in return for Mayor Robert Wagner’s promise of a fact-finding committee loaded with the leading lights of the city’s labor movement, was a no-brainer. From where he stood — outside...
Class struggles
This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.