![]() | |
Predecessor | American Federation of Teachers and Students |
---|---|
Founded | April 15, 1916 [1] |
Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
Location |
|
Members | 1.7 million |
Key people | Randi Weingarten, president |
Affiliations | AFL–CIO, Education International, Public Services International |
Website | aft.org |
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is the second largest teacher's labor union in America (the largest being the National Education Association). The union was founded in Chicago. John Dewey and Margaret Haley were founders. [2] [3] [4] [5]
About 60 percent of AFT's membership works directly in education, with the remainder of the union's members composed of paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; local, state and federal employees; higher education faculty and staff, and nurses and other healthcare professionals. [6] The AFT has, since its founding, affiliated with trade union federations: until 1955 the American Federation of Labor, and now the AFL–CIO.
![]() | Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
![]() | Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
AFT was founded in Chicago, Illinois, on April 15, 1916. Charles Stillman was the first president and Margaret Haley was the national organizer. On May 9, 1916, the American Federation of Labor chartered the AFT. By 1919, AFT had 100 local affiliates and a membership of approximately 11,000 teachers, which amounted to 1.5% of the nation's teaching force. In its early days, AFT distinguished itself from the National Education Association (NEA) by its exclusion of school administrators from membership. Facing opposition from politicians and boards of education, membership in AFT declined to 7,000 by 1930. During this period, the organization had little impact on local or national education policy. [6]
AFT membership climbed during the Great Depression, reaching 33,000 by 1939. During the 1930s, AFT, whose members had historically been primary school teachers, saw influential college professors join the union. Also during the 1930s, the Communist Party gained influence within the AFT. [6] In 1941, under pressure from the AFL, the union ejected three local unions in New York City and Philadelphia (including its prominent early member, the New York City Teachers Union, AFT Local 5) for being communist-dominated. The charter revocations represented nearly a third of the union's national membership. [8]
The 1940s were marked by a series of teacher strikes, including 57 strikes that occurred from 1946 through 1949. By 1947, AFT had a membership of 42,000. The 1960s and 1970s also saw numerous teacher strikes, including 1,000 strikes involving more than 823,000 teachers between 1960 and 1974.
AFT membership was 59,000 in 1960, 200,000 in 1970, and 550,000 in 1980. [6] In 2017, membership was around 1.6 million, and the union had due income of $35 million. [9]
Since 1977, AFT has published a quarterly magazine for teachers covering various issues about children and education called American Educator . In 1998, the membership of the NEA rejected a proposed merger with AFT. The AFT's membership is half that of the NEA. [6]
In 1974, Albert Shanker was elected president of AFT. He served in this role until his death on February 22, 1997. [10] For 27 years, Shanker wrote a weekly column entitled "Where We Stand" that ran as an advertisement in The New York Times . Shanker was an early advocate of charter schools. [10] He also called for a national competency test for teachers, merit pay for teachers, and more rigorous requirements for high school graduation. [11] During his tenure as AFT president, Shanker was jailed twice for leading illegal strikes. [12]
Sandra Feldman served as AFT's president from 1997 to 2004. Feldman helped craft the No Child Left Behind Act. [13]
Edward J. McElroy, the AFT's secretary-treasurer since 1992, was elected president of the AFT in 2004, replacing Feldman. [14] On February 12, 2008, McElroy announced he would retire at the union's regularly scheduled biennial convention in July. On July 14, 2008, Randi Weingarten was elected to succeed him. [15]
On July 14, 2008, Randi Weingarten, then the president of the United Federation of Teachers, was elected to succeed McElroy as AFT president. In September 2008, she announced the launch of the AFT Innovation Fund, a union-led, private foundation-supported effort to provide grants to AFT unions to develop and implement innovations in education. [16] In 2014, Weingarten announced that AFT was ending a five-year funding relationship between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the AFT Innovation Fund. [17]
Since 1980, AFT and the NEA have contributed nearly $57.4 million to federal campaigns, an amount that is about 30 percent higher than any single corporation or other union. About 95 percent of political donations from teachers unions have gone to Democrats. [18]
In 2008, AFT provided a campaign contribution of $1,784,808.59 to Hillary Clinton and $1,997,375.00 to Barack Obama. [19]
In July 2015, AFT endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. Clinton and AFT president Randi Weingarten are longtime friends. [20] AFT's official endorsement of Clinton caused controversy among some AFT members who felt that the endorsement came too soon and did not reflect the wishes of rank-and-file AFT members, some of whom supported Bernie Sanders. [21] [22]
Members' dues underwrite much of AFT's political activities. [23] [24] In 2015, four California teachers sued AFT and its California unit, the California Federation of Teachers, over the use of member dues for political activities. The plaintiffs argued that unions were violating their constitutional right to free speech by forcing them to either support union-favored causes and candidates or lose access to important job benefits such as disability and life insurance. [25]
In 2018, the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME resolved this matter, concluding that public sector union fees violate the First Amendment, compelling nonmembers to "subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern". Unions will, subsequently, need to gain the affirmative consent of individual teachers before enrolling them in the union.
The AFT was one of the first trade unions to allow African-Americans and minorities to become full members of their trade union. [26] In 1918, the AFT called for equal pay for African-American teachers, the election of African Americans to local school boards and compulsory school attendance for African-American children. In 1919, the AFT called for equal educational opportunities for African-American children, and in 1928 called for the social, political, economic, and cultural contributions of African Americans to be taught in the public schools. [27]
In 1951, the union stopped chartering segregated locals. [28] It filed an amicus brief in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education . In 1957, the AFT expelled all locals that refused to desegregate. This resulted in the loss of over 7,000 members. [8] In 1963, the AFT actively supported the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. [8]
By the late 1940s, AFT was slowly moving toward collective bargaining as an official policy. By the end of the 1970s, collective bargaining agreements covered 72% of public school teachers. [6]
In 2020, the union along with the National Education Association issued a report expressing opposition to active shooter drills being held in schools, calling on the drills to be revised or eliminated. [29]
In 2012, AFT partnered with Britain's TES Connect to create a curriculum sharing website called Share My Lesson. The AFT and TES invested $10 million to develop the site. [30]
In 2010, four American film documentaries, most notably Waiting for Superman , portrayed the AFT as hurting children by opposing charter schools and protecting incompetent teachers. [31]
The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States. It represents public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college students preparing to become teachers. The NEA has just under 3 million members and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The NEA had a budget of more than $341 million for the 2012–2013 fiscal year. Becky Pringle is the NEA's current president.
Education International (EI) is a global union federation (GUF) of teachers' trade unions consisting of 383 member organizations in 178 countries and territories that represents over 32 million education teachers and education support personnel from pre-school through university. It is one of the world's largest sectoral global union federations.
Albert Shanker was president of the United Federation of Teachers from 1964 to 1985 and president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1974 to 1997.
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is the labor union that represents most teachers in New York City public schools. As of 2005, there were about 118,000 in-service teachers and nearly 30,000 paraprofessional educators in the union, as well as about 54,000 retired members. In October 2007, 28,280 home day care providers voted to join the union. It is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, the AFL–CIO and the Central Labor Council. It is also the largest member of New York State United Teachers, which is affiliated with the National Educational Association and Education International.
Rhonda "Randi" Weingarten is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator. She is president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and a member of the AFL-CIO. She is the former president of the United Federation of Teachers.
Margaret A. Haley was a teacher, unionist, and Georgist land value tax activist, who was dubbed the "lady labor slugger". Haley was the first business representative of the Chicago Teachers Federation and a pioneer leader in organizing schoolteachers. During her long career with the CTF, Haley fought to correct tax inequalities, increase the salaries of teachers, and expose unfair land leasing by the Chicago Board of Education.
Sandra Feldman was an American educator and labor leader who served as president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1997 to 2004.
New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) is a 600,000-member New York state teachers union, affiliated since 2006 with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the AFL–CIO, and the National Education Association (NEA). NYSUT is an umbrella group which provides services to local affiliates in New York state; lobbies on the local, state and federal level; conducts research; and organizes new members.
Edward J. McElroy, Jr. is an American teacher and labor union leader. He was president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 2004 to 2008, and an AFL-CIO vice president from 2001 to 2008.
David Selden was an American activist who led the American Federation of Teachers from 1968 through 1974.
The Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT) is a statewide federation of unions in Ohio, affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFL–CIO.
The Montana Federation of Public Employees(MFPE) is a Montana labor union. Its 23,000 members make it the largest union in the state.
The Florida Education Association (FEA) is a statewide federation of teacher and education workers' labor unions in the US state of Florida. Its 145,000 members make it the largest union in the state. It is a merged affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), and is a member of the AFL–CIO.
Nat LaCour was an American labor union leader and teacher. From 1971 to 1998, he was president of United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO), American Federation of Teachers Local 527, the longest serving president in the local's history. Under his leadership, UTNO became the largest teachers union in the Deep South, eventually representing more than 7000 teachers, paraprofessionals, school secretaries, and administrative clericals.
The Albert Shanker Institute (ASI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to three themes: excellence in public education, unions as advocates for quality, and freedom of association in the public life of democracies. Its mission is to generate ideas, foster candid exchanges, and promote constructive policy proposals related to these issues. Toward these ends, ASI conducts original research, sponsors research, and organizes conferences and conversations in its three theme areas.
Israel Kugler was a noted American professor of sociology. In the 1960s, he helped organize faculty at a number of New York City-area colleges and universities into labor unions. He co-founded the Professional Staff Congress, a union of faculty at the City University of New York (CUNY) which now represents more than 20,000 faculty and staff members at the university.
The New York State Teachers Association (NYSTA) was an association of teachers in the state of New York, United States, founded in 1845. It assisted teachers in their professional career, provided a public voice for its members on subjects such as pay and tenure, and promoted improvements to the public school system in the state. In 1973 it joined with the United Teachers of New York to form the New York State United Teachers.
The New York City Teachers Union or "TU" (1916–1964) was the first New York labor union for teachers, formed as "AFT Local 5" of the American Federation of Teachers, which found itself hounded throughout its history due largely to co-membership of many of its members in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
The New York City Teachers Guild (1935-1960), AKA "Local 2, AFT" as of June 1941, was a progressive labor union that started as breakaway from the New York City Teachers Union and later merged into the United Federation of Teachers.
The Chicago Teachers Federation was a teachers union in Chicago Illinois that was founded in 1897. It is considered a predecessor of today's Chicago Teachers Union.