New York City Teachers Guild – Local 2, AFT | |
Predecessor | New York City Teachers Union |
---|---|
Merged into | United Federation of Teachers |
Successor | United Federation of Teachers |
Founded | 1935 |
Dissolved | 1960 |
Location |
|
Key people | Henry Linville, Abraham Lefkowitz (co-founders) |
Affiliations | American Federation of Teachers (AFT) |
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. [1] [2]
The New York City Teachers Union (TU) had experience conflict internally for more of the early 1930s. The opposing groups were the founders (Henry Linville and Abraham Lefkowitz–at the time called "administrators") and "Rank and File" members (many of whom were also Communist Party members). [3] [4]
During an August 1935 national convention, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) voted down a TU administrators' request to reorganize (100 to 79). On October 1, 1935, Linville and Lefkowitz led all officers, nearly all executive board members, and nearly 800 members (including Communist Lovestoneite members of a rival "Progressive Group") out of the TU to form the Teachers Guild (TG). [3] [4]
On March 29, 1940, the New York State Legislature formed the "Rapp-Coudert Committee" to investigate finances (Rapp in the New York State Assembly) and subversive activities (Coudert in the New York State Senate). From September 1940 through December 1941, Coudert investigated more than 500 people regarding their affiliation with the Communist Party USA. Coudert's subcommittee focused on the TU Local 5 as well as a college professors union Local 537. Former TU leaders who had helped found the TG, Henry Linville and Benjamin Mandel, testified against TU members. On June 20, 1941, the AFT designated the TG as "Local 2, AFT." [2] On December 29, 1940, the AFT voted and in May 1941 officially expelled three communist-influenced locals: the TU (Local 5, AFT), the New York College Teachers Union (Local 537, AFT), and the Philadelphia Teachers Union (Local 192, AFT). [1] [2] In June 1941, the AFT made the TG its "Local 5, AFT" in New York City. [2] In 1943, the Rapp-Coudert Committee endorsed school financing policies of the TG. [2]
(Forthcoming)
In March 1960, the TG and Committee of Action Through Unity (CATU) merged into the United Federation of Teachers (Local 2, AFT). In August 1960, New York's Board of Education and the UFT conducted initial collective bargaining. [1]
The TU was a client of Harold I. Cammer. [5]
All TG presidents were former members of the TU: [2]
In 2015, Nicholas Toloudis attributed the demise of the TU not only to Red Scares in the 1940s and 1950s but also to competition with other city teachers associations. In particular, the TG was "accommodating to the government, while the radical Union was confrontational" and "consistently sacrificed its commitment to academic freedom by collaborating with public authorities" to reveal TU ties to the CPUSA. [2]
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is the second largest teacher's labor union in America. The union was founded in Chicago. John Dewey and Margaret Haley were founders.
Nathan Witt, born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940. He resigned from the NLRB after his communist political beliefs were exposed and he was accused of manipulating the Board's policies to favor his own political leanings. He was also investigated several times in the late 1940s and 1950s for being a spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. No evidence of espionage was ever found.
Philip Sheldon Foner was an American labor historian and teacher. Foner was a prolific author and editor of more than 100 books. He is considered a pioneer in his extensive works on the role of radicals, Black Americans, and women in American labor and political history, which were generally neglected in mainstream academia at the time. A Marxist thinker, he influenced more than a generation of scholars, inspiring some of the work published by younger academics from the 1970s on. In 1941, Foner became a public figure as one among 26 persons fired from teaching and staff positions at City College of New York for political views, following an investigation of communist influence in education by a state legislative committee, known as the Rapp-Coudert Committee.
Jack Donald Foner was an American historian best known for his work on the labor movement and the struggle for African-American civil rights. A professor of American history with a doctorate from Columbia University, he established one of the first programs in black studies in the United States at Colby College.
Bella Dodd was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s, and vocal anti-communist after her expulsion from the Party in 1949.
The Rapp-Coudert Committee was the colloquial name of the New York State Legislature's Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate the Educational System of the State of New York. Between 1940 and 1942, the Rapp-Coudert Committee sought to identify the extent of communist influence in the public education system of the state of New York. Its inquiries lead to the dismissal of more 40 instructors and staff members at the City College of New York for their political affiliations, actions the committee's critics regarded as a political "witch-hunt."
The Lovestoneites, led by former General Secretary of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Jay Lovestone, were a small American oppositionist Communist movement of the 1930s. The organization emerged from a factional fight in the CPUSA in 1929 and unsuccessfully sought to reintegrate with that organization for several years.
Charles S. "Sasha" Zimmerman (1896–1983) was an American socialist activist and trade union leader, who was an associate of Jay Lovestone. Zimmerman had a career spanning five decades as an official of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. During the early 1970s, Zimmerman and Bayard Rustin were national Co-Chairmen the Socialist Party of America and the Social Democrats USA.
Benjamin Mandela.k.a. "Bert Miller" was a New York city school teacher and communist activist who later became an ex-communist director of research for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SIS).
Harold I. Cammer was an American lawyer who co-founded the National Lawyers Guild. He was known for his participation in labor law, civil rights, peace and justice issues, and freedom of speech cases; in particular, defending those accused of communist leanings.
Morris U. Schappes was an American educator, writer, radical political activist, historian, and magazine editor, best remembered for a 1941 perjury conviction obtained in association with testimony before the Rapp-Coudert Committee and as long-time editor of the radical magazine Jewish Currents.
Jack Hardy, born Dale Zysman, was a 20th-Century Communist author labor leader as "Jack Hardy" and a teacher and board member of the New York City Teachers Union under his birth name "Dale Zysman": investigation by the New York Board of Education led to public awareness that the two names belonged to one person and subsequent expulsion from the school system in 1941.
Ben Davidson (1901-1991) was an American politician who co-founded the Liberal Party of New York State with fellow teacher unionist George Counts, David Dubinsky of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Alex Rose of the Cloth Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers, and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
Henry Joseph Foner was a 20th-century Jewish-American social activist and president for more than two decades of the Joint Board, Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union (FLM).
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).
Henry Linville was a co-founder of the New York City Teachers Union (TU) in 1916 and the New York City Teachers Guild (TG), which broke off from the TU in 1935. He also served as president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1931 to 1934.
Abraham Lefkowitz was a co-founder of the American Federation of Teachers, of the New York City Teachers Union in 1916 and the New York City Teachers Guild, which broke off from the Teachers Union in 1935. For both the Teachers Union and Teachers Guild, he served as legislative representative to relevant New York city and state government bodies.
Morris U. Cohen was an American professor of chemistry, dismissed in 1941 from the City College of New York (CCNY) following investigations by the Rapp-Coudert Committee and accused of Soviet espionage during 1953 hearings of the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS).
Charles J. Hendley (1881-1962) was a teacher, education reformer, union activist, and president of the New York City Teachers Union (TU) from 1935 to 1945.
The United Office and Professional Workers of America (UOPWA) (1937–1950) was a CIO-affiliated union and one of the white-collar unions formed by the CPUSA-breakaway party of Lovestoneites.