American Federation of Teachers Convention

issues for teacher unionism

Real

By MARK SYDNEY

TORONTO — It’s not often’ that trade unions from other countries with no Canadian affiliates have conventions’ in Canada, but the American Feder- ation of Teachers, a major U.S. union, met here during the course of Aug. 19-24. The Tri- bune talked to a rank-and-file delegate from Chicago about the issues and what’s being said on the floor of the convention.

We asked her first about the mood _among progressive teach- ers in the face of a right wing push led by incoming President Albert Shanker in the union.

“Well, somebody summed it _ up by saying, ‘Don’t mourn, or- ganize’,” she said. “We are for- tunate in having a well organ- ized national caucus coming out of the convention around which the movement for a democratic union can be organized.

“However, among the many progressive teachers that have not been in contact with the United Caucus, the real progres- sive caucus (you see, the Pro- gressive Caucus, Shanker’s group, is really the non-progres- sive caucus — ours is called the United Caucus), the mood is somewhat of complete frustra- tion; that this is the end.”

We then asked what issues the real progressive caucus, the United Caucus, was fighting around against the Shanker right-wing bureaucratic position.

‘A Democratic Union’

“A major group of issues deal with the slogan ‘For a Demo- cratic Union’”, she replied. “Of course without making some progress on this it is quite dif- ficult to make gains on any of the other issues. These include effective action against the con- tinuing onslaught on education, the cuts in the educational bud- get, the cutbacks in teaching staff and the service to the children which Jesse Jackson em- phasized as really the main pro- per concern of the union.

“To place this as the concern of the union and to- be effective . would mean that we need a-coa- lition of teacher unionists with progressive community groups, with the Black liberation move- ment. This is the very opposite of what Shanker stands for, be- cause through support for Mea- ny and the war machine as typi- fied by Senator ‘Scoop’ Jackson and his support for racist poli- cies, that immediately destroys any possibility of the kind of coalition that could protect education and teacher unionism

from the attacks we’re now experiencing.”

We went on to the question of Black representation in the con- vention, whether they are organ- ized with a specific program for action.

Black Caucus

“There is an organized Black caucus. It is playing a very im- portant role. The percentage of Black teachers at the convention probably reflects fairly accurate- ly the percentage of Black teachers in the union. It also re- flects fairly accurately the small percentage of Black teachers on the teaching staffs of cities like New York where students are over 50% Black and Latino, but only 9% of the teachers are Black.

“This in itself is a conse- quence of the kind of racist policies that the Shanker domin- ation of the New York local has resulted in. .

“In terms of the impact they are having, perhaps the most important single act the Black caucus took at the convention was bringing Rev. Jesse Jackson (a U.S. national figure in the civil rights movement) to a luncheon. While Jackson was careful not to ‘interfere’ in the internal debate in terms of the exact selection of officers; through inviting Jesse Jackson there was the balance and the more correct priority given, be- cause Shanker, and in some case quite successfully, projects him- self as really good on ‘bread and butter’ issues.

“This is the basis, plus the usual Tamanny Hall method of politics on which he (Shanker) has built his machine and the myth he has created that noth- ing else matters.

Concern for Education

“What Jackson did was to restore as a priority of teacher unionists a concern for educa- tion and the needs of the stu- dents, and in this specifically mentioning that you can not do it while funnelling billions to the war machine and end up with no money for edication. It restored a correct perspective. And even though this perspective has not been formally adopted by the convention, the Black caucus made a tremendous contribution in not only showing what the important issues are, but in ex- posing by inference the basic weakness of the Shanker ma- chine.” :

We put a question as to whe- ther any program for further or- ganizing will come out of the convention.

SKETCH — JOHN SLATER, "AMERICAN TEACHER’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 1974—PAGE8 ‘\

“On the possibilities for or- ganizing in the immediate period — AFT organizing oc- curs in the sphere of two main areas,” she said. “There are a large number of teachers, a huge number of teachers, organized by NEA: (National: Educators Association, not affiliated to the AFL-CIO, as is the American Federation of Teachers). In some cases where the NEA poli- cies are unsuccessful, or, I should say, more broadly where- ever there is any opening, be- cause the Shankerites have proved they don’t mind raiding —in fact in New York, they raid ed another AFL-CIO union, AFSME — there is this type of ‘organizing’, where you go in and take over from NEA.

NEA Position

“This can even be legitimate

‘organizing in areas where NEA

is not functioning as a union. I think this kind of movement will be quite limited, in part be- cause NEA has refused further merger talks with AFT. This refusal is based on a number of grounds; the ground involving AFL-CIO affiliation of course, is

‘Not a progressive one, but there

are other progressive stances the NEA is taking in opposition to Shanker. One is the question of secret ballots, and second, a principled stand against racism by guaranteeing minimum per-

centage of representation for °

minorities.

“On that type of conflict, AFT doesn’t come out looking too good, and that’s not going to help them in further organiz- ing among NEA, :

“Now for the very important number of teachers that are nei- ther in AFT or NEA, I would expect some continued organiz- ing there. But wherever there is a large Black community, it will be handicapped by Shanker’s ra- cist stand. However, in empha- sizing economic issues, and in not letting on that they have actually sacrificed 7,000 jobs, I believe that there should be some gains made in organizing the unorganized, although it would not be nearly of the scope Possible with a democratic union and a_ progressive pro- gram.”

Just as in all other union con- ventions, international ques- tions are increasingly receiving

an

prominence in debate. We asked what~ main international ques- tions the AFT is taking up. Detente “The main international issue

is not going to be presented, and

that is the question of detente,” she said. “On the contrary, there will be a resolution which, much as the Shankerites disclaim it,

is really an attack on detente,.

under the cover of defending ‘intellectual freedom in the Soviet Union, and particularly Solzhenitsyn’.

“When pointed out during the discussion in the international affairs committee that. Solzhe- nitsyn had in fact praised those Russians who fought for Hitler, and was therefore as popular in

the Soviet Union as Benedict. -

Arnold in the U.S., a Local 2 spokesman (from New York, Shanker’s local) said that ‘well, after all, look at it from Solzhe- nitsyn’s viewpoint. If the choice was Hitlerism or Stalinism, we can understand why he chose Hitlerism’.

“This coming from a Jewish

‘teacher was enough to make

one’s blood freeze.

“Nonetheless,. this resolution °

per se is the only one which directly deals with detente, and to that extent it is against de- tente. However, even those who defended the resolution, and I expect it will pass with very little discussion, said, ‘This in no way affects detente.’ So al- though that nobody dares to

‘openly attack detente, it is clear

that Shanker is committed to the Meany policy of opposing detente.

Solidarity with Chile _“The second most important

issue, and this was represented

by four resolutions, is solidar- ity with the unions of ‘Chile. One of the resolutions was a mildly-worded one asking for investigation of AIFLD (American Institute for Free Labor Development, co-founded in 1962 by the AFL-CIO, U.S. big business, partner, the CIA, in order to subvert overseas trade unions), asking the AFL-CIO executive council to provide us with in- formation on what the activities of AIFLD consisted of in Chile and Latin America, and whether they were involved in the coup.

“It also asked what the source

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