A UFT Victory Among Nonwhite Workers
Kemble, Eugenia
IN NOVEMBER 1968 the United Federation of Teachers was in the final stage of the longest and most acrimonious strike in its history, one the leadership saw as a "struggle for survival," but...
...In view of the furious attack made upon the UFT a few months earlier for its racial attitude, this was a development of some significance, but one that apparently went either unnoticed or was ignored by those who had kept such a close watch on the UFT in late 1968...
...When it started its organizing drive last March, the odds appeared to be against the UFT...
...IF REASONABLE CONCLUSIONS are to be drawn from the random queries of pro-UFT voters, then their desire to be with the "educators' union" and the "strong union" were the reasons behind most votes...
...Even in Ocean Hill-Brownsville there was a strong UFT vote...
...Though the margin of victory was narrow, the fact that the UFT won at all was a major accomplishment for an organization that was supposedly so low in the esteem of minority communities...
...It was bucking the widely held notion that it was hostile to minorities...
...It could hardly be expected, to judge from these reports, that the post-strike atmosphere would be anything but bitter for a long time to come...
...Voters had a choice between the UFT, District Council 37 of the State, County and Municipal Employees Union, and "no union...
...Ultimately, those who voted UFT did so in spite of their fear...
...Many of these are parents who will begin to see the problems of teaching through their own experience...
...And these fundamentals of the para-professionals' alignment with the teachers managed to reduce the well-cultivated hostility to the UFT...
...With the memory of the 1968 strike still fresh in the minds of the para-professionals, union organizers found it difficult to convince them that the UFT was not strikeprone...
...In fact, over 50 para-professionals from two Ocean Hill schools alone have since joined the union and are bringing nonunion teachers with them...
...Since only 33 votes were cast for "no union" (less than 1 percent), it appears that for most voters the choice was one between unions and did not involve a rejection of the idea of unionism...
...Last November, less than a year later, the UFT won a collective bargaining election which gave it the right to represent 3,500 NYC school para-professionals,* the bulk of whom are black and Puerto Rican, and also parents of school-age children...
...Initially para-professionalswere to be given the opportunity to climb up whatFrank Riessman has called a "career ladder" to become teachers...
...They are people who relay their thoughts on teaching to the professional teachers with whom they work...
...Challenged ballots were finally counted in November and the final tally came to 1,248 for the UFT, and 1,195 for District Council 37...
...A transition seems underway...
...Among the union's critics were Nat Hentoff who, week after week, denounced the UFT in the Village Voice...
...A majority of the challenged ballots, which were from schools in that district, contained votes for the UFT...
...Federal and state funding shortages have limited this aspect of their jobs...
...37 by a margin of 50 votes...
...IN NOVEMBER 1968 the United Federation of Teachers was in the final stage of the longest and most acrimonious strike in its history, one the leadership saw as a "struggle for survival," but which a wide variety of commentators, vocal elements in the black and Puerto Rican communities, and even the New York Civil Liberties Union bitterly attacked...
...Those who found it so easy a year ago to interpret the New York school situation as an "irreconcilable conflict" ought, in fairness, to take another look now...
...Though the election took place in June 1969, only eight months after the strike, a final decision was not made on its outcome until much later—mainly because it was poorly run and many voted who should not have...
...The exchange of opinions on problems of mutual interest is bound to increase the possibilities for alliances between parents and teachers, and blacks and whites in the school system...
...Many black and Puerto Rican para-professionals are now members of UFT chapters in schools throughout the city...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS when separatism had seemingly captured the thinking of blacks and Puerto Ricans in the city...
...With this the UFT won the larger college-bound unit of para-professionals...
...A smaller group of 500 was awarded to D.C...
...So: Hentoff, Epstein, and McDonald notwithstanding, a group of black and Puerto Rican school personnel have chosen to join with the UFT on the basis of vocational and economic interest...
...Jason Epstein who, in the New York Review of Books, concluded that the "conflicting interests" between parents and teachers were "irreconcilable...
...More tangible roadblocks for the UFT included the fear of strikes felt by many paraprofessionals...
...And like teachers, they too will periodically be negotiating a new contract...
...Yet, ironically, it was the same strength the UFT had exhibited in its dispute with the Ocean Hill-Brownsville project that won it the votes of many para-professionals...
...A majority of the critics interpreted the dispute in terms of racial and parent-teacher conflict...
...Such sentiments, to the extent that they really existed and weren't merely a figment of journalistic imaginations, soon dissolved as the para-professionals began to take their economic and job-related interests seriously...
...it was operating on an integrationist philosophy at a time * An umbrella term used to designate a varietyof nonteaching assistant-type jobs in the New YorkCity schools, for which the Board of Educationnow pays from $1.75 to $3.25 an hour, dependingon educational level...
...and Dwight McDonald, who regarded the strike as a "racial issue" largely "fabricated" by the UFT...
Vol. 17 • January 1970 • No. 1
