AL SHANKER AND I

...Trachtenberg believed in militant, democratic, Reuther-style unionism...

...we rode back and forth to union meetings together, and we often conferred by phone...

...He is as ruthless as he is megalomanic...

...We often discussed the functioning of the New York local...

...the visible blacks are in staff positions...

...He gave a nod to labor tradition by returning to the classroom for a brief stint, but in the spring of 1964 he 'became UFT president, while Cogen, a few months later, became president of the American Federation of of Teachers...

...The first open break in my relationship with Shanker occurred at the AFT convention the following year...

...Furthermore, we should press for a collective bargaining (CB) representation election even if we could not win it because the CBsituation would inexorably force the winning organization to become a union whether it had been one in the beginning or not...

...The debate was bitter...

...Originally Shanker was content to be a partner on the organizing team...

...In a mailing sent nationwide in June, Shanker lists paragraph after paragraph of untrue and deceptive statements...

...This dispute involves not only intra-union issues but political and intellectual matters of wide-ranging interest...

...Shanker also presented himself as a socialist in those days...

...Temporarily frustrated, I hit upon the idea of a Cogen candidacy for AFT president and began making plans accordingly...

...They would include Shanker's attempt to force me to resign in April 1973 following a critical interview I gave to a New York Post reporter...

...McGovern campaign was in progress, Shanker asked my support for his candidacy for a spot on the AFL-CIO executive council...

...The UFT has no department of human rights...

...He is now determined to go nationwide, and it looks as though he may succeed—for a while...

...In the fall of 1972, even as the Nixon...

...In the meantime I worked closely with the IUD to initiate CB campaigns in Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C...

...There are strong indications that, outside New York City, a secret vote ballot would show Shanker has the support of less than half the members...

...Taking into account the extreme left-toright distribution of the more than a hundred constituent unions of the AFL-CIO, to say nothing of unaffiliated unions, George Meany has done a remarkable job in keeping the labor federation together...

...This was not really undemocratic, Shanker maintained, because that way the members could hold the president responsible for the effectiveness of the union...

...George McGovern's outspoken condemnation of the war in Southeast Asia therefore made him suspect—an impression the New Politics types around the Senator did nothing to dispel...

...We agreed, of course, and got in touch with Selden, who also agreed...

...There is no doubt that Shanker's role in the 1972 election cemented his relationship with the Meany administration, but personal ambition aside, he scarcely needed this motivation...

...Trachtenberg was a socialist, ironically, from the same Shachtmanite faction which now controls the United Federation of Teachers and several AFL-CIO-sponsored front groups...

...I make no estimate of the amount of racism in Shanker's character...

...Therefore, when after great pressure from the AFL–CIO Industrial Union Department, then bank-rolling teacher organizing, the director of organization position was established, Megel saw to it that the job went to a young New Jersey organizer who was not considered a political threat...

...Within three years or so, teachers in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and Detroit won collective bargaining rights...

...The AFT national office in 1964 was still in Chicago...

...Militant action by workers was always to be supported regardless of organizational sponsorship...

...NEA interest in national merger talks during the summer of 1973 and the break-off of those negotiations in February 1974...

...In recent months there has broken out in the American Federation of Teachers a sharp factional dispute between David Selden, the AFT president, and Albert Shanker, head of its powerful New York affiliate...

...The issue was the AFT's relationship to the AFL-CIO...

...By coincidence we had moved into neighboring apartments in Morningside Gardens, the Title I Co-op north of Columbia University...

...But what does come out is his unwillingness toshare power with anyone, black or white...

...AFT members must do what the coal miners and other progressive rank-and-file groups have done...

...The history of AFT events following the capitulation of _the AFT executive council to Shanker's 1972 demand for endorsement of his candidacy for AFL–CIO vice-president must be left for other chronicles...

...The total membership of the Unity Caucus is a small fraction of the UFT membership, yet no one gets elected to UFT office without its endorsement...

...Throughout the five years of the collective bargaining drive Shanker and I became increasingly intimate...

...yet no meaningful effort at white-black, union-community rapprochement has been made in the nearly six years that have passed since that tragic event...

...I held the vague title of "special representative," and while I sometimes represented the union in my own right, my main function was to back up Charles Cogen, president of the Guild–UFT from 1951 to 1962...

...If Shanker does to the AFT what he has done to the UFT and NYSUT—he plans to keep all three posts—all liberals lose...

...Shanker seeks to have people believe that the AFT is in danger of being taken over by "the Communist Party and other extremist groups...

...We had a genuine liking for each other...

...his recommendations have great authority...

...I said the Progressive Caucus was neither progressive nor a caucus...

...It was a period when everything worked...

...I took the position that it was better to stay off the council than to gain a seat by Meany's permission...

...At the apex is Al Shanker...

...Shanker has never seen it this way...

...A large portion of the UFT executive board is on the union payroll...

...The paragraph is a blatant McCarthyite red smear...

...The centralist theory of administration is certainly defensible—if one ignores the reality of machine politics...

...my efforts to carry on AFT affairs in spite of Shanker's massive, underhanded campaign of harassment and sabotage of AFT functioning—and other happenings...

...He shared the paranoia common among politicians, particularly those of the labor variety, and he believed I had some scheme in mind for personal advancement...

...Ironically, the final piece in Shanker's design for control of the AFT was consummation of the merger between the New York State AFT and NEA units in May 1973...

...Organizing the union, like bridge, which he taught in night school, was a game to be savored for its own sake...

...Last April Shanker proposed that Dissent print in its summer issue—just before the AFT convention—articles by Selden and himself presenting their views...

...The AFT executive council, by a narrow 11-9 voice vote, went for Shanker...

...396 Trachtenberg's well-developed ideas, therefore, held a strong attraction for me...

...It was clear that we were on a collision course...

...Whatever else it did, the New York merger gave Shanker absolute voting control of the AFT convention...

...We must keep up the struggle—and keep up the faith—for liberalism and democracy...

...I refused and referred the question to the AFT executive council...

...At his news conference on April 28, 1974, after reciting a long record of personal actions for civil rights dating back to his college days, and after telling about the good things he had done for paraprofessionals in New York City, Shanker turned to a black teacher in his audience and demanded, "Now, am I a racist...

...Today the UFT is controlled by a pyramid of staff members and others receiving special advantages of one kind or another...

...AL SHANKER AND I 401...

...I too considered myself a socialist then, as I do now, but strangely, I had never been a member of any organized political group...

...Consequently, immediately following the UFT victory in New York in December 1961, I suggested to AFT president Carl Megel that the position of AFT Director of Organization be established, and I stated that I would be a candidate for the job...

...He was one of half a dozen younger members of the executive board of the New York Teachers Guild, AFT Local 2. I was the Guild's organizer and general factotum...

...This corporate form of organization is still Shanker's model...

...I say "ironically" because, as a proclaimer and chief sponsor of teacher unity, I became its chief victim...

...By 1957 his devotion to socialist objectives had dimmed, however, a rightward drift which has continued to the present...

...Shanker excuses such practices by holding up the 1930s New York 398 DAVID SELDEN City Council election as a horrible example of the unworkability of proportional (minority) representation, not mentioning that the ill-fated New York experiment used a particularly complicated form of the O'Hare system...

...Shanker's own extremist actions do evoke extreme reactions...

...But chiefly at Trachtenberg's urging, the Guild gave allout support to the night school stoppage...

...Soon -after the UFT won the CB representation election, however, it became apparent that he had strong political ambitions...

...His concept of union functioning was frankly centralist...

...In the spring of 1972, long before either the Republican or the Democratic conventions, the entire labor officialdom of the city, Shanker among them, attended a riproaring political clambake at Governor Nelson Rockefeller's Westchester County estate...

...He is recognized as a leader...

...When Carl Megel, the AFT national president, asked me to recommend someone to become an -organizer, I chose Shanker...

...He repudiates liberal positions that have long been part of the underlying philosophy of the AFT, divides and polarizes the membership, and betrays the liberal tradition of our union...

...One other matter must be dealt with before I sum up...

...While the controversial Ocean HillBrownsville strike of 1968 was primarily a struggle to preserve union contract rights and to protect due process, it was also racially polarizing...

...The strike lasted a month, and by the time it was over the militants in the Guild had found their like numbers in the High School Teachers Association and were talking merger of the two groups...

...The most influential of the young Turks—until his sudden death in 1960, from a heart -attack —was Eli Trachtenberg...

...Labor tradition assigns a unique role to the organizer...

...We delayed publication several times, hoping that he would be able to send in his piece, but finally had to go ahead without it...

...In organizational warfare the normal tactical response to a move by a rival -would be nonsupport—perhaps even active resistance...

...Shanker has political power, money, and the backing of the labor establishment...

...Shanker was nominated by the AFL–CIO executive council by an 18-8 vote and was elected to the council by the 1973 convention...

...And yet he usually does not assume political power in his union...

...Once this initial vote was taken, the succeeding rollAL SHANKER AND I 399 call votes formalizing the action were 20-1...

...In January of 1958, the evening high school teachers, affiliated with the Guild's strongest rival, the High School Teachers Association, called the, first teachers' strike in the history of the city...

...My interest in the teachers' union had long been national...

...A proposal of mine that the UFT create a "vice-president for community affairs" was impatiently rejected...

...Under Meany's guidance AFL-CIO policy, except for the Vietnam war, trade, and perhaps environmental issues, has been reasonably liberal...

...But the AFT is based on local autonomy...

...Shanker has aligned himself with the conservative forces within the Democratic party...

...Two years later, in February 1960, the UFT was formed by merging the Guild with HSTA militants, who had broken away from the Association...

...But Al Shanker in New York City in the turbulent 1960s was an entirely different thing...

...This last Trachtenberg teaching was particularly important in the Guild's rise to power...

...I have long believed, however, that the AFT should work with other liberal unions to increase the liberal commitment of the AFL-CIO...

...Another inhibiting factor was the attitude of the New York labor movement...

...all of us, of whatever color, have some of it...

...One purpose of organizing was to create a vehicle for socialist action...

...He is a strong backer of the pro-Jackson (Senator Henry) Coalition for a Democratic Majority...

...Postscript SINCE THE ABOVE was written, Shanker's campaign for AFT president has taken an ugly turn...

...Throughout the 1950s New York City teachers were becoming more and more disgruntled...

...There are almost no blacks in the elected UFT apparatus, or that of NYSUT either...

...Committees and other forms of democratic participation in union affairs were difficult to keep operative, so the best way was to rely on paid staff to get jobs done...

...Discipline is rigid...

...In the fall of 1972 hostilities broke out into the open...

...It is hard to say what teachers got out of Rockefeller's romance with labor, but one of the celebrants, Peter Brennan, is now Secretary of Labor...

...As the AFT constitution now stands, at least, the national organization cannot even put a local into trusteeship...

...Binding everything together is Shanker's Unity Caucus, which functions not unlike the Communist party in the Soviet Union...

...Within two more years the UFT won exclusive representation rights over a hastily constructed coalition of conservatives sponsored by the NEA...

...Before becoming a teacher he had worked in the auto plants around Buffalo, and he clung doggedly to his proletarian values...

...Working with other conservative leaders, he defeated, over my opposition, liberal resolutions on the war in Southeast Asia, student rights, direct election of the AFT president, and a number of other issues...

...The contrast between Shanker and Trachtenberg is instructive...

...In the five years from 1957 to 1962 the Guild, a relatively small organization with social democratic traditions, moved out of the welter of New York teacher groups to become the exclusive bargaining agent for all 45,000 members of the teaching staff...

...Along with Shanker's corporate power goes suppression of minority representation...

...Once the best paid and most prestigious teachers in the nation, their status was steadily undermined in the postwar period by inflation and deteriorating social conditions in the city...

...I first met Shanker in the late 1950s...

...In addition, I got Shanker to go for a 25 cent increase in per capita to be used for a strike fund...

...I was elected AFT President in 1968...

...There will also appear a report on the AFT convention by Stanley Plastrik.—ED...

...In addition, the world's largest educational bureaucracy at 110 Livingston Street in Brooklyn treated this highly qualified staff with arrogance and contempt...

...my peacekeeping efforts at the 1973 convention and Shanker's subsequent Pearl Harbor Day sneak attack on me...

...All officers and delegates are elected by slate voting—with no representation for the minority, of course...

...Shanker eschews the Black Trade Union Leaders Coalition and works closely with the AFL–CIO-financed A. Philip Randolph Institute, which, just incidentally, is housed in the UFT building...

...Item seven in this list of ten states that Shanker should be supported in order to "repudiate extremism...

...Following the convention I resigned in protest from the Progressive Caucus, the majority party in the AFT and the national equivalent of Shanker's New York Unity Caucus...

...From then on it was only a matter of time before Shanker realized his ambitions...

...I had a strong hand in Cogen's rise to AFT president, although quite by accident...

...If Shanker would like to reply to Selden, space will be provided in our next issue...

...Shanker stated that he had the support of the Meany administration and that I was unacceptable...

...The Shanker issue goes far beyond the usual political contest where somebody wins and somebody loses and life goes on much as before...

...The UFT paraprofessional operation is run by Velma Hill, a hand-picked leader who was never a "para"—she holds a master's degree from Harvard...

...That had been my role...

...One night he informed me that he was not going to run against Cogen for president, even though he was on his way to meet with a group that wanted him to run...

...I also began commuting from New York to Detroit, at UAW expense, to get things moving there...

...At the 1974 Montreal convention of the New York State United Teachers he defended his methods by insisting that a large staff was essential because "we used to be losers, but now we have the power to win...

...A few weeks later, following the same theme at a press conference, Shanker stated that the AFT had become a big organization and could no longer be "run like a corner grocery store...

...If Henry Jackson becomes president of the United States in 1976 you can 400 DAVID SELDEN expect to find Al Shanker in the door of the White House when it comes to matters affecting education...

...If Al Shanker had emerged somewhere in New Mexico in 1950 the world would have been none the wiser...

...Shanker has become a power in New York Democratic party politics, mainly by backing conservatives against reformers, liberals, and insurgents...

...Tom Hobart, president of NYSUT and Shanker's upstate echo, at the same convention reminded a reporter that the union was a big business...

...Shanker was preoccupied with completing his control of the UFT during his first years as president...

...Even though it was apparent that the day of the teacher was dawning at last, Megel was slow to act...

...During the six months following the 1969 convention I negotiated with Shanker and other AFT leaders for a series of progressive proposals for the 1970 convention, with the result that most of the conservative stands of the previous year were modified...

...More than 200,000 of the AFT's 400,000 membership is now in New York State, and while some locals have managed to stay independent, these defections are more than offset by eager bandwagon riders from other locals across the country...

...When the deadline arrived, Selden sent in his article, which appears below, but Shanker, informing us he was beset by a number of union crises, did not...

...Even so, my truce with Shanker was an uneasy one...

...When I left New York to take up my new duties the close association between Shanker and me was interrupted, although we conferred frequently by telephone and I always stayed with the Shankers when I was in New York...

...It was a classic example of the .wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time...

...No votes were taken and no commitments expressed, but jolly good feeling was rampant...

...A machine such as Shanker has put together in New York is hard to fight...

...We were constantly in and out of each other's apartments...

...Hence, when 35 unions representing more than half the unionized workers of the nation joined together to oppose the reelection of Richard Nixon, Shanker stayed "neutral" along with Meany...

...What of the future...

...In fact, I did not even become a member of the local lest I be considered a political rival...

...Shanker became UFT president, Cogen became AFT president, and I became assistant to the AFT president—a solid vantage point from which to pursue my objective of making the teachers' union a national movement...

...His concluding line would be hilarious in a less serious connotation: "I will not accept the support of any of these groups...

...For one thing, the Shachtmanite democraticsocialist faction, with which Shanker works closely, has long supported military containment of Communism...

...I hoped that the AFT could, in concert with other progressive unions, be a AL SHANKER AND I 397 liberalizing force within the labor movement...