Birth of a union

More than half a century ago, teachers across New York state were riveted by a tale of two rival organizations.

Upstate, New York State Teachers Association was dominant, with 105,000 members who were generally uneasy about the idea of professionals joining a union.

Downstate, United Teachers of New York held sway with about 72,000 members, professionals all, and firmly allied with the trade unions and the AFL-CIO.

Like feuding families, these two groups — still wrestling internally with questions of identity and purpose — battled for primacy. No blood was shed, but as the competition intensified, financial costs mounted, along with bitter feelings on both sides.

As a destructive war for members raged on, the early seventies were shaping up as the best of times and the worst of times for New York state educators. The majority of teachers were poorly paid, disregarded and lacking leverage — but the 1966 passage of the landmark Taylor Law had ignited the possibility of real change, granting all public employees the right to unionize and bargain collectively.

Hope was in the air as local groups of teachers voted to organize, usually along school district lines. This progress only intensified the competition over which umbrella group would prevail as the voice of educators statewide.

Upstaters had only to look to New York City to see the truth in the expression “there’s strength in numbers.” By the seventies, the United Federation of Teachers, representing all the teachers in New York City, was a force to be reckoned with. Willing to pay the price for striking, the UFT won members the largest pay raise in the school system’s history, along with unprecedented health benefits.

Elected UFT president in 1964, succeeding Charles Cogen, Al Shanker accelerated UFT’s rise to a position of power and influence in the city. “I understood very quickly,” Shanker said, “that nothing would change for the better unless teachers learned to take matters into their own hands.”

A prescient strategist, Shanker soon came to realize that the city union had little sway in a critically important arena: the state Legislature. Also serving as president of the state-level UTNY, Shanker sought to build influence in this essential arena.

Meanwhile, Emanuel “Manny” Kafka of West Hempstead, “disgusted with how school employees were treated, the low salaries, the few benefits” in 1969 had been elected president of NYSTA. And while he bragged that NYSTA “was the only group at the Capitol” one fateful Friday in 1971 when brutal anti-teacher bills were put in motion, they, too, lacked the muscle to stop them.

These two statewide entities competed with each other, often bitterly and at great expense, to affiliate locals and their members. These costly turf wars were rife with contested elections, raids on staff, accusations of skullduggery and vehement partisan insistence that the two organizations were diametrically opposed.

In reality, they were more alike than they were different. Both helped their locals negotiate contracts, defended member rights and aligned on a host of educational issues. Their differences were fueled in part by distrust between upstate and downstate, divergent national affiliations, and a dispute over whether to link arms with the trade union movement and the AFL-CIO.

While they skirmished, external threats against teachers intensified. The 1971 bills had eroded teachers’ rights, increased the length of probation, eliminated minimum salaries and weakened tenure. Separately, teacher leaders were beginning to realize that if they wanted to effectively counter external threats, internal battles would have to stop.

It was Shanker, ever the visionary, who first pitched the idea of a statewide merger in talks with Kafka. At the time, the competitors had each taken parallel steps to strengthen their organizations. They had increased field services, legal support and member benefits and established unified dues structures. By 1972, Shanker and newly elected NYSTA President Tom Hobart of Buffalo made merger talks a priority.

After months of intensive bargaining, they signed a merger agreement on March 30, 1972. Local buy-in and organizational details still needed to be accomplished, but the bottom line was this: Two statewide organizations, long accustomed to competing, would begin to work together on behalf of members and the people they served.

By forming the largest employee organization in New York state, Hobart declared, “teachers will now have the power to improve the quality of education for every child and to raise the status of the teaching profession.”

Sylvia Matousek, president of the North Syracuse EA, recalled: “That saying ‘all for one and one for all’ was just a saying for many of us when we thought about merger with the ‘radical’ downstaters. But having Tom there made us feel more secure … It was Tom’s reputation on the line with all the upstate locals.”

Founding officers, elected at the merged union’s first Representative Assembly in 1973, were Tom Hobart, president; Al Shanker, executive vice president; Dan Sanders, first vice president; Antonia Cortese, second vice president; and Ed Rodgers, secretary-treasurer. Members voted to adopt New York State United Teachers as the union’s official name. Decades later, after 33 years of achievement as NYSUT’s founding president, Hobart would say: “My part in that endeavor remains as my greatest achievement.” The new union was dually affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, and at the international level, with the AFL-CIO. It boasted a diverse membership, including teachers, guidance counselors, librarians, school-related personnel and public higher education faculty.

But the euphoria engendered by the historic vote for statewide unity would not last.

NEA, unhappy about the split affiliations, soon launched communications and organizing campaigns in New York state that were widely viewed as attempts to claw back locals and splinter the statewide organization. Just four years after it was inked, the fragile merger was in real trouble.

“It was a tense time,” recalled Cortese. “The entire organization could have gone down.”

The growing tensions erupted at NYSUT’s 1976 Representative Assembly where it became clear that some locals were receptive to NEA’s pitch and planning to bail.

But how many? And could the statewide union even survive?

It was there that Albert Shanker delivered what many have said was his greatest speech.

A legendary teacher leader, whose towering intellect and vision had propelled his New York City local to the forefront of power, Shanker had been one of the principal architects of statewide merger four years before. He took the mic. 

As delegates hushed, Shanker’s voice slowed, and he told them a fable.

Once there was a king who held a competition to see who could accomplish the most unbelievable thing. There was great excitement and competition in the land, and marvelous creations were presented for judgment. Towering high above all of them was a glorious clock, an intricate work of art with a wonderful complicated mechanism. Everybody — the people and the judges — agreed that yes, to create such a marvel must be the most unbelievable thing.

They were about to award the prize when a new competitor appeared. He was a lowbrow fellow, who carried in his hands, not a work of art, but a sledge hammer. He walked up to the clock and in three blows, destroyed it. And the people said, why, to smash up such a clock, this was surely the most unbelievable thing.

Shanker paused and addressed the delegates directly.

“Our organization is a wonderful work of art,” he said. “It has been put together. If destroyed, it will never be put together again.  

“To each of us goes the responsibility of seeing that it is the clock that survives — and not the sledgehammer.”

The effect was galvanizing. Delegates roared to their feet in a prolonged standing ovation, some with tears streaming down their faces. 

Another year would pass before the dust would settle, but as the 1976–77 school year drew to a close, it became clear NYSUT would lose just a fraction of the feared exodus. Its affiliation with the National Education Association ended, and it would be decades before the prospect of statewide unity would arise again.

But for now, the existential threat was over: The union survived. Looking back, many said that was the moment NYSUT truly came of age.