Topic: Labor History
Convention delegates celebrate the CFT’s 100th Anniversary
Gala, special guests, videos and exhibits showcase an extraordinary history
Hundreds of delegates to the CFT Convention celebrated the 100th Anniversary of their union at a hotel of nearly the same age, the historic Millennium Biltmore in downtown Los Angeles.
During general sessions, delegates watched a series of videos chronicling the CFT’s history of activism. Outside the ballroom doors, they could view a wide range of exhibits in the CFT Hall of History.
100 years of the CFT — a capsule history
The CFT turns 100 on May 31, 2019. To kick off this anniversary year, California Teacher digs into the archives to present a commemorative issue about the rich history of our statewide federation of unions. The big events — legislation, elections, social trends — described here affected every member. But this capsule history cannot possibly relate the profound impact almost 100 years of activism had on thousands of individual education workers.
Council of Retired Members taps a resource: Retirees are “stickin’ to the union”
Download a single-sheet illustrated history of the Council of Retired Members
What retirees have that unions need — knowledge, experience and memories — are concentrated in the Council of Retired Members, the newest division of CFT. Convention delegates in 2014 overwhelmingly voted to add the council to the union’s governance structure so retirees could contribute in the same way as working teachers and classified employees.
Bringing dignity to UC lecturers and librarians
University Council-AFT
Download a single-sheet illustrated history of the University Council-AFT
In September of 1978, Gov. Jerry Brown made good on a promise to the CFT and signed the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act, authorizing employees of the UC and CSU systems to engage in collective bargaining.
Effective advocacy promotes interests of college faculty and staff
Community College Council
Download a single-sheet illustrated history of the Community College Council
Formed in 1971, the Community College Council gave a voice to the growing numbers of CFT college faculty. Los Angeles history teacher Hy Weintraub, president of the council for much of the decade, brought a coherent statewide identity to the group.
Council of Classified Employees: Quality representation wins respect for support staff
Download a single-sheet illustrated history of the Council of Classified Employees
When the AFT in 1977 welcomed educational workers other than teachers into its ranks, paraprofessionals and classified employees became one of the fastest growing sectors of the national AFT. In the 1980s, several thousand California support staff voted for the AFT as their bargaining agent.
PreK-12 Council leads the way on educational issues
Download a single-sheet illustrated history of the EC/TK-12 Council
The CFT originally formed as a union of K-12 teachers. As other education workers joined, the membership of CFT diversified. Because the CFT had a working group of teachers — called the QuEST Council — which dealt with curriculum and policy issues, and reviewed current legislation, there was little pressure for a separate K-12 council.
Raoul Teilhet Scholarship Program celebrates 20 years
638 dependents awarded $1.76 million
In the mid 1990s, leaders of the Greater Santa Cruz Federation of
Teachers decided the CFT, a union of educators, should offer the
children of its members scholarships to achieve their higher
education goals.
Celebrating 70 years of California Teacher in print
The “Voice of the Union” changes with the times
The committed activists who formed the California State Federation of Teachers in 1919 recognized from the beginning the need for communications among their far-flung members. From rudimentary origins, the California Teacher grew in every way and has been published in print for 70 years.
Documentary movie features United Farm Workers organizer
Five lessons from Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta, an organizing legend who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez, was a Girl Scout growing up in Stockton. She took seriously the idea that people should help one another and try to make things better. Something that particularly angered her was police officers stopping her and her Latino friends — but not the white people they knew — on their way home from a basketball or football game.
New book illustrates the humanity of people who travel with the crops
Writer, photographer and veteran UFW union organizer David Bacon frequently refers to “people who travel with the crops,” agricultural workers who move from place to place to cultivate and harvest California’s fields. They are the subject of his newest work of photojournalism, In the Fields of the North/En los campos del norte. Bacon is a frequent contributor to California Teacher. Below are excerpts from an interview with Capitol & Main. » Read the whole article here.
The richest country in the world doesn’t have what?
The struggle for paid maternity leave continues
KNOW OUR HISTORY
Okay, educators, here’s a pop quiz: Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Surinam, Tonga, and the United States. What do these countries have in common? The answer is that not one of these has a national paid maternity leave law. Every other nation in the world — 180 of them — has one.
Two union women and the fight for pay equity
How the “comparable worth” campaign succeeded
On a hillside in San Francisco a small public school bears the name of one of the pioneers in the movement for workplace equality. Kate Kennedy was born in Ireland, and like so many others, came to the United States during the Great Potato Famine of 1845-49. She was the first San Francisco teacher to join a union. In 1874, she brought a non-discrimination suit that provided the precedent for “equal pay for equal work.” Ultimately a federal law passed in 1963 made it illegal to pay men and women working in the same place different salaries for similar work.
Victory in Watsonville: Cannery workers show how solidarity works
KNOW OUR HISTORY
Watsonville, California, a produce powerhouse — July 1985: Mort Console, owner of Watsonville Canning, the major company in town, suddenly cuts wages by 40 percent and reduces health benefits. The factory workers of Teamsters Local 912 immediately vote to go out on strike, just as Console’s anti-union law firm has advised him they would: “Make outrageous demands; the workers will strike. Replace them with scabs. After 12 months, request a union decertification vote, which will then include the strikebreakers too.”
Book review: From Mission to Microchip, A History of the California Labor Movement
Working people have been organizing in California since the 18th century. And, as Utah Phillips says, we workers do not get benevolent gifts from enlightened management.
The first 100 years of the AFT
From eight local unions to 3,000 locals and 1.6 million members
World War I and the Depression: The American Federation of Teachers was founded in Chicago, with eight locals signing on as AFL President Samuel Gompers welcomed the union into its fold in 1916. The union operated from one room of AFT Financial Secretary Freeland Stecker’s five-room bungalow in Chicago. President Charles Stillman lived next door.
Honoring “letter carrier who sings” turned teacher
Old school troubadour and modern Joe Hill among top labor artists and activists
Jimmy Kelly comes from a union family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his grandfather, father and two brothers were all union members. “I grew up in a different era, in a town that traced the origin of its labor movement to the great strikes in the steel mills,” he recalls. “We learned labor terms in fourth grade.”
In Memoriam: Former CFT President Miles Myers dies
Passionate educator led CFT for five years, edited California Teacher for 15
Teacher, author and former CFT President Miles Myers died December 15 from complications related to heart disease. Myers devoted his six-decade career to improving educational standards and the conditions for teaching and learning in public education. He was 84.
Raoul Teilhet: Delegates celebrate life of courageous former president
Raoul Teilhet, president of the CFT from 1968 to 1985, who oversaw the successful struggle for a collective bargaining law for education employees, was “a rock star,” said AFT Vice President and United Educators of San Francisco President Dennis Kelly. CFT President Emeritus Miles Myers read a poem and thanked Teilhet for the good times. Long-time CFT staffer Annette Eisenberg told of Teilhet leaving a registration form on her desk after finding out she had never voted, and how he made everyone feel they mattered.
Daly City elementary schools honor collective bargaining
Local 3267 commemorates significant union event
CFT Vice President Melinda Dart, president of the Jefferson Elementary Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 3267, presents a plaque to district Superintendent Bernardo Vidales. The plaque commemorates the occasion when leaders of the AFT local occupied the board room, a key moment in the history of collective bargaining in the Daly City district.