The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is the labor union that represents most teachers in New York City public schools. , there were about 118,000 in-service teachers and nearly 30,000 paraprofessional educators in the union, as well as about 54,000 retired members. In October 2007, 28,280 home day care providers voted to join the union. It is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, the AFL–CIO and the Central Labor Council. It is also the largest member of New York State United Teachers, which is affiliated with the National Educational Association and Education International.
History
Two previous unions of New York schoolteachers, the Teachers Union, founded in 1916, and the Teachers Guild, founded in 1935, failed to gather widespread enrollment or support. Many of the early leaders were pacifists or socialists and so frequently met with clashes against more right-leaning newspapers and organizations of the time, as red-baiting was fairly common. The ethnically and ideologically diverse teachers associations of the city made the creation of a single organized body difficult, with each association continuing to vie for its own priorities irrespective of the others.
The UFT was created on March 16, 1960, and grew rapidly. On November 7, 1960, the union organized a major strike. The strike largely failed in its main objectives but obtained some concessions, as well as bringing much popular attention to the union. After much further negotiation, the UFT was chosen as the collective bargaining organization for all city teachers in December 1961.
Albert Shanker, a controversial but successful organizer was president of the UFT from 1964 until 1984. He held an overlapping tenure as president of the national American Federation of Teachers from 1974 to his death in 1997.
In 1968, the UFT went on strike and shut down the school system in May and then again from September to November to protest the decentralization plan that was being put in place to give more neighborhoods community control. The Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike focused on the Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn but, ironically, the schools in that area were among the few that were open in the entire city. The Ocean Hill-Brownsville crisis is often described as a turning point in the history of unionism and of civil rights, as it created a rift between African-Americans and the Jewish communities, two groups that were previously viewed as allied. The two sides threw accusations of racism and anti-Semitism at each other.
Following the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis, some 14,000 teachers were laid off and class size soared. Another strike addressed some of these complaints and gave long-serving teachers longevity benefits.
Caucuses
The Unity Caucus, formed in 1962, predominates in the union, holding nearly every leadership position. New Action formed in the 1980s as an opposition caucus but, since 2003, it has cross-endorsed Unity candidates. The Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) is a relatively new caucus, formed in 2012, whose stated focus is to "[defend] members' rights, [fight] for social justice, and [empower] workers in schools."
In the spring of 2013, UFT election campaign, president Michael Mulgrew (Unity) refused repeated requests to debate his opponent, Julie Cavanagh (MORE).