Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2008, Sunday
Copyright 2008 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune
July 13, 2008, Sunday
Chicagoland Final Edition
SECTION: BUSINESS ; ZONE C; Pg. 1
BYLINE: By Stephen Franklin, TRIBUNE REPORTER
BODY:
Lorretta Johnson was reading to her kids and others in the library of a mostly black Baltimore elementary school when she decided to ask for a job helping teachers. That was over 40 years ago.
About the same time, Antonia Cortese wasn't sure if she wanted school work. But she gave it a chance, starting out as an elementary school teacher and social worker in a poor rural district near her upstate New York home.
Over 20 years ago Randi Weingarten quit a cushy Wall Street lawyer's job to do legal work for the New York City teachers union. Wanting to know what it was like in the classroom, she took a part-time job teaching social studies at a largely black and Latino high school in Brooklyn.
On Monday, barring any rebellion before votes are tallied, the trio is expected to be elected to the top three positions of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers at its Chicago convention.
Their election would mark the first time three women will hold top positions in a union whose membership is more than 70 percent female. Similarly, no other major union in the U.S. has such a female-driven leadership, AFT officials point out.
Johnson is expected to be elected executive vice president and Cortese will move up to secretary-treasurer.
As the union's executive vice president, Johnson will have reached the highest position held by a paraprofessional within the AFT; teachers make up more than two-thirds of the union's membership. She would join only one other black in holding a top position in a union that is three-quarters white.
As the AFT's president, Weingarten will be the only woman leading a major U.S. union -- one that has been growing, unlike much of organized labor. AFT's ranks have increased more than 50 percent in the last decade, the union says.
Cornell University labor expert Kate Bronfenbrenner views the arrival of the three women at AFT's top ranks as the exception to the rule in major American unions.
"The problem is that union leaders literally don't leave until they die," Bronfenbrenner said.
Women make up the majority of newly organized workers and overall have been moving closer to the top rungs of unions, but not much further progress is expected until the old guard and their proteges die off, Bronfenbrenner said.
Even in the AFT, Weingarten, 50, sees herself as an outsider. Instead of coming from a top position within the union, Weingarten has served for the past decade as head of the 200,000-member New York teachers group, known as the UFT.
Both Cortese and Johnson are AFT insiders. Cortese is the union's executive vice president and Johnson is a union vice president besides heading the AFT in Maryland as well as the Baltimore Teachers Union's paraprofessional chapter.
Weingarten sees herself as a major change driver for her members, spurring the union to set up two charter schools in New York and a program that improved teaching conditions in troubled New York City schools.
"When some people say they are going to change things, it's sometimes change for change's sake. I'm not that kind of girl," she said.
Her main goal, she said, is to expand workers' voices in the work that they do, including playing more of a role in federal and local efforts to improve schools.
"You have all of these folks who are Johnny-Come-Latelys to education. They say just tell the teacher what to do and sanction those who don't do well," she said.
Indeed, Weingarten and her two running mates are strong critics of the federal government's No Child Left Behind program, the Bush administration's 7-year-old effort to improve the nation's schools by setting testing standards nationwide and severely punishing schools that steadily fall behind. They say the government hasn't provided the money for the program to work and that its target is off base.
"It is more of a gotcha game that relies on only two test scores a year and the use of sanctions rather than supports for schools that are doing well," said Cortese, who, for the last few years, has led the union's research on educational issues.
As for the union's future, all three women talk of signing up more early childhood workers, paraprofessionals and charter school workers. They talk of stepping up the union's political activities so that schools get support from state and local lawmakers.
They also want to expand teachers' roles in their own professional groups.
One issue for Weingarten is helping workers deal with discrimination.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, she felt a drop-off in women serving in top union positions in the New York City area. Her only explanation was that the tragedy triggered a harkening back to "more traditional roles."
She faced her own fears about discrimination when she announced at a public meeting in New York City last October that she was gay.
"I never hid my sexuality, but I never talked about it," she said.
She had hesitated, she explained, because "the things that most people are afraid of, I was afraid of too."
Much to her pleasure, the response, she said, was overwhelmingly supportive.
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Randi Weingarten
What: Expected to be elected president of the country's second-largest teachers organization, after the National Education Association. She will also be the only woman in charge of a major U.S. union.
Challenges: To give workers a voice in their jobs. Workers want to be "treated respectfully."
Background: Part-time social studies teacher at Clara Barton High School, Brooklyn, N.Y.; lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, New York
Significant event: As a high school junior she joined her mother on a picket line where teachers faced heavy fines for striking. "The whole notion of fighting back was etched in me at an early age."
-- Stephen Franklin
sfranklin@tribune.com
GRAPHIC: Photo: Randi Weingarten (left) is expected to be elected president of the American Federation of Teachers. Lorretta Johnson (center) is expected to become executive vice president and Antonia Cortese secretary-treasurer. Tribune photo by Bonnie Trafelet
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