Word: shanker
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Much Blood. As New Yorkers discovered last week, the package was only as strong as its individual elements, and one was controlled by tough, abrasive Albert Shanker, president of the United Federation of Teachers. Like other local union leaders, he believes that New York municipal workers are shedding too much blood from the city's cuts. Two weeks ago, he was outraged when the Emergency Financial Control Board, the fiscal overseer imposed by the state on the city in September, rejected an agreement that had ended a five-day teachers' strike last month. The board, which is controlled...
...Shanker and the other union chiefs also have been angered by layoffs of city employees. Firings and attrition since January have reduced the city's full-time work force to 263,311, a drop of 32,211, including 7,077 teachers and other school employees. Further cutbacks must be made, but the union leaders will use their muscle to limit the losses...
While other union captains merely fumed, Shanker mounted his power play, operating through the teachers' retirement board, whose trustees include three former teachers loyal to him. These men held the fate of New York in their hands. They simply told Big Mac that they would not buy the retirement board's remaining $150 million share of Big Mac bonds. Without that investment, the state would have to withhold a $250 million payment due last week, and the city would be forced to default...
Next day, however, Feinstein and other labor leaders-notably Albert Shanker of the United Federation of Teachers, Victor Gotbaum of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Ken McFeeley of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association-were talking more calmly. Moreover, while TIME correspondents found that union members were universally unhappy with Beame and his cost-cutting plans, most were not enthusiastic about striking. Explained an adviser to several of the labor leaders: "They are aware that if the police, the firemen and the bridge tenders go out, there could be chaos, there could be deaths. It would...
...subdued Shanker predicted that "there will be a mess for a period of time." The man who had done more than his share to create that mess may pay heavily for violating a state law prohibiting strikes by public employees. Shanker served two 15-day jail terms after leading the 1967 and 1968 teacher strikes...