Word: shanker
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...even the negotiators were pleased with the contract that ended the New York strike. "Neither side will sing victory songs about this," predicted School Board Vice President Robert Christen. Albert Shanker, president of the 81,000-member United Federation of Teachers called it a settlement that "nobody likes." Certainly few educators did. As Shanker outlined the proposed contract to the union's delegate assembly (which had voted overwhelmingly to strike the week before), he was interrupted with jeers and catcalls of "Sellout." Outside Madison Square Garden, rank-and-file teachers chanted: "Vote no, vote no." The roiled, resentful membership...
...public posture, Shanker appears to be a dogged, stubborn defender of what he deems to be right. In private, he is different: "Because of the strikes," says Tom Kahn, a Meany assistant, "Al has been portrayed as power-hungry and overly aggressive. Personally, he's a shy, intellectual type." Shanker reads voraciously and likes to consider himself close in political attitude to the moderate liberalism of Commentary and Public Interest. In reflective moments, he professes to wonder why he got into the union presidency at all. "I never sought this career," he says, "I backed into it. I like...
Reluctantly or not, Shanker really established his firm grip on the union in 1968, when the city started an experiment in school decentralization in the largely black Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of Brooklyn. Black militants in control of the schools dismissed 13 teachers who were active in the U.F.T. In response, Shanker called a teachers' strike that lasted for 35 days and led to a nasty period of public hostility between New York's black community and the heavily Jewish teachers' union. The U.F.T. eventually won reinstatement of the teachers, but Shanker spent 15 days in jail...
Since the 1968 strike, Shanker has been accused of retreating from his earlier liberalism. Says a city labor leader: "My disappointment in him is that as the new face in the American labor movement, he adheres to the status quo. He is not innovative in terms of reform." Shanker is not enthusiastic about busing, and he has opposed affirmative-action programs that impose racial or ethnic quotas. "Quotas are authoritarian and essentially discriminatory," he says. "Why not just confer an M.A. at birth on blacks and minorities?" On the other hand, he takes pride in the some 10,000 blacks...
Some observers think Shanker is under attack because he has done his job too well. "Once [a union chief] gets to be magnanimous and takes the broad public point of view, he's defeated," says Kheel. "Every leader of a special-interest group is basically selfish. That's why he is the leader...