Union election to be lesson on women's achievement

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun-teachers-union-randi-weijul13,0,1795281,print.story

By Stephen Franklin

Chicago Tribune Reporter

July 13, 2008

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.


FULL story at link.