Characterizing the battle to protect employee pensions as a war, AFT president Edward J. McElroy urged higher education delegates in the strongest way possible to react to developments in the private sector with anger and passion.

"We assume that we're okay," he told several hundred faculty, professional staff and paraprofessionals at the 2006 AFT convention Friday morning over eggs and potatoes. "We're not. At IBM, with a stroke of the pen, they knocked out all the pensions of middle managers. That's stealing. We have to stand up and say we're not going to tolerate that."

Within the AFT, higher ed people are known for having their hearts and politics in the right place. Yet as the union is placing a greater premium on activism, noted McElroy, "We don't have enough of you talking and reaching out to colleagues about why we need a strong union. It's to protect pensions. It's for academic freedom." He warned delegates not to show up two years from now saying that "you were too busy to protect your rights, and now you've found they’re all gone."

The higher education division also made five awards for outstanding performance. Two locals that weathered draining strikes in the past two years received the Norman G. Swenson Militancy Award: the Northeastern Illinois University chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois and the City Colleges chapter of the Cook County College Teachers Union. The first recipient of the newly created Louis Stollar Award for Advancing the Rights of Contingent Faculty is the San Francisco College Federation of Teachers, which has advanced on negotiating equal pay for equal work for part-timers.

The Southwestern Illinois College Faculty Union received a special honorary award to recognize its 60-year history of collective bargaining, strong militancy and groundbreaking contracts. In accepting the award, longtime SICFU president Leo Welch noted that in the 1980 strike, 56 faculty left in police vans. Because Welch refused to give ground to a scab-driven car charging the picket line, however, he left the site in an ambulance.

Finally, the division honored Tony Wildman, director of higher education services for New York State United Teachers, with the Higher Education Staff Award. In his introduction, United University Professions/NYSUT president William Scheuerman, also an AFT vice president, noted that Wildman had been mentor to unionists across the country as well as within the state. "This is the greatest job," said Wildman. "You get to help people and they pay you for it." [Barbara McKenna]

July 28, 2006