In Address to Union, AFT’s Weingarten Champions Real Solutions for a Better Life, Celebrates Historic 1.8 Million-Member Milestone

HOUSTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten, addressing more than 3,500 delegates at the union’s 88th biennial convention Monday, laid out an expansive election-year vision for American progress, freedom and democracy during unprecedented political times. And she announced that the AFT’s membership had topped 1.8 million, a historic milestone stemming from the union’s relentless focus on real solutions for a better life.

In her State of the Union speech, Weingarten revealed that the AFT has added 185 new units and more than 80,000 new members in the last two years as a revival of labor activism sweeps the nation. The AFT’s newest members include airport ground crews, staff at universities, healthcare workers, bus drivers, librarians, charter school educators, paraprofessionals and, after a 50-year fight, 27,000 educators and school staff in Fairfax County, Va. The AFT is now the biggest higher education union, the second-largest nurses union, the fastest-growing healthcare union and the second-largest K-12 union in the country.

“Our unions help us win better wages and benefits,” Weingarten said. “Our unions give us real voice at work. It’s how New York teachers negotiated groundbreaking paid parental leave and lower class sizes. It’s how Cleveland got their new policy prohibiting students from using cellphones during the school day. How Los Angeles educators won sustainable community schools. And how Chicago educators are negotiating for healthy, safe, green schools.

“It is about the value of belonging.”

The speech came a day after President Joe Biden ended his presidential campaign and the AFT’s 47-member executive council voted unanimously on a resolution to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president, subject to ratification by the delegates to the 2024 AFT convention.

“Vice President Harris has fought alongside Joe Biden to deliver historic accomplishments and create a better life for all Americans,” Weingarten said during her speech. “She has a record of fighting for us—fighting to lower the costs we pay, for reproductive rights, for worker empowerment and to keep communities safe from gun violence.”

Weingarten unveiled a new landmark federal consumer protection lawsuit, filed Monday morning in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, against embattled student loan servicing giant MOHELA, which has mismanaged student loan accounts for millions of people, including scores of AFT members. “We won’t stop until every borrower gets the forgiveness they deserve,” she said.

Throughout her speech, Weingarten zeroed in on the convention’s theme of Real Solutions for a Better Life as the AFT prepares to confront the biggest issues facing the country and chart a path forward for public schools, public services and democracy in a general election year. She highlighted the existential stakes of the presidential race and issued a dire warning about Trump, calling him a “cunning master manipulator.”

“Does anyone in this room doubt, given a choice between what’s good for him or what’s good for working families, which Donald Trump would choose?” Weingarten asked. “Or whether he would use the nearly unlimited power the Supreme Court has granted him in dangerous ways?

“If your answer is the same as mine, this election is not only the most important in our lifetimes but in our children’s and grandchildren’s lifetimes,” she said.

As the Republican Party champions Project 2025 and rolls out an extremist education platform that would impose universal vouchers, abolish the federal Department of Education and decimate Title I support for low-income students, Weingarten announced a vision for strengthened K-12 schools that includes a renewed focus on experiential learning, a “sea change in public education” that involves hands-on learning, debates, robotics, science fairs, service learning, student-led projects, and career and technical education. And in a significant policy push, she called for the federal accountability system to change with it.

“No single test can measure what kids need to learn and be able to do to succeed in life,” she said. “Projects, portfolios and presentations tell us so much more. And they resonate with students. So it is well past time to end high-stakes testing as the basis of federal education law.”

As proponents of universal vouchers continue to threaten the survival of public education by siphoning taxpayers’ money into private hands, Weingarten pointed to their defeat in Texas after the union built a coalition of parents, pro-public education pastors, rural Republican legislators and urban Democratic legislators to fight back. Still, billionaires and extremists will continue their work to destroy public education, even in states like California, Illinois and New York, she said.

“They fear what we do—the teaching of reason, of critical thinking, of honest history, of pluralism—because their brand of greed, of power, of privilege cannot survive in a democracy of diverse, educated citizens,” she said.

On higher education, Weingarten highlighted the AFT’s new $1 million Real Solutions for Higher Education campaign, focusing on college affordability, access for all and academic freedom.

“Expression—including expression one disagrees with—must be protected for a democracy to thrive,” she said. “The Hamas-Israel conflict has tested this. But we can and must fight hate, ensure people on campus are safe and protect nonviolent speech.”

Drawing on new recommendations developed by AFT Public Employees, Weingarten announced the union is launching a campaign to combat an “understaffing crisis” that she said is “stretching public employees to the breaking point and endangering lives.”

Weingarten issued a clarion call for civility in the face of ongoing political violence that risks tearing the country apart. Touching on the recent assassination attempt against Trump, she pointed to the gun violence that continues to haunt Americans and said, “Political violence is never justified; not on Jan. 6 and not against political candidates.”

“I pray this near-death experience changed him, but the Republican National Convention demonstrated the opposite,” she said.

Weingarten asked members to compare the failed record of Trump, who left the country in crisis and the economy in free fall, with the success of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who stood up for workers, stabilized schools, saved retirees’ pensions, passed legislation to improve the country’s infrastructure, cut child poverty in half, bolstered American manufacturing, took on climate change, protected veterans and reduced healthcare costs.

She ended by calling on members to do everything they can to help get out the vote in the 15 weeks before Election Day.

“You are trusted, you are beloved—because you make a difference in the lives of others,” she said. “Talk to your co-workers. Talk to your neighbors. Knock on doors. Write postcards. Put out the lawn sign and slap on the bumper sticker.

“We can’t risk regretting that we didn’t do more,” she added.

Read the full speech here.