United Federation of Teachers

The Teachers' Union (TU) of New York City was organized in 1916 and chartered as Local 5 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Although constrained by the AFT's no-strike pledge, laws against strikes by public employees, the authoritarian and paternalistic policies of the Board of Education, and the resistance of many teachers to trade-union appeals, the Teacher' Union soon won a reputation for militancy. The Teachers' Union not only addressed the bread and butter issues of salaries, pensions and working conditions, but defended pacifist teachers against dismissal during World War I, and opposed loyalty oaths and other assaults on academic freedom in the 1920s and 30s.

Although the TU had organized a substantial number of the City's teachers by the early 1930s, its efforts were undermined by a growing political struggle within its ranks between a left wing dominated by Communist Party members and their sympathizers, and a more moderate group consisting of socialists, liberals and less ideologically inclined teachers. In 1935 the factional conflict came to a head, and TU president Henry Linville, a moderate, withdrew with a majority of the membership to found the Teachers Guild. The TU continued to fend off attacks on its left-wing politics, culminating in a 1940 investigation by New York's Rapp-Coudert Committee, which declared Communist Party membership sufficient grounds for dismissal from the public school system. In 1941 the AFT revoked the Teachers' Union's charter. The Teachers' Union subsequently affiliated with the United Public Workers of America, which in turn was expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a Communist-dominated organization. The TU, weakened by McCarthy-era persecution and the increasingly successful organizing efforts of the rival Teachers Guild (and later the United Federation of Teachers), went out of existence in 1964.

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