Zeluck, Steve, 1922-1985

Steve Zeluck (1922-1985) and Barbara Zeluck (1923-2010) were Trotskyist, labor union, and occupational health activists. Steve Zeluck was active in the rank and file caucus Chalk Dust, in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), and also was active in the White Lung Association, a group that advocated for those made ill by their exposure to asbestosis (Zeluck died of mesothelioma). This unprocessed collection contains personal papers, including correspondence and writings, organizational records, printed ephemera, periodicals (some annotated), relating to the Zeluck's activism in the Trotskyist movement, including within the Socialist Workers Party, International Socialists, Workers Power, and Solidarity, and within the UFT, and the White Lung Association and other asbestos-related activity. The papers also document Barbara Zeluck's socialist feminist and women's health care activism. Most periodical titles have been transferred to the Library's print collection.

RECENTLY, WHILE GOING through old pamphlets on my bookshelf, I came across Toward Teacher Power, a pamphlet written by Steve Zeluck in 1973, when Steve was a member of the International Socialists. On March 1, 1985, Steve died as a result of a Mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer developed in his work in the Philadelphia shipyards during World War II. In the introduction to the In Memoriam article in the Winter, 1985 edition of Against The Current (original series), Steve was described as “founder and editor of this journal and lifelong revolutionary” and “as political thinker, organizer and teacher, and as personal friend and comrade.” Steve was the president of the AFT local in New Rochelle, New York at that time He was rather fond of using a devil’s advocate technique to sharpen the discussion in Chalk Dust, another teacher reform group that Steve helped to found, and in Workers Power. For teacher activists Steve wrote Toward Teacher Power, and it is as relevant today as it was two decades ago. In it, he analyzes business unionism, the philosophy of the U.S. labor movement, and shows how teachers’ unions have been rendered ineffective by that philosophy.