| (Cross-posted at The Excelsior Files, my newest blog project.)
The annual New York State United Teachers convention has concluded in Buffalo and no one could be happier about the convention than NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi.
 Iannuzzi was named president of NYSUT in April 2005 and also serves as vice president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and holds the same title with the New York State AFL-CIO.
(Pictured, at left, is Richard Iannuzzi speaking before the NYSUT Convention in Buffalo.)
Being a teacher is something Iannuzzi knows plenty about. It is why he is the best man to serve as president of such a diverse union that includes 600,000 members statewide. For 34 years, Iannuzzi was an elementary school teacher in Central Islip, where he spent 20 of those years teaching fourth grade. It was during his teaching career that he was very involved in teachers' unions, including his service as vice president of the Central Islip Teachers Association starting in 1976 to 1996 before becoming president of that organization from 1996 to 2004.
While at the convention, I caught up with Iannuzzi and had a chance to ask him a few questions about how he thought the convention went, why NYSUT decided on a social justice theme for the convention and his thoughts on the budget impact on teachers.
QUESTION: How was your experience in Buffalo and how do you think the convention went?
IANNUZZI: I'll start with the city of Buffalo and the wonderful mayor (Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown) and the convention bureau (the Buffalo-Niagara Convention Center and Visitors Bureau) they have done more to make us feel at home than any convention site I have ever been at. It's been a great city and a great convention bureau and our hope is that we will be able to be back. That's our goal.
As far as the Representative Assembly goes, I'm excited about it. I feel good now that we are done with it. That we achieved our goals and that the delegates went home inspired and satisfied that they had a good convention. That Woody Guthrie quote does it for me, which is our goal is to make sure that these officers get their job done. If we can help them get their job done, then we've gotten our job done.
Q: There is a debate brewing in school districts across the state about how the state budget and federal stimulus package will impact teachers. Some school districts are proposing cuts, layoffs and so forth to address budget problems. What is your take on that?
IANNUZZI: At the end of the day, when a school district puts its budget forward, it needs to, as always, think about its federal support, state support and its local property tax support. We always understand that and appreciate that.
What's different this year is that the federal stimulus money was clearly designed and directed to save and preserve jobs. Where any school district is not applying those dollars directly for that purpose, our commitment is to aggressively pursue those responsible for that misappropriation and to be sure things get done correctly. We know the Governor's office understands that. We know that the state Education Department understands that.
My last comment on that is to the people that live in those communities and the message is that if your school board is foolishly misappropriating those funds, the result is going to be the potential of losing the funds and property taxes going up even higher.
On behalf of both the community and my members and the kids, our goal will be to be sure those dollars the way they were designed to be spent. And if they are spent that way, what will happen is that teachers will be in classrooms, good things will continue to happen and our hope is that the standards that are raised, the achievement gap is addressed and potentially, we will be able to create the trained and well educated workforce that will grow the economy in the state, especially upstate, in ways that will make it self-sufficient and able to carry it on with their own dollars instead of dollars generated by new business and new industry.
Q: I was impressed by the social justice themes today and that is really impressive that NYSUT has been engaged in that. Talk a little bit about that and what the motives are behind making the union social justice minded.
IANNUZZI: I think if you go back to the birth of the union movement, it really was about providing an opportunity for collective action in ways that the voice of those who were voiceless could be heard. And that's really how unions started and how unions have grown.
Perhaps there is a period of time, it could be argued, where unions, in general, have concentrated on so many other issues that they haven't been able to concentrate on social justice. But our view of social justice is that now that we have begun to move forward in respect to our ability to move workers further and further into the middle class, we still have an obligation to be sure that our lowest wage earning workers get a living wage, that we protect their health insurance and their nutrition.
We believe that our responsibility as a union expands beyond our members. It expands to other workers and that we ought to be sure that it expands to those we serve, whether we are talking about children, patients or the public.
In his biography posted on the NYSUT website, there is this quote from Iannuzzi, which certainly could best sum up Iannuzzi's view of what he hopes to do as a union and as president of that union.
"Whether we work in health care, on a campus or in a school - whether we are in-service or retired - we all bring different contributions and concerns to our shared union endeavors," said Iannuzzi, who has spoken frequently concerning the potential for diversity to increase the power of unity. "After all, each of us understands that our strength is not in focusing on our diverse professions, geography or the size of our locals, but in our common union culture. In essence, our strength is our solidarity."
Iannuzzi's leadership has brought many successes to NYSUT. And with his leadership, the union will still look for ways to best represent their members as well as improving the world around them. |
