UC Santa Cruz

From the 1940s to the late 1970s, rank-and-file teachers and elected leaders in California engaged in dynamic efforts to shape the American Federation of Teachers' political approach to unionism. This study considers organizing by rank-and-file teachers in this period, both inside the American Federation of Teachers and independently, to promote left-led social unionism. In contrast to a more politically moderate and narrow version of unionism (often referred to as business unionism), advocates of social unionism have sought to simultaneously improve workplace-based rights and benefits while also engaging in movements to challenge social injustice defined more broadly. More specifically, from the late 1940s to the late 1970s rank-and-file teachers in California made challenging various forms of discrimination central to their vision of social unionism.

This study examines four case studies that helped to determine the AFT's political approach to unionism. It begins with a discussion of AFT Local 430 in the late 1940s, a left-led teachers' union in Los Angeles that prioritized organizing against racism due to the involvement of Communist Party members in its leadership. In 1948 the national AFT leadership expelled AFT Local 430 on charges of communist domination, marking a political turning point within the AFT nationally; where once the AFT was left-led and strongly committed to anti-racism, the union became more politically moderate and less committed to struggles against discrimination.

The next three case studies consider rank-and-file teachers' efforts to revive and redefine social unionism from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Influenced by the new social movements of the period, rank-and-file teachers in California revived the AFT's earlier anti-racist tradition, but the new social unionism also challenged a wider range of oppressions. The new social unionism was aligned with advocates of Black Power and the Third World left, a resurgent feminism, and, for the first time in a significant way, gay and lesbian rights. Teachers' organizing also speaks to the relationship of the labor movement to social movements of people of color as they turned toward militancy in the late 1960s, the feminist movement of the late 1960s to early 1970s, and the gay and lesbian movement of the late 1970s.

Additionally, bottom-up democratic unionism was a defining feature of the new social unionism in the 1960s and 1970s. The self-organization of rank-and-file teachers and locally-based elected leaders, rather than national leaders, pushed the AFT to more forcefully take on racism, sexism, and homophobia. Organizing by rank-and-file teachers in California in the late 1960s and 1970s demonstrates that the AFT was not politically monolithic. The history of the AFT in California reveals a relatively politically progressive union engaged with social movements in an effort to generate social change on a broad scale.