Education: Who's in the Union?

A hell-cat on wheels is the New York City Teachers Union. Rowdy, ruddy and quarrelsome, last week it got itself into such a jam that U. S. Labor was alarmed.

The Teachers Union, Local 5 of the A. F. of L.-affiliated American Federation of Teachers, has as members 6,000 of the 37,000 New York City public school teachers. The Union claims part credit for the fact that New York teachers, ill-paid when the Union was founded in 1916, today are the world's best-paid. But for some ten years the most conspicuous fact about the Teachers Union has been its intense interest in Marxist politics.

By 1935, fighting among the Union's Socialists, Stalinists, Trotskyists had become so violent (at meetings, members brandished chairs, pulled each other's neckties) that A. F. of L.'s President William Green asked the American Federation of Teachers to revoke Local 5—3 charter. When A. F. of T. rebuffed Mr. Green, Local $'s officers and 700 of its 2,200 members marched out of the Union formed a rival Teachers Guild. Local 5 thereupon cagily elected a non-Stalinist, tense, well-meaning Charles J. Hendley, as its president, in two years increased its' membership sixfold.

But the Union's troubles had only begun. Two years ago it was expelled from the New York City Central Trades and Labor Council for aiding C. I. O. unions. Then a group of Columbia professors quit a college branch of the Union because it was too Red. Last month the A. F. of T.'s executive council, an anti-Stalinist group elected at the Federation's last convention, made nine charges of misbehavior against Local 5, ordered it to show cause this month why it should not be expelled. One of the charges: "tactics and practices inimical to democracy."

Meanwhile Local 5 was under investigation by the New York Legislature, probing subversive activities" (TIME, Dec. 16). That gave Local 5 something real to worry about, for the investigating committee demanded the union's membership list. No U. S. labor union had ever before been compelled to make public the names of its members. President Hendley, objecting that disclosure would endanger union members' jobs, refused to hand over the list. Many another union, many a distinguished educator (among them: Princeton's Dean Christian Gauss) backed him in his refusal. But last week New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that Mr. Hendley must give up the list. A sheriff went hunting for Mr Hendley, prepared to jail him if he still refused.

This week President Hendley and the Union decided to comply with the court's order. Said the Union:.". . . A dangerous precedent to the whole labor movement "