Bargaining Table and Beyond - How the AFT Came to Support Labor-Management Collaboration

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious

A personal account of Phil Kugler’s decades-long experience within the American Federation of Teachers, tracing how the union evolved from focusing mainly on winning collective bargaining rights and building local unions to actively encouraging labor-management collaboration. It describes Kugler’s organizing and field services leadership, highlights partnerships that enable teachers to teach and students to learn, and connects these changes to family history rooted in labor activism. The narrative links individual organizing paths to broader institutional shifts over time.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages5

Reading Time13 min

AccessFree to download

Bargaining Table and Beyond

How the AFT Came to Support Labor-Management Collaboration

Early years in the labor movement

Organizing and field services leadership

Partnerships with management

e Bargaining Table and Beyond How theAFT Came to Support Labor-Management Collaboration Israel Kugler (third from left) on a 1973 picket line at Baruch College. By Phil Kugler W hen I 􀀛rst came to the American Federation of Teachers in 1973, there was no such thing as labor-management collaboration. It was a term I had never heard of, and no one used it. Back then, we focused on supporting local unions in their struggles to win collective bargaining rights. At the time, teachers were 􀀛ghting to achieve basic rights just to organize, so the priority was on establishing locals and helping them achieve the pay, bene􀀛ts, and working conditions that teachers demanded and deserved as professionals. For the last 32 years, I have led the AFT’s organizing and 􀀛eld services department, which supports our union’s e􀀝ortsto organize the unorganized and to assist a􀀉liates in contract negotiations and administration, internal organizing, and member mobilization. In that time, I have seen a gradual shift within the AFT toward encouraging local leaders to cultivate strong relationships with management. Such partnerships have taken hold in New Haven, Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati (see the sidebar on Phil Kugleris the assistant to the AFT presidentfor Organization and Field Services. page 10), the ABC school district in California (see the article on page 22), and Meriden, Connecticut (see the article on page 29), among other places. 􀀞ese partnerships are the result of hard work between local leaders and school o􀀉cials, who together have created, as AFT President Randi Weingarten often says, the conditions that enable teachers to teach and students to learn. Growing up in the labor movement during the 1950s and 1960s, I could not have predicted that a major focus of this great union would eventually be on strengthening labor-management relations. All that I knew, and all that my family knew, was about 􀀛ghting for basic rights on the job. My grandparents were immigrants. My paternal grandmother was in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. My paternal grandfather was involved in a painters’ union, but I never got to meet him. While picketing with his fellow painters, he was arrested, and he died in jail from a heart attack. My father, Israel Kugler, who became a social science professor, absorbed the lessons his parents taught him about workers’rights. He was really a pioneer in the AFT in terms of organizing college professors. In the 1950s, he was a professor in Brooklyn at one of the 􀀛rst community colleges established in New York state. At this college, he and some of his colleagues formed an independent union and then a􀀉liated with the New York Teach- 36 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | WINTER 2013–2014 PROFESSIONAL STAFF CONGRESS/CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK RECORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS (WAG 009), BOX 222, BARUCH PSC CHAPTER, TAMI MENT L IBRARY AND ROBERT F. WAGNER LABOR ARCH IVES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY CURTIS ACKERMAN ers Guild, the AFT a􀀉liate at the time in New York City. 􀀞e Guild was one of the predecessor organizations of the United Federation of Teachers. My father eventually became vice president of the UFT for colleges and universities, and later became president of a New York City metropolitan higher education local. He also cofounded the Professional Sta􀀝 Congress, a union of faculty members at the City University of New York, which now represents more than 25,000 faculty and sta􀀝 members. I’ve been around organizing all my life; it was something my parents constantly discussed at home. We lived in one of the 􀀛rst cooperative housing developments in Queens. Albert Shanker, the late president of the AFT, grew up 8 to 10 blocks away in another housing development. He taught at Junior High School 126 in our neighborhood; so did George Altomare, a founder of the UFT, its vice president for high schools, and later its director of worker education, who lived in the same housing development as us. Eli Trachtenber

FAQs

What shift does Phil Kugler describe within the AFT over time?

He describes a gradual shift toward encouraging local leaders to build strong relationships with management, resulting in labor-management partnerships.

What work does Kugler’s department support at the AFT?

It supports efforts to organize the unorganized and assists affiliates in contract negotiations and administration, internal organizing, and member mobilization.

How are the outcomes of collaboration described in the article?

Kugler says partnerships help create conditions that enable teachers to teach and students to learn.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious