53 Facts About Randi Weingarten

Rhonda "Randi" Weingarten was born on December 18,1957 and is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator.

Randi Weingarten has been president of the American Federation of Teachers since 2008, and is a member of the AFL-CIO.

Randi Weingarten is the former president of the United Federation of Teachers.

Randi Weingarten's father was an electrical engineer and her mother a teacher.

Randi Weingarten grew up in Rockland County, New York, and attended Clarkstown High School North in New City, New York.

From 1979 to 1980, Randi Weingarten was a legislative assistant for the Labor Committee of the New York State Senate.

Randi Weingarten was appointed an adjunct instructor at the Cardozo School of Law in 1986.

Randi Weingarten worked as an attorney in the real estate department of Wien Malkin and Bettex.

In 1986, Randi Weingarten became counsel to Sandra Feldman, then-president of the UFT.

Randi Weingarten was lead counsel for the union in a number of lawsuits against New York City and the state of New York over school funding and school safety.

Randi Weingarten was one of two coaches for the school's team for the 1995 We the People civics competition.

Randi Weingarten was elected a Vice President of the AFT the same year.

Randi Weingarten was reelected by consistently wide margins after her initial appointment in 1998.

Randi Weingarten received 74 percent of the vote against two opponents in 1999 and served the final two years of Feldman's term.

Randi Weingarten ran in 2001 for a full term and was re-elected.

Randi Weingarten won her third full three-year term with more than 88 percent of the vote, despite having two opposing candidates.

On March 30,2007, Randi Weingarten won reelection to a fourth term as UFT President, garnering 87 percent of the vote.

Randi Weingarten stepped down from her post as president of the United Federation of Teachers on July 31,2009.

Randi Weingarten began negotiating her first contract as UFT president in 2000.

Randi Weingarten demanded a 22 percent wage hike; Giuliani offered 8 percent.

Talks collapsed on March 9, and Randi Weingarten began preparing the UFT for its first strike since the early 1970s.

Randi Weingarten rejected these proposals and asked for state mediation in late March 2004.

Randi Weingarten concluded her third collective bargaining agreement on November 6,2006, when the union and city reached a tentative deal to increase pay by 7.1 percent over two years.

In October 2007, Randi Weingarten assented to two agreements whereby the city and the UFT would jointly seek legislative approval for a new pension deal allowing teachers with 25 years of service to retire at age 55 and providing bonuses to all teachers in schools that showed a certain level of improvement in student achievement.

In June 2009, Randi Weingarten negotiated some pension modifications for new teachers in exchange for maintaining the age 55 pension and for allowing teachers to return to their traditional post-Labor Day start date.

In 2003, Randi Weingarten sold the UFT's headquarters at 260 Park Avenue South and two other buildings at 48 and 49 East 21st Street for $63.6 million and moved the union's offices to Lower Manhattan, purchasing a building at 50 Broadway for $53.75 million and leasing the building next to it, 52 Broadway, for 32 years.

Randi Weingarten's largest organizing victory came when the UFT organized childcare providers in New York City.

Randi Weingarten is the first openly gay individual to be elected president of a national American labor union.

Randi Weingarten has, as AFT president, criticized state and federal reforms proposed by her opponents.

Randi Weingarten was among 19 arrested in March 2013 while protesting a Philadelphia School Reform Commission meeting on school closures.

Randi Weingarten sees the role of charters as complementary to, rather than competing with, other schools.

Randi Weingarten condemns a "fixation on testing and data over everything else" as "a fundamental flaw in how our nation approaches public education," but accepts the use of standardized tests as one tool among several to evaluate student achievement and teacher performance.

An overemphasis on standardized testing and a shortage of resources, according to Randi Weingarten, has harmed efforts to recruit and retain well-prepared teachers at public schools.

The AFT, under Randi Weingarten's leadership, has worked to draw attention to economic inequalities within cities and regions that can hobble public schools.

Randi Weingarten has resisted attempts to curtail or eliminate tenure protections for public-school teachers, arguing that the outright removal of tenure protection would hurt the quality of classroom instruction.

Randi Weingarten is a longtime critic of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Randi Weingarten was an early and critically important supporter of Howard Dean as Chairman of the DNC.

Randi Weingarten is a superdelegate who was pledged to Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential primary.

In 2020, Randi Weingarten was named a candidate for Secretary of Education in the Biden administration.

Randi Weingarten was an elector for the State of New York in the 2020 United States presidential election.

Randi Weingarten has endorsed merit pay for city teachers, and in 2007 negotiated a controversial contract which paid teachers bonuses if their students' test scores rose.

Andrew Wolf, in an October 19,2007, op-ed in the New York Sun entitled "Socialism for Schools," argued that despite some observers' perception that "Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein [had] won a victory over the teachers' union by gaining approval of a merit pay scheme," the real winner was Randi Weingarten, who had gained power for the UFT.

Also in 2012, Randi Weingarten criticized what she calls "merit pay schemes".

Randi Weingarten compared advocates for "school choice" and "parental rights" to segregationists.

Randi Weingarten has been frequently criticized over the years for resisting attempts to address the problem of teacher incompetence.

Randi Weingarten has been a severe critic of proposals to allow parents to use tax credits to help pay to send their children to private school.

Randi Weingarten attempted to tie smaller class sizes to salaries in each of the three collective bargaining agreements she has negotiated, and linked class size to school repair and rebuilding issues.

The charter revision became caught in lawsuits and was eventually dropped, although Randi Weingarten continued to advocate for smaller class sizes.

Randi Weingarten has been a staunch supporter of the LIFO policy, otherwise known as teacher seniority.

In December 2007, Randi Weingarten cancelled the subsidized-housing deal after discovering that the developer would not be using unionized construction workers.

In 2010, the AFT and Randi Weingarten specifically were charged with interfering in the local elections of the Washington Teachers Union.

On October 11,2007, Randi Weingarten publicly announced she is a lesbian.

Randi Weingarten introduced Liz Margolies, a psychotherapist and health care activist, as her partner while accepting the Empire State Pride Agenda's 2007 Community Service Award from Christine Quinn.