Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals - History

History

The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers was originally founded as the Rhode Island Branch, American Federation of Teachers, on March 27, 1947. The original unions making up the federation were the Warwick Teachers' Union, the North Providence Federation of Teachers, the Pawtucket Teachers' Alliance, the Woonsocket Teachers' Guild, and the Providence Teachers' Alliance. Four years after its formation, the Pawtucket Teachers' Alliance went out on strike—one of a handful of local unions to disobey a national AFT policy banning strikes by teacheers. The federation changed its name to the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers in 1958. The Pawtucket strike ended in a settlement favorable to the union, and a rudimentary contract—one of the first teacher contracts in the United States. Another strike in Pawtucket in 1964 also ended in a contract, this one personally negotiated by Governor John Chafee. This collective bargaining experience helped pave the way for legalization of teacher unionism in Rhode Island two years later.

Public school teachers in Rhode Island were given the legal right to bargain collectively over "...hours, salary, working conditions, and other terms of professional employment" in May 1966 (P.L. 1966, Chapter 146). Rhode Island law also allows payment of unemployment benefits to public school workers if they struck for more than eight weeks.

Edward J. McElroy was president of RIFTHP from 1969 to 1992. He was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the AFT in 1992, and President in 2004 (he retired in 2008).

In 1971, David Selden, then a national representative with the AFT, attempted to convince the leaders of RIFTHP to join with the state federations in Connecticut and New York to fund and operate an organizing project, but the RIFTHP leaders rejected the idea.

In the early 1970s, RIFTHP and the NEA statewide affiliate in Rhode Island considered merging, but did not do so. During the same years, RIFTHP was active in organizing higher education faculty as well. When the AFT and the National Education Association signed a tentative merger agreement in 1998, RIFTHP leaders refused to immediately commit to a state-level merger (but supported the national effort).

RIFTHP began organizing nurses in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Its most significant effort in this area came when it organized more than 1,000 registered nurses at Rhode Island Hospital in August 1993. But in 1998, more than 3,500 health care workers belonging to RIFTHP disaffiliated in a dispute over how much money should be spent on organizing new members. Although RIFTHP and the AFT disputed the election results and sued former staff who went to work for the new union (the United Nurses and Allied Professionals), the AFT lost these challenges.