Michael Mulgrew has won election to his first full three-year term as the president of the city’s teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers announced today.
Mulgrew was elected with 91 percent of the vote over James Eterno, a candidate from an opposition group within the union. UFT spokesman Dick Riley said the union was still waiting to hear the final vote tally, which will be released tomorrow.
Mulgrew, 44, became union president last year, when the UFT’s executive board appointed him to serve the remainder of then-president Randi Weingarten’s term after she left to run the national union. A relative newcomer to the union — only five years ago he was a high school teacher in Staten Island — Mulgrew became Weingarten’s designated successor after winning an internal run-off race she held.
UFT presidents typically win reelection by huge margins, but Mulgrew’s win is impressive even compared to his predecessors. In 1999, the first time former UFT president Randi Weingarten ran for office, she won with 74 percent of the vote.
The Unity caucus, which has dominated UFT politics since the union’s beginning, won all of the seats it ran candidates for. The six high school seats on the union’s executive board, which are routinely the most contested, went to the candidates who had been endorsed by both Unity and the New Action caucus.
The opposition party, Independent Community of Educators/Teachers for a Just Contract did not win any seats. The number of active teachers casting votes this year increased compared to 2007, but so did the number of retired teachers who voted. Having hit the cap of 18,000 retired member votes, each retired person’s vote will count as less than one.
Mulgrew’s new term will begin on July 1.
Vote tallies broken down by voter type are below:
High School:
Unity: 2,595
ICE/TJC: 1,369
New Action: 774
Non-slate: 424
Middle School:
Unity: 1,981
New Action: 421
ICE/TJC: 248
Non-Slate: 207
Elementary
Unity: 7,761
New Action: 978
ICE/TJC: 703
Non-slate: 712
Functional (e.g. guidance counselors, school secretaries)
Unity: 7,337
Non-slate: 1,332
New Action: 1,175
ICE: 708
Retired Union Members
Unity: 20,744
New Action: 2,234
ICE/TJC: 1,037
Non-slate: 867
MICHAEL MULGREW ELECTED UFT PRESIDENT Michael Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers, has been elected to his first full three-year term. According to a count of mailed ballots from UFT members conducted by the American Arbitration Association, Mulgrew received 91 % of those cast. On August 1, 2009, Mulgrew was chosen by the union’s Executive Board to fill the remainder of Randi Weingarten’s term after she became president of the AFT, the UFT’s parent union. Mulgrew is the fifth president of the UFT since its founding in 1960, following Charles Cogan, Albert Shanker, Sandra Feldman, and Weingarten. Mulgrew, 44, began teaching as a substitute working with special needs students. He became a full-time teacher at the William E. Grady High School in 1993 and served as Grady’s UFT chapter leader from 1999 to 2004. He was elected Vice President for Career and Technical Education High Schools in 2005 and became the UFT Chief Operating Officer in 2008.