Executive Council Welcomes 3 New Members, Honors 4 Retiring Members

by Mike Hall, Aug 5, 2008

Randi Weingarten
Matthew Loeb
Jill Levy

The AFL-CIO Executive Council this morning elected three new members and honored four union leaders who are stepping off the council. The action came during the first day of the council’s two-day meeting in Chicago.

Newly elected council member AFT President Randi Weingarten, just last month, won election to head the 1.4 million member union. In a statement from AFT, Weingarten says:

The labor movement is the strongest advocate of policies that help professionals, working class families and the nation’s middle class. That is why I am honored to serve on the AFL-CIO Executive Council and I am fully committed to strengthening the labor movement so we can help working families deal with the challenges of the 21st century economy.

Former AFT President Ed McElroy, who served on the council for seven years and announced his retirement from the AFT earlier this year, is stepping down, as is former AFT Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour, who also is retiring.

Matthew Loeb, president of the 110,000-strong Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), is another new council member who just recently took the reins of his union. He served as the union’s Division Director of Motion Picture and Television Production before his election as president last week and has been an IATSE’s Executive Board member since 2002.

In 1999, retiring IATSE President Tom Short became the first leader of the stagehands in more than three decades to serve on the Executive Council and he led his union for 14 years. He joined the union movement in 1968 when he began work as a stagehand for the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra.

Jill Levy, president of the School Administrators (AFSA) is the other new Executive Council member. She is a longtime union activist who served for several years as supervisor of special education for New York City’s public schools and headed AFSA Local 1 there. She served in several national offices for AFSA and was elected union president in 2006.

Retiring Executive Council member Baxter Atkinson is stepping down after four years on the council. He is a former AFSA president who got his start in public education as a reading and mathematics teacher in Hartford, Conn. He is also a former principal and vice principal who was elected to local and state AFSA offices before his 2003 election as national president.

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