Randi Weingarten

Rhonda "Randi" Weingarten (born December 18, 1957) is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator who has served since 2008 as president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), an affiliate of the AFL–CIO. A former president of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT), she previously worked as the union’s chief negotiator and counsel and taught social studies at Clara Barton High School. She is widely noted as the first openly gay person elected to lead a national American labor union.

As AFT president, Weingarten has been a prominent voice in national debates over K–12 policy, advocating for “bottom-up” school improvement, community schools, and limits on high-stakes testing while supporting accountability measures and selective use of assessments. Her leadership and positions on standardized testing, charter schools, tenure, and educator pensions have drawn both support and criticism from policymakers, advocacy groups, and the press.

During her tenure with the UFT, Weingarten oversaw a series of major collective-bargaining agreements in New York City that increased teacher pay while lengthening the workday and workweek, positions that figured prominently in citywide education policy debates of the 2000s.

Weingarten was born in 1957 in New York City, to a Jewish family, Gabriel and Edith (Appelbaum) Weingarten. Her father was an electrical engineer and her mother a teacher. Weingarten grew up in Rockland County, New York, and attended Clarkstown High School North in New City, New York. A congregant of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, she considers herself a deeply religious Jew.

Weingarten's interest in trade unions and political advocacy was formed during childhood. Her mother's union went on a seven-week strike when Weingarten was in the eleventh grade. Under New York state's Taylor Law, her mother could have been fired for taking part in a strike. Instead, she was fined two days' pay for every day she was on strike. Later that year, the school board cut $2 million from the budget. Weingarten and several other students convinced the school board to let them conduct a survey regarding the impact of the cuts. The survey led several school board members to change their minds and rescind the cuts.

From 1979 to 1980, Weingarten was a legislative assistant for the Labor Committee of the New York State Senate. She received a B.S. degree in labor relations from the ILR School at Cornell University in 1980 and a J.D. degree from the Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law in 1983.

Weingarten worked as a lawyer for the firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan from 1983 to 1986, where she handled several acrimonious arbitration cases on behalf of the UFT. She was appointed an adjunct instructor at the Cardozo School of Law in 1986. She also worked as an attorney in the real estate department of Wien Malkin and Bettex.

In 1986, Weingarten became counsel to Sandra Feldman, then-president of the UFT. Weingarten handled high-level grievances for the union. She was also 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. By the early 1990s, she was the union's primary negotiator in UFT contract negotiations.