thomhobartjr

Thomas Y. Hobart Jr.
President
NYS United Teachers, AFT AFL-CIO
English/German/Italian
1997 Recipients

Thomas Y. Hobart, Jr., president of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), was elected president of NYSUT’s predecessor organization, the New York State Teachers’ Association (NYSTA), in 1971. The following year, he and Al Shanker, then president of the United Teachers of New York, led talks that resulted in the merger of the two unions. Hobart became co-president of the merged state teachers’ organization, along with Shanker. In 1973, Hobart was elected NYSUT’s first president, the post he currently holds having been reelected 14 times.

NYSUT has grown under Hobart’s presidency from the 100,000-member NYSTA to today’s AFT affiliate of more than 450,000 members. NYSUT programs are provided from 16 offices around the state staffed by more than 300 full-time employees. NYSUT’s more than 900 affiliates bargain collectively for benefits; working conditions; and professional, healthcare, and educational improvements.

NYSUT represents a diverse group which includes active and retired members in New York’s public schools, colleges, universities, and healthcare facilities.

Hobart’s career as a union leader has covered more than four decades, from his first union position as building representative in 1964. In 1969, he was elected president of the 3,700-member bargaining unit represented by the Buffalo Teachers Federation. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the National Education Association and since 1974 has served as vice president of the American Federation of Teachers and as a member of the AFT Executive Committee. He also is a vice president and member of the Executive Committee of the New York State AFL-CIO.

In 1974, he served on the Teacher Education and Certification Board. He was elected vice chairman in June 1979 of the New York State Employment Training Council, an advisory board to Governor Carey on all CETA-funded job training programs in the state. In April 1983, Governor Cuomo appointed him to CETA’s successor, the Job Training and Partnership Council. Hobart was appointed vice chairperson of the council in 1985, succeeding the state’s lieutenant governor in that post. In 1991, he co-chaired the Task Force on Career Pathways which recommended initiatives to produce a world-class workforce, and issued the report of Education That Works: Creating Career Pathways for New York State Youth.

Also, he has been vice president of the Teacher Education Conference Board and served on the Commissioner’s Task Force on Education and Certification 1975. He chaired the Public Employee Benefit Fund, a 70,000-member health service provider, from 1975-1991.

In 1974, Hobart was a member of the Governor’s Task Force on the Taylor Law; and in 1975, he served on the Governor’s Task Force on the Financing of Elementary, Secondary, and Continuing Education. In 1977, he was appointed to the New York State Advisory Council on Vocational Education; and in 1982, he was elected its vice president. In 1978, he was appointed to the Regents and Governor’s Task Force on Equity and Excellence in Education, and in 1979 to the State Planning Committee for Vocational Education. In 1982, Hobart was appointed as a charter member of the Martin Luther King Commission; as well as a member of the Board of

Directors of the Welfare Research Institute, an independent data gathering and analyzing organization; the Advisory Board of the New York State Occupational Disease Diagnostic Center Network Study, and the Advisory Board of the Northeast Lab. Together with Bishop Howard Hubbard of the Catholic Diocese of Albany, Hobart was a founder and has co-chaired the New York State Labor-Religion Conference. In 1987, he was named co-chair by Education Commissioner Sobol of the Task Force on the Teaching Profession, which produced The New York Report: A Blueprint for Learning and Teaching in 1988. In 1990, he was appointed a commissioner by Governor Cuomo of the New York State Governor’s Conference on Library and Information Services. In 1991, he was appointed by the Commissioner of Labor to the Child Labor Law Education Fund. Hobart was appointed by New York State Commissioner of Education Mills in 1999 to the Blue Ribbon Task Force on School Leadership.

Hobart has served as a delegate to the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession (WCOTP); the International Federation of Free Teacher Unions (IFFTU); and the founding convention of Education International, created from the merger of WCOTP and IFFTU. He also has served as a delegate to the state and national AFL-CIO; the Jewish Labor Council; the Council of Professional Employees, AFL-CIO; and the Public Employment Department, AFL-CIO. He is a member of the Advisory Council of Cornell School of Labor/Management Relations, St. Joseph’s Guild, and the American Labor Council to the Histradrut. In 1983, Hobart represented the AFT at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1992, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the United Way of New York State and became its chair in 1999. He was elected to the New York State Service Council of the American Red Cross in 1996.

In his capacity as president of NYSUT and as a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, Hobart has extensive international travel experience representing labor in 40 foreign countries. Some of those include: exchange study programs with labor and teacher organizations in France, Portugal, and Germany; serving as a representative to the White Rose tribute to Nazi resistance in Munich, Germany; participating in the International Rescue Committee’s refugee fact-finding trip to southern Africa, and taking part in the AFL-CIO National Defense Commit-tee NATO investigation in 1984. In 1985, Hobart participated in a study tour of the Japanese education system co-sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers and NIKKYOSO (the Japanese Teachers Union) and was part of AFT’s study of the German vocational education program. In 1986, he was part of an American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) inspection group for human rights in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. In 1988, he twice visited Chile, serving during his second visit as an observer to the plebiscite on the presidency. In 1990, he served as an AFL-CIO observer to the presidential elections in Nicaragua. In 1993, Hobart was an official observer to the first multi-racial elections in South Africa.

Hobart is the author of a pamphlet entitled, What Price Quotas, and a contributor to The Governance of Teacher Education by Consortium. He has been a guest lecturer in undergraduate and graduate classes in both public and private institutions of higher education.

Hobart earned his Master of Science Degree in Education from Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, in 1964. He received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Arts Education in 1960 from the State University College at Buffalo which honored him with its distinguished Alumni Award in 1988. In 1990, the Italian-American Labor Council presented him its Four Freedoms Award. He was the 1981 recipient of the Union Label Award of Merit. In 1992, Hobart was awarded the Good Scout Award presented to those individuals who exemplify in their daily lives the ideals of the Boy Scouts of America as expressed in the Scout Oath and Law. He received an Honorable Discharge from the United States Army. In 1997, Hobart received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor award.

Hobart and his wife, Dorothy, live in Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo, New York.

The attached biographical data is for background purposes only. When introducing Tom, he would prefer you limit your remarks to the following:

Tom Hobart has been president of the New York State United Teachers since its inception in 1972. Since then, the organization has grown from 100,000 to more than 450,000. He also serves as vice president and member of the Executive Committee of both the American Federation of Teachers and the New York State AFL-CIO. The mission of the union is to improve the quality of education and health in New York state and to improve the security and working conditions for its members.

If your program calls for an elaborated introduction, please limit it to the above with the addition of the following four paragraphs:

Hobart has co-chaired a 1991 Committee on School-to-Work Transition which produced the report, Education That Works: Creating Career Pathways for New York State Youths. In 1987, he co-chaired the Task Force on the Teaching Profession which produced The New York Report: A Blueprint for Learning and Teaching.

Hobart has been vice chair for both the New York State Employment and Training Council and the Job Training and Partnership Council. He co-founded the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition and served as an international observer in elections held in Nicaragua, South Africa, and Chile, and has represented the labor movement in more than 30 nations. He currently serves as chair of the Board of Directors of the United Way of New York State. Hobart is a former member of the National Education Association (NEA) Board of Directors. In 1998, Homework Central, the largest academic research site on the Internet, named Hobart as one of the 100 most influential people in United States public education.

In his teaching career, he taught Industrial Arts, Social Studies, and was a guidance counselor in the Buffalo school system. While teaching, he served as president of the 3,700-member bargaining unit representing teachers, the Buffalo Teachers Federation.

He currently is a member of the AFT team exploring the possibility of creating a single teachers’ union by combining both NEA and AFT into one.

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