AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour has been elected to the AFL-CIO executive council. LaCour, elected by acclamation at the council's Aug. 9-11 meeting in Chicago, joins AFT president Edward J. McElroy and 47 other vice presidents and three AFL-CIO officers on the council.

The AFL-CIO council, along with delegates to the AFL-CIO's quadrennial convention and the federation's general board, is an important policymaking body of the federation, meeting at least twice a year to consider union business and resolutions. The AFL-CIO is a voluntary federation of some 60 national and international unions representing more than 13 million working men and women.

LaCour, who was elected AFT secretary-treasurer at the AFT's convention in Washington, D.C., in July, had previously served as the AFT's executive vice president. Over the past four years he chaired the AFT's organizing committee, charting a course for unprecedented membership growth for the union. During that time, the union grew by nearly 230,000 members; the AFT now represents 1.3 million preK-12 teachers, paraprofessionals and other school support employees, higher education faculty, nurses and other healthcare workers, and federal, state and local government employees.

LaCour is the former president of AFT's New Orleans affiliate, the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO). In 1974, without the aid of a state public employee collective bargaining law, UTNO became the first teachers union in the Deep South to obtain a collective bargaining agreement with a school district.

The AFL-CIO council also paid tribute to Sandra Feldman, who for health reasons decided not to run for another term as AFT president and who had also served on the AFL-CIO council. In a special resolution, the council expressed its "gratitude and appreciation to Sandra Feldman for her service and devotion to the members of her union and to the labor movement." Feldman was elected to the AFL-CIO council in May 1997 and served as chair of the committee on public policy and as a member of the executive committee.

August 12, 2004