The AFT biennial convention, held July 13-17 at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., and attended by more than 3,900 delegates and guests, launched a new era of AFT leadership. After seven years as president of the more than 1.3 million member union, Sandra Feldman chose not to run for another term for health reasons. Delegates elected Edward J. McElroy, the national union’s former secretary-treasurer, president. McElroy is joined on the leadership team by secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour, who had served as executive vice president, and Antonia Cortese, an AFT vice president who now will serve as executive vice president.

McElroy used his first address as president to assure delegates that their union will stay true to the course that has made it one of the fastest-growing and most respected unions in the nation. Citing the contributions of former presidents Albert Shanker and Sandra Feldman, leaders who placed the AFT squarely in labor’s vanguard, McElroy told delegates, “We have an obligation to continue their work. And we will. We are all part of the same team.

“The convictions and priorities of our union have been passed from Al Shanker and those before him to Sandy Feldman, to our current leadership team of Nat LaCour, Toni Cortese and myself. I have every intention of advancing the same important cause these great leaders championed.”

McElroy was first elected AFT secretary-treasurer in 1992. He began his education career teaching social studies and English. A former president of the Warwick (R.I.) Teachers Union and the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, McElroy served as president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO from 1977 until 1992. McElroy was elected to the AFL-CIO executive council in 2001.

The new AFT president said that the first order of business is to rally the full force of the union and its members behind the effort to elect John Kerry president of the United States. McElroy promised that the AFT would devote every ounce of its energy, resources and talent to succeed in a presidential election where failure simply isn’t an option.

He detailed the many problems faced by AFT members and the institutions they serve, thanks to “misguided leadership from the White House and the majority in Congress.”

Job cuts, skyrocketing healthcare costs, mandatory overtime and barriers to union organizing are among those ills, said McElroy. He also singled out problems with the No Child Left Behind Act signed into law by President Bush in 2002 .

“We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we definitely want to get rid of the dirty bathwater,” McElroy said. “We will continue to try to work with the Department of Education and the Congress to fix what is wrong with this law and to give the goals that we have long supported a fighting chance to succeed.”

McElroy also pledged that the AFT would honor its broad mission to build the house of labor. That means “coordinating efforts on organizing, political action, health and safety, public policy—and many other efforts where the strength of the whole is so much greater than the strength of any individual union.”