Over 100 delegates attended the AFT Public Employees breakfast, which featured New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) president Roger Benson as the first Jim McGarvey Distinguished Speaker.

The AFT Public Employees program and policy council (PPC) established the speaker series earlier this year in honor of AFT leader Jim McGarvey, an AFT vice president, chair of the PPC and vice president of Montana’s MEA-MFT, for his invaluable contributions to the union, public employees and the labor movement.

“Jim is a labor leader in the truest sense,” said Benson, an AFT vice president. “He is so completely giving that he makes whatever group he’s associated with more powerful and effective.” McGarvey is, above all, an organizer, Benson said, “because he’s not out in front seeking glory, but rather dead last pushing the union to greater power and effectiveness, which is really the bottom line for the member.”

Benson noted that among McGarvey’s accomplishments is pre-budget bargaining for the MEA-MFT’s 250 public sector locals.

Although the speaker series recognizes McGarvey’s leadership, Benson has established himself as “one of the great speakers and thinkers in our union,” McGarvey said, noting that PEF’s political program is the “bane of every New York governor’s existence.”