Introducing David Horowitz

I'm David Horowitz and I come from a union family – during the first years of the 20th century my paternal grandfather was a founding member of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers in New York and in the Sixties, my mother was a founding member and chapter head of the United Federation of Teachers in Queens. So when several of my colleagues in the History Department took the lead in organizing the PSU AAUP chapter as a bargaining unit in 1978, I never thought twice about signing on – historians know better than anybody that unions represent solidarity and a democratic workforce. Over the years I've certainly benefited from the salary increments, health insurance and pension benefits, sabbatical allowances, and academic freedom that the union has played an indispensable role in ensuring. But for me unions represent what political scientists call a “countervailing” power with the ability to encourage management toward positions that in the end, benefit everyone. I like to think of Franklin D. Roosevelt's admonition during the Great Depression that “we all go up or we all go down.”