AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler joined the UFT’s HERstory event, an annual celebration of Women’s History Month, to discuss the history and future of women in the labor movement. Shuler is that future — the first woman to head the national labor federation, leading 12.5 million working people in 57 unions.

“Women kept us going through the pandemic,” Shuler told about 100 UFT members at the event, held on Zoom on March 4, specifically addressing them as “our educators, our healers, who worked in our homes and schools” to carry their communities through the crisis.

UFT Vice President for Academic High Schools Janella Hinds, who planned the event with Vice President for Elementary Schools Karen Alford, said she was “thrilled” to welcome Shuler and have a conversation about women’s leadership. “That leadership might not look the same” as a man’s, said Hinds, “but it’s powerful, it’s essential and there’s dignity in it.”

The message about women’s leadership resonated with UFT members like Mindy Rosier-Rayburn, a special education teacher at PS 811 in Manhattan. Rosier-Rayburn said the labor movement often feels “male-dominated,” but attending the HERstory event gave her a chance to see “women leaders in the labor movement making a difference.”

“To see so many female leaders in my own union is very inspiring and promising that hopefully the world is moving toward equity,” Rosier-Rayburn said.

Jolene DiBrango, the executive vice president of the UFT’s state affiliate, New York State United Teachers, and a HERstory speaker, called the women of the UFT “trailblazers and pioneers in the labor movement.”

Among those trailblazers is Shelvy Young-Abrams, the paraprofessionals chapter leader, who was honored with an award and a tribute video. For decades, Young-Abrams has fought for the union cause, championing the UFT and helping paras win their first union contract in 1970 — tripling wages and providing benefits to paras for the first time.

Alford, introducing Young-Abrams, spoke affectionately of her colleague as a “country girl who moved to New York and developed her ‘why,’ ” which was to “ensure her two daughters knew a life bigger and more expansive” than the family’s early years in public housing, supported by Young-Abrams’ domestic work. Alford said Young-Abrams “personifies this year’s HERstory theme of strength, courage and wisdom.” Reflecting on the early days of her career, Young-Abrams remembered the advice her mother gave her before she moved from South Carolina to New York City in 1950: Join the union and get involved as soon as possible.