PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) -- A veteran labor leader who represented teachers at Catholic high schools in the Philadelphia Archdiocese for more than five decades is planning to retire.
Rita Schwartz has been serving as president of the Association of Catholic Teachers Local 1776 for more than 36 years.
But she has been active at the bargaining table since the union formed and was involved in negotiating its first contract back in 1968.
“I was on every negotiating team there’s ever been,” she recalled. “In 1984, I became president and I was negotiating at that point. So I think that there have to be over 20 contracts over the years that I’ve negotiated.”
Schwartz got her start as an English teacher and guidance counselor at St. Hubert Catholic High School for Girls in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia in 1963 where she was on staff for 12 years.
But she said it was her interest in the welfare of her fellow teachers that propelled her to a more active role in the union.
“I’m a labor person, so it’s been a labor of love,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz took the teachers through two memorable strikes in 1997 and 2011.
Her last contract, negotiated in September, took both sides to the brink of a strike before a settlement was finally reached.
“I didn’t want to the president of the first union to strike during a pandemic, but we got very close,” Schwartz said. “That was as close as I wanted to get to that without actually striking.”
Schwartz said she always approached her work at the bargaining table with a “simply business” attitude.
“Not to make things personal,” she explained. “We’re going to professionally disagree on a lot of things, don’t take it personally.”
Schwartz gives up the local president’s role in January, but will still stay on as the national president of the Association of Catholic Teachers.