Nat LaCour
Nat LaCour is an American labor union leader and teacher. As of 2007, he is the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, and a member of the AFL-CIO executive council.
Originally a school teacher with the New Orleans public schools, he became a labor union activist with the AFT. Becoming president of the AFT affiliate in the city, he engineered along with Bob Crowley, the Executive Director of the NEA affiliate in New Orleans, a merger with the National Education Association local to form the United Teachers of New Orleans. In 1974, UTNO became the first teachers' union in the Deep South to win a contract without the protection of a state public employee collective bargaining law.
LaCour was elected a vice president of the AFT, and in 1998 was elected to the newly formed position of executive vice president of the union. In 2004, LaCour was elected secretary-treasurer of the union after the retirement of AFT president Sandra Feldman and the election of secretary-treasurer Edward J. McElroy as president. The same year, he was elected to the executive council of the AFL-CIO.
LaCour is a founding member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and serves on the board of directors of the Albert Shanker Institute, National Democratic Institute, the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists.
On February 11, 2008, LaCour announced he would retire as Secretary-Treasurer of the AFT at its regularly scheduled biennial convention in Chicago in July 2008.
