Staff Profiles
Bob HARRIS (Senior Consultant to the General Secretary)
 Bob HARRIS |
Bob Harris serves as Senior Consultant to the General Secretary. Having worked with Fred van Leeuwen, Mary Futrell and the late Albert Shanker on the creation of EI, he was Executive Director for Intergovernmental Relations and a member of the Board from 1993 to 1996.
A former secondary teacher in Adelaide Australia, he was Assistant General Secretary of the State Institute of Teachers, then the Australian Teachers’ Federation, playing a key role in the establishment of the national Schools Commission in the 1970s, as well as the formation of a single national trade union centre. He became Coordinator for development of the World Confederation of Organisations of the Teaching Profession (WCOTP) in 1979 and WCOTP Secretary General in 1988, shortly before discussions began with the IFFTU leading to the formation of EI in 1993.
Bob Harris also chairs the Working Group on Education, Training and Employment of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) at the OECD, was President of the Conference of NGOs at the United Nations, 1995-97, and President of the NGO Conference at UNESCO in 1982-88.
He is a graduate of Adelaide and Australian National Universities, and studied at the Graduate Institute of International Relations in Geneva. He is a life member of the Australian Education Union.
Bob Harris was born on 1 January 1946, has four children and lives in Switzerland.