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1) AFL-CIO/NEA Agreement: Of DANLs, DALUs and
Dollars. NEA finally got around to
announcing its labor solidarity agreement with the AFL-CIO, posting the
text of the agreement, and providing a
653KB photo of NEA President Reg Weaver glad-handing AFL-CIO President
John Sweeney (suitable for printing a giant Weaver/Sweeney poster, if your
tastes run that way).
The press release puts some myths to rest:
1) It's no big deal. NEA calls the agreement
"groundbreaking." AFT President Edward McElroy added that "potential of this
partnership for education, for labor and for the nation is significant."
2) NEA locals and state affiliates wouldn't be
AFL-CIO affiliates. The release states, "NEA and the AFL-CIO will remain
independent organizations. For the first time, though, NEA locals may become
affiliated with the AFL-CIO." The agreement has a provision for procedures
to be created to allow state affiliates to join their state's AFL-CIO
federation.
3) NEA's Representative Assembly has to approve it
first. The release states, "NEA affiliates
have previously worked with the AFL-CIO locally, but AFL-CIO policy
prohibited the affiliates from joining the AFL-CIO. This agreement, which
the AFL-CIO executive council approved this morning and NEA approved earlier
this month, allows that relationship." We can infer that NEA believes the
Executive Committee and board of directors are the "appropriate governing
bodies" to authorize the agreement.
4) The NEA state affiliate would have to approve a
request by any of its locals to join AFL-CIO. The agreement states, "An
NEA local affiliate that desires to become a member of a CLC will notify the
NEA and the AFL-CIO…. The AFL-CIO and the NEA will consult with each other
through the Implementation Committee concerning each request for membership,
and each organization will consult with their affiliated
organizations through their own internal processes." (emphasis added)
Now that that's all settled,
what will it mean?
Whether it means anything at
all depends entirely on how many locals and, later, NEA state affiliates,
join the AFL-CIO. If few do, it will have virtually no impact. NEA and
AFL-CIO work closely on issues of mutual interest already, at the national,
state and local levels. Merged NEA-AFT state affiliates in Minnesota,
Montana and Florida (and soon, New York) already belong to the AFL-CIO.
But the estimates being offered for the near
term suggest this could be a sea change in the history of the National
Education Association. The
New York Times reported this morning that the agreement was "a
move that could increase the federation's membership by nearly a million
over the next five years." Even Reg Weaver is reportedly offering an
estimate of about 2,000 locals.
A million NEA members in the AFL-CIO, coupled with the 220,000 that
already belong though merged affiliates, would mean nearly 44 percent of NEA
members would also be AFL-CIO members by 2011. Groundbreaking, indeed.
NEA delegates had many
problems with the proposed merger with AFT in 1998, but by far the biggest
problem was that national NEA would affiliate with AFL-CIO – though locals
and states were not required to follow suit. How can that argument hold
water at a future Representative Assembly when almost half of the delegates
will belong to the AFL-CIO?
The short-term effect of this arrangement will be to
bolster the drastically reduced coffers of the AFL-CIO, in a shambles since
the departure of some 6 million union members in the Change to Win split.
(And isn't it funny that NEA arranges for its affiliates to join a
federation just as millions are fleeing it in droves?)
The agreement isn't specific about how much it will
cost NEA affiliates to join up, and even makes mention that a percentage of
per capita taxes (AFL-CIO dues) might be rebated to the NEA locals. In the
absence of hard numbers, we can only go by what the agreement and the
AFL-CIO constitution says.
The agreement states that a Dual Affiliated NEA Local (DANL)
will have the same rights and obligations in the national AFL-CIO as any
Directly Affiliated Local Union (DALU) of the AFL-CIO. So, what are DALUs?
DALUs, oddly enough, are fast becoming an anachronism
in AFL-CIO. They are independent locals that are not affiliated with a
larger union, but wanted the clout of AFL-CIO support. Over the years,
AFL-CIO has absorbed DALUs by merging them with other unions, or persuading
them to affiliate with a larger member union. In 2004-05, there were only 10
DALUs left, with a grand total of 837 members.
The financial arrangement between DALUs and the AFL-CIO
will probably be replicated for the DANLs. DALUs pay one per capita tax
directly to national AFL-CIO, and then the federation uses that money to pay
for the local's membership in the appropriate state federation and central
labor council. In the case of the DANLs, the money will go to NEA first,
then forwarded to AFL-CIO.
Article XVI of the AFL-CIO Constitution requires a DALU
to pay no less than $5 per member per month to the AFL-CIO. The amount for
2004-05 was $9 per member per month. If this holds true for DANLs, a
medium-sized NEA local of 1,000 members would send $108,000 annually to the
federation. Consequently, if the million-member prediction pans out, it
would improve the AFL-CIO treasury by $108 million annually. AFL-CIO's
entire income for 2004-05 was $190 million – and that was before the
departure of the Change to Win unions.
Whatever the psychic benefit of AFL-CIO affiliation
might be for NEA locals, the federation will gain a very tangible benefit
for every local that signs up.
So, I have put off answering the obvious question: Why
does it matter? For that, I return once again to the
EIA Communiqué of January 22, 2001:
"Should present trends continue, we will see in our
lifetimes the total number of public sector union members overtake the total
number of private sector union members. We may also see a labor force in
which public school employees are the only growth sector in union
membership. The implications of such a trend are enormous. First, we will
have a private sector almost devoid of unions, being regulated by a large
plurality of unionized government employees, whose unions' membership growth
will be directly tied to the size of government itself. For organized labor,
it will mean either dragging the NEA into its structure in order to bolster
its failing numbers, or it will mean the education unions will engulf the
AFL-CIO, effectively putting it out of business and replacing it with a new
coalition dominated by the NEA (or, more likely, by a merged NEA/AFT).
"The time may come when teachers' unions may be
the organized labor movement, which lends a whole new light to issues such
as merger, new unionism, merit pay and professionalism."
Last year, 47.4 percent of all union members worked for
the federal, state, or local governments. About 21 percent of all union
members worked in public education. The number of local government employees
(teachers, police officers, firefighters) who belong to a union grew by
106,000 in 2005 – more than doubling the union membership growth in the
entire American private sector.
Now, faced with the loss of the Change to Win unions,
the AFL-CIO quickly altered its membership rules, effectively "dragging the
NEA into its structure in order to bolster its failing numbers."
Will the education unions also engulf the AFL-CIO? It's
possible. Take a look at Montana (May 9, 2005
Is Montana a Glimpse into the Future of the AFL-CIO?).
The AFL-CIO Labor Solidarity Partnership Agreement has
the potential to be a much more important event in labor movement history
than the Change to Win split was. Whether it will be is now in the hands of
all of NEA's affiliates.
2) AFT Howls Obligingly When Its Chain Is Yanked.
If you want to know what it looks like when an entire organization
screws itself into the ceiling, you need only look at AFT's tersely titled
report
Stupid on ABC: The John Stossel Agenda, An Analysis of John Stossel's
"Stupid in America" Broadcast ("20/20," January 13, 2006).
AFT's report exhibits every one of the evils it accuses
Stossel of using, and a few even Stossel couldn't dream up. My favorite is
the union's response when Stossel used the example of a hypothetical
government grocery store. "The store wouldn't have to compete for your
business, and it would soon sell spoiled milk or stock only high profit
items," Stossel said. "Real estate agencies would sell houses advertising
'neighborhood with a good grocery store.' That's insane, and yet that's what
America does with public schools."
Here is the AFT's response:
"Finally, Stossel's reference to a grocery store in
this case is not only insensitive; it undermines his case, given the
notorious absence of reliable and high-quality grocery stores in inner-city
communities. The lack of such stores is a glaring example of how many
citizens (and poor people in particular) are betrayed by the free market, a
system whereby quality is dictated by a consumer's ability to pay, rather
than publicly agreed-to standards."
Is AFT so irritated by Stossel that it actually argues
in favor of government-run grocery stores?
Long live the public gruel!
3) Denver, ProComp and Feet-Voting. The
Rocky Mountain News highlighted the results of an annual survey by
the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA), which showed a spike in
the number of teachers who said they planned to leave the district.
DCTA didn't ask teachers why they wanted to leave, but
suggested anyway that it was because of increased class sizes. In fact, this
was the most easily predicted outcome of the phased-in performance pay
program, dubbed ProComp. It was so easily predicted that EIA predicted it
not once, but three times – March 22, 2004 (Will
Denver Teachers Vote with Their Feet on Performance Pay?), September 27,
2004 (Ripples
Begin in Denver Schools), and January 24, 2005 (Teacher
Retention in Denver: Help or Hindrance to Performance Pay?).
We still don't know if this is a bad thing (little
teacher support for the concept) or a good thing (clearing space for those
who do support the concept). Either way, the recruitment and retention issue
in Denver will tell us much more about the possibilities for education
reform than the actual ProComp program will.
4) Grievous Grievances. Just a typical week in
the world of public school labor relations:
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New York: "The Fonda-Fultonville Teachers Association says it would
oppose any attempt by the school district to fire alleged rapist Erik Betz,
a fourth-grade teacher, before his case is resolved in court."
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California: "The teachers' union has sued the Long Beach School District
in federal court, claiming district officials violated teachers' free speech
rights when security officers confiscated tables, chairs and a podium at a
rally last month."
*
California: "To the Gilroy Teacher's
Association president, the district's Strategic Accountability Plan simply
translated to more work for an already overloaded staff. On Feb. 9, 2005,
the GTA filed an unfair labor practice suit with the California Public
Employment Relations Board. The suit claimed that, once implemented, the
plan would violate the educators' contracts because they would be forced to
work extra time to achieve the results requested.
In January, PERB sent a
letter to the California Teachers Association lawyer informing him that the
suit had been dismissed because the union failed to submit data, namely the
number of teachers and the extra hours they were required to work due to the
accountability plan.
[GTA President] Nelson said
she couldn't provide the district or the lawyer with specifics because the
accountability plan had yet to be enacted."
5) Why Would SEIU Hand 2,200 Members Over to NEA?
The following item appears in the March 2006 issue of NEA Today:
All in the (Union) Family
Massachusetts: Almost 2,200 higher education
members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 888 at the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Boston, and Lowell recently voted to
join the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA). The vote came after MTA
President Catherine Boudreau and SEIU International President Andrew Sternan
(sic) reached an agreement. According to reports, Stern said SEIU 888
members would be better served by a union with a stronger focus on higher
education. SEIU has about 1.8 million members in the United States and
Canada who work primarily in the health, public, and property service
industries. (end)
So why would SEIU hand over an entire local to NEA? An
insider spills the beans on
the pages of ZNet.
6) Last week's Intercepts. EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from February 22-26:
*
Damage Control. After its exclusive posting of the AFL-CIO/NEA Labor
Solidarity Partnership Agreement, EIA received and posted NEA's memo to
affiliate leaders about the pact.
*
Cleveland Attendance in the News Again. "Average Daily Membership Week"
is far from average.
*
Winerip Spoonfeeds a Watchdog Group.
The New York Times columnist uses his space to raise funds for
struggling FairTest.
7)
Quote of the Week.
"You shouldn't
be angry about how much teachers get paid, but how little money most
everyone else makes." – Portland Oregonian columnist S. Renee
Mitchell. (February 27
Portland Oregonian) |
