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1) National Labor Coordinating
Committee – Less Than Meets the Eye? Last week,
representatives of the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and NEA announced the
formation of a
National Labor Coordinating Committee to be headed by former Congressman
David Bonior. According to Bonior, its purpose is to create a single
national labor federation.
It seemed to be an obvious extension of
efforts to reunite the AFL-CIO unions with those that broke away in 2005 and
formed Change to Win. NEA's participation raised the stakes in the hope that
the nation's largest labor union would, for the first time, be formally
inducted.
I have been following these developments
closely, even though I don't see any practical difference in either NEA's
policies or operations that would occur with AFL-CIO affiliation. But many
NEA members, affiliates and staff think it makes a great deal of difference.
The primary reason
the proposed merger with AFT failed in 1998 was the prospect of AFL-CIO
affiliation. At the time, NEA delegates felt such affiliation would greatly
diminish the union's role as a professional organization. Despite
state-level mergers and closer ties with local labor coordinating councils,
I see little evidence that the overall mood has changed.
I was surprised that NEA President
Dennis Van Roekel seemed to be working toward AFL-CIO affiliation
without laying the groundwork among the state affiliates. But he may be
off the hook if recent reports hold up.
Rather than cheering developments,
people with close ties to the labor movement spent last week pointing out
the hurdles and pitfalls.
Harold Meyerson, for one, went into excruciating detail.
Mark Gruenberg echoed him, adding that the issue of who will succeed
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney might be enough to derail things by itself.
Then, on Friday, Ezra Klein suggested
the whole idea is going nowhere. He posted
a memo from Sweeney to federation officers regarding "erroneous press
reports on status of reunification discussions." The memo makes it clear
that the AFL-CIO will welcome back the Change to Win unions, but "will not
be disbanding to start anew, it will not be subordinating itself to or
merging itself into any other organization." As for NEA, Sweeney states it
is urgent "to continue the ongoing progress that we have been making
recently in formalizing our relationship with the NEA."
The memo makes it plain that regardless
of negotiations, the decision for NEA is whether it will join the AFL-CIO,
not whether it will join an entirely new labor federation whose composition
and policies Van Roekel and his officers will play a part in creating.
Since NEA isn't setting the stage for
such a thing, and because joining the AFL-CIO costs money, I'm inclined to
think the formal relationship will resemble the moribund
NEAFT Partnership.
2) California Teachers Association to
Spend $12 Million on Budget Ballot Initiatives.
News reports confirm the California Teachers Association
doubled down on its contributions to pass the budget initiatives on the
May 19 special election ballot. CTA sent another $2.2 million to the
campaigns in favor of Propositions 1A and 1B, bringing the union's total
contributions to more than $5.3 million.
However, EIA can report here exclusively
that the union is currently authorized to spend up to $12 million from its
Initiative Fund. This is a significant expenditure, since it constitutes the
full amount of one year's worth of contributions to the fund. Each member is
assessed $36 per year for ballot initiatives. Any spending beyond this
amount would have required a special dues assessment,
such as the one CTA used to defeat Gov. Schwarzenegger's initiatives in 2005.
3) Straying (a Little) from the
Teacher Shortage Herd. Tips of the hat to Sam
Dillon of the New York Times and Craig Smith of the Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review, for at least providing a dissonant note amid the teacher
shortage amen chorus.
Dillon,
in his story about the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future
report, included this paragraph:
"This is not the first report to predict
widespread teacher shortages unless policy makers took quick action. In
1999, an Education Department study warned that the impending retirement of
millions of teachers could lead to chaos, a dire outcome that never
materialized."
From Smith, we get the news that in
Pennsylvania "fewer
than half of the state's 15,000 new teachers will find in-state jobs."
The nation still has a shortage of math,
science and special education teachers, which the system cannot fill with a
glut of candidates with elementary general education credentials. Hmmm, I
wonder if there's a way to persuade teachers to choose a shortage area over
a surplus area.
4) ESP Local Drops Michigan Education
Association Affiliation. Twenty-two support
employees with the South Redford School District
disaffiliated from the Michigan Education Association and NEA to form a
local-only union.
"Restructuring our association allows us
to reduce our costs for representation and significantly lower the dues,"
said Kim Meray, president of the new South Redford Office Professionals
Association.
5) Contract Hits.
Wherein we highlight a contract provision from the current agreement between
the National Education Association and its largest staff union. This is from
Article 14, Part B, Section 1, subsection (a):
"Except as otherwise provided in
subsection (b), an employee shall accrue medical leave at the rate of four
hours per 75 hours of working time."
6) Last Week's Intercepts.
EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from April 6-13:
*
"America's Future" Stats Are Buried in the Past. Footnotes to nowhere.
*
Edu-Zombie. Maybe we should spend more time on critical thinking in
school.
*
Going Green. Why is there more investigative reporting in celebrity and
sports news than in education?
*
Exclusive Look at UFT's New City Council Lobbying Plan. Cue cards are
too cumbersome.
*
Do Schools Need Full-Time Principals? Probably, but questions like these
need to be asked.
7) Scheduling Note.
The next communiqué will appear on Tuesday, April 21.
8) Quotes of the Week.
This week we have several quotes from an interview with U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan published in the
April 10 issue of Science magazine:
* "I'm saying that you can't teach
physics if you don't know physics. You don't have to have majored in
physics. Maybe you come out of industry, or out of some other place. I worry
a lot about how many folks are teaching classes in which they are not
experts in the content. To me, that's a big part of the problem. We don't
have enough teachers today who are experts in math and science. This is not
just high school, it's also fifth, sixth, seventh grade."
* "You can also use the money to pay
math and science teachers five or 10 grand more. Pay folks who are going to
the toughest schools extra money. So you can do really creative things that
haven't happened before."
* "There are some places that really
encourage alternative certification, and there are other places where these
guys are just locked out, where the schools of education have a monopoly. So
I think we can challenge that. We can also use these dollars to send people
back to get their master's. We want to play heavily in the area of talent.
Talent matters tremendously. There may be lots of folks who want to do this.
And we should be doing what we can to help them grow, to take it to a whole
'nother scale."
* "As the
second education secretary with school-aged kids, where does your daughter
go to school, and how important was the school district in your decision
about where to live?
A.D.: She
goes to Arlington [Virginia] public schools. That was why we chose where we
live, it was the determining factor. That was the most important thing to
me. My family has given up so much so that I could have the opportunity to
serve; I didn't want to try to save the country's children and our
educational system and jeopardize my own children's education." |
