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1) EIA Exclusive: NEA
Internal Survey on Health Care Reveals "Huge Divide Between NEA Executives
and Presidents and Rank and File." The
National Education Association has appeared front and center in the debate
over reform of the health care and insurance system, spending hundreds
of thousands of dollars on lobbying and media buys. But a 2008 internal
survey of NEA members and officers on health care issues indicates varying
levels of enthusiasm for proposed reforms.
Though the survey itself was not made
available to EIA, the union's collective bargaining and member advocacy
department has been briefing union activists on its findings throughout
2009. I have posted a link to the relevant information on
EIA's Declassified page. The report included statistics such as the
average health insurance premium paid in 2007 by NEA members was $603 for
employee-only coverage - about 12.6% of the total cost. Eight affiliates
reported members paid nothing.
NEA commissioned the polling firm of
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner to learn member and officer attitudes about health
care reform. Most of those surveyed were concerned about the system, but
satisfied with their own health care. NEA members were also more favorably
disposed towards government health care programs than the average American.
Still, the survey found that NEA members
were "split on whether government or employers should provide health care"
and that a "Massachusetts-style proposal [is] susceptible to arguments
against it."
For those unfamiliar with the arguments
against the Massachusetts system,
this Cato Institute analysis should be helpful.
Despite NEA's prominence in the health
care debate, the survey found a "Huge Divide Between NEA Executives and
Presidents and Rank and File." For example, "Execs/Presidents express most
urgency about health care problems" and "Execs/Presidents [are] most
supportive of major health care reforms, while ESPs (education support
professionals) [are] most susceptible to arguments against reforms."
These results fall in line with previous
surveys of NEA members and officers on other issues. There is a strong
correlation between
authority in the NEA structure and liberal political views. It cannot be
said that the views of NEA officers are opposite those in the
rank-and-file. However, there is little doubt that their political views and
preferred legislative remedies are several orders of magnitude further to
the left than those of the members they represent.
These differences will have little
direct effect on NEA's activities. The survey results were shared with NEA's
activists, not with the rank-and-file. And even the language used shows the
dynamic at play - execs/presidents are "supportive" while ESPs are
"susceptible."
Indirectly, the effect could be
substantial should the day come when the union feels the need to muster
large numbers of members for a particular bill or policy. When the issues
are money, jobs, working conditions or vouchers, the union can count on
unbridled enthusiasm and support. For health care, that indivisibility does
not exist.
2) Ohio Education Association Staff
Prepare to Strike, South Carolina Staff Warned of Disaster. As I type
this, the employees of the Ohio Education Association are less than 10 hours
from going out on strike. OEA and its staff unions have had bitter relations
in the past, resulting in a strike in 1997,
a lawsuit in 2005, and a last-minute settlement in 2006. I'll refrain
from making too much of this right now, since last-minute settlements are
fairly common in NEA staff labor disputes, but I'll have more tomorrow
morning.
Meanwhile, negotiations between the
South Carolina Education Association and its staff are souring, with the
staff union president asserting SCEA executives told employees "that the
South Carolina Education Association is two years from closing its doors."
This may be a negotiating tactic, but SCEA is a mess, and the last time an
NEA state affiliate was in such bad shape, the national union ceded it to
the New York State United Teachers. Unfortunately there is no AFT affiliate
in South Carolina.
No NEA state affiliate has ever "closed
its doors," and it won't happen in South Carolina as long as there is dues
money flowing in from members in New Jersey, Illinois and California to keep
the doors open. The thing is watch for is when the have-not affiliates start
to outnumber the haves.
3) Indiana State Teachers
Association Sues Former Executive Director. The
Indiana State Teachers Association sued former executive director Warren L.
Williams and a host of others for breach of trust, fraud, malpractice
and negligence for sinking the union's insurance trust.
Also named as defendants were Robert
Frankel, former director of the trust, investment adviser David Karandos,
UBS Financial Services, Morgan Stanley, Huttleston Associates (which has
done business with NEA for many years), the McInnes Maggart Consulting
Group, and Crowe Horwath, which was the trust's auditor.
In short,
ISTA sued everyone remotely associated with the trust... except for the
people responsible for overseeing its budget, finances and investments - the
board of trustees. Entirely by coincidence, that board consisted of ISTA
officers and members, including the union president.
"The evidence that we have uncovered
thus far demonstrates that the individuals and the professional and
financial institutions charged with the responsibility of managing this
Trust on behalf of Indiana school employees ignored basic trust and
insurance principles," said Edward Sullivan, who is running the Indiana
affiliate on behalf of NEA. "Their failures resulted in the Trust being
placed in an extremely precarious financial condition which threatened the
benefits of the Trust's beneficiaries. My primary focus is to make sure that
the Trust's beneficiaries continue to be paid all of the benefits promised
to them."
Which is pretty funny, since Sullivan
tried to weasel out of his primary focus
just three months ago.
4) Reactions to NEA's Race to the
Top Letter. I'm not sure what kind of response NEA
officers were expecting to their
letter criticizing the Obama administration's Race to the Top funding
guidelines, but if they were hoping for applause, they're still waiting.
Education Week
had a couple of observations,
the first an overall examination, the second a discovery of
NEA's double standard when it comes to teachers and student test scores.
Checker Finn noted NEA's grumpiness,
and then asked the obvious question about the much-ballyhooed collaboration
between unions and the Obama administration: What happens when one side or
the other won't budge?
Sherman Dorn is a proud union member,
but even he wonders how
NEA mixed up its internal and external messages.
None of this would matter if Obama and
Duncan exhibited any signs of squishiness on their education agenda. But
despite numerous opportunities to do so, they've held firm.
I admit I expected NEA to offer some lip
service to distasteful reforms in order to get the cash, but this was a
clear shot across Obama's bow, which makes me wonder who within NEA is most
responsible for the letter's tone. I can speculate as well as anyone
(California Teachers Association, disgruntled Hillary supporters,
Alinskyites) but whoever it was, they think this was the most effective way
to get their point across. And we'll soon see if they were right or not.
5) EIA Technology Update and
Scheduling Note. My apologies to those of you who
have had to wait patiently while I sorted out the various computer problems
I experienced in the last two weeks. EIA is back up and running normal
operations, but tasks like the district enrollment and spending tables had
to go on the back burner. Expect to see updates of those statistics in
September.
I reworked the web site with new
hardware and software, and it looks OK to me, but I'm aware of the vast
number of permutations of computers, operating systems, browsers and
personalization out there, so if elements look squirrelly to you, let me
know and I'll try to correct them. I'm far from an expert on these things,
but I'm cheap.
Thanks for your patience. The next
communiqué will appear Tuesday, September 8.
6) 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 25:
"NEA and NEASO agree performance
assessment is a continuous process, not a once-a-year event, and further
agree that a new performance appraisal system must be created in order to
support quality performance and advance organizational effectiveness. The
system shall:
... (j) preclude a member of the
bargaining unit from participating in summative evaluation of another
bargaining unit member."
7) Last Week's Intercepts.
EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from August 24-31:
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We Are Not Getting the Job Done. Most people love charters, hate NCLB,
and think schools spend too little, but their facts are all wrong.
*
Your Dues Dollars at Work. Each and every NEA member paid 30 cents in
damages to the victims of Tom Harvey's harassment.
*
Listening in the Northwest. Take my job, please.
*
Innovative Reform = Avoiding Layoffs. And even that isn't being done
well.
*
Union Claims Collective Bargaining Is a "Term of Art." It means what I
want it to mean.
8)
Quote of the Week.
"The most important provision - the one that should be non-negotiable -
requires states to show how student achievement will be taken into account
when judging teacher performance. The systems for making these judgments are
still in the formative stages. And when they are developed, they might
differ from place to place. Of course, those systems need to be sensible and
fair. But the country will never get where it needs to be if we take the
approach - as union leaders have sometimes done - that student test scores
should be out of bounds when it comes to judging teacher effectiveness. That
is an indefensible position. The unions can either help to create this
system, or get left behind." – from the New York Times editorial
board. (August 29
New York Times) |
