Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

This is the EIA Communiqué for June 8, 1998:

+ The Associated Press ran a story today about the proposed NEA/AFT merger in which it noted that “The outcome is uncertain.” This sign that conventional wisdom has caught up with EIA’s reporting compels me to predict flatly that merger will not achieve the necessary two-thirds majority at the NEA Representative Assembly in New Orleans on July 5. In fact, there is an outside chance it will not achieve a simple majority.This, despite the fact that the California Teachers Association’s State Council voted to support the Principles of Unity on Saturday by an estimated 2 to 1 margin. The vote was especially significant because a large number of State Council reps are also delegates to the NEA RA. California sends approximately 10.6 percent of the total number of delegates. As expected, the large locals (some of which are already dual-affiliated) supported the merger, while the smaller, rural locals opposed it. But with one-third opposition in California, large majority opposition in New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois and Massachusetts, and split delegations in Pennsylvania and Ohio, merger needs a miracle.

NEA’s official line has been that the state assembly voters are different than the RA voters. This is true, but anecdotal evidence indicates this fact is not to the advantage of the pro-merger side. The opposition to merger in pro-merger states (New York, Missouri and Georgia, for example) is far more prominent than the support for merger in listed anti-merger states. Here are the latest totals:

Pro-merger — California, Wisconsin, Washington, Florida, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Georgia, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Montana, Mississippi, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Wyoming. TOTAL = 32.3%

Anti-merger — New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Indiana, Iowa, Connecticut, West Virginia, New Hampshire. TOTAL = 29.6%

No position — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Alabama, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland, Kentucky, Colorado, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah, Alaska, Delaware, Vermont, South Dakota. TOTAL = 33.0%

Unknown — Maine, Louisiana, Arkansas, Hawaii, South Carolina, Idaho, North Dakota. TOTAL = 5.1%

NEA President Bob Chase told the Associated Press that there is a lot of persuading to do in less than a month. His opportunities are limited. NEA has only one mailing to delegates. He will undoubtedly craft a persuasive speech to deliver in New Orleans, but his track record is bad. After Chase’s speeches in Illinois, Iowa, Virginia and his home state, Connecticut, the delegates voted to oppose merger.

NEA must do something dramatic to pass merger. Will it reverse its own pronouncements and throw the Principles of Unity open to amendments from the floor? Will it postpone the vote until next year? And what happens if NEA does persuade delegates from anti-merger states to defy their state affiliate’s recommendation? Once the NEA delegates vote, their role in the matter is finished. Chase will then have to rely on those same state assemblies that voted to oppose merger to acquiesce in its implementation. Will they do so? Or will they disaffiliate?

+ Don’t expect the California Teachers Association to jump on the peer review bandwagon anytime soon. The union’s recent survey of members showed only 12 percent wanted the union to “greatly increase its efforts on behalf of peer review.”

+ Lost in the post-mortems of the California campaign was the results of this CNN/Los Angeles Times exit poll question: “Labor unions have…”

Too much influence — 44%

Right amount — 35%

Too little influence — 21%

+ Michigan enacted a modified “paycheck protection” initiative after a long legal battle. Before it was implemented, each of the Michigan Education Association’s 140,000+ members contributed to the union’s political action committee. The most recent figures show MEA-PAC membership at 30,815 — a decline of over 78 percent.

+ The Pennsylvania State Education Association has reportedly uncovered a $2.3 million “shortfall” while developing next year’s budget. PSEA Executive Director Carolyn Dumaresq implemented a temporary hold on external hiring “until a clearer direction has crystallized.” Dumaresq implied that targeted budget cuts will be necessary. PSEA collected $35.6 million in dues last year, an increase of 7.2 percent from 1996. Meanwhile, the Michigan Education Association is running ahead of budget schedule, but with significant overspending on some line items. These include: staff training; the travel budget of MEA’s various policy committees; and the “coalitions” budget (for coordination with the Council Against Parochaid, the Michigan Tax Information Council and the League of Women Voters).

The largest overspend went to “political education.” With 58.3 percent of the budget year elapsed, MEA has already spent 184.5 percent of its political education budget.

+ A Kentucky grand jury is investigating a $10,000 donation made by NEA PAC to the A. Philip Randolph Institute during the 1995 gubernatorial race. The institute mounted a get-out-the-vote drive in Louisville, allegedly to ensure the victory of Democrat Paul Patton. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, the grand jury is focusing on whether Patton’s campaign colluded with the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, the Democratic Party and the institute to exceed campaign spending limits. A number of officials of the NEA’s state affiliate have testified.

+ Quote of the Week: “One of the things that is evident from the campaign against Proposition 226 is that there exists a vast and well-funded national network of organizations that are coordinating a campaign to undermine public education and other parts of our social fabric.” — NEA President Bob Chase. Chase went on to name the National Taxpayers Union, the Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Claremont Institute, and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, apparently so you would know to which side he was referring.

This is the EIA Communiqué for May 4, 1998:

+ In dramatic fashion, Michigan Education Association President Julius Maddox drove a stake through the heart of the proposed NEA/AFT merger on Friday. Saying affiliation with AFL-CIO should be considered apart from the issue of merger with AFT, Maddox announced his opposition to the Principles of Unity, which will be voted on at the NEA Representative Assembly in New Orleans in July.Addressing his union’s own Representative Assembly, Maddox noted that MEA’s recent growth in membership was due to the desire of many union members not to be affiliated with AFL-CIO. He expressed his fear that these members would seek representation elsewhere if the merged national union were affiliated with AFL-CIO. He called on NEA and AFT to revisit the issue. In a voice vote on Saturday, the MEA assembly overwhelmingly supported Maddox’s position.

MEA is the 3rd largest NEA state affiliate, representing over 142,000 members. Its delegates to the NEA Representative Assembly constitute approximately 6.3% of the total number. Despite recent press reports of substantial progress, pro-merger forces are clearly losing the numbers game. Here is an update of the state affiliates who have taken a vote on the merger as proposed. The figure in parentheses is the state affiliate’s NEA delegate representation, expressed as a percentage of the total Representative Assembly. Remember, merger needs a 2/3rds majority to pass.

Pro-merger — Wisconsin (3.6%), Minnesota (2.3%), New York (1.8%), Missouri (1.2%), Nebraska (1.1%), Montana (0.5%), New Mexico (0.3%), Wyoming (0.3%). TOTAL = 11.1%

Anti-merger — Michigan (6.3%), Illinois (4.2%), Virginia (2.5%), Iowa (1.7%), New Hampshire (0.5%). TOTAL = 15.2%

Neutral — Kentucky (1.7%) and Utah (0.9%). TOTAL = 2.6%

When you add in the state affiliates whose top officials have spoken very openly against merger (New Jersey, Texas, Georgia and Delaware), the anti-merger vote rises to 26.0%. This leaves anti-merger forces with a very simple task. Win in Alabama, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Mississippi and the merger is dead. Three of those are right-to-work states.

The California Teachers Association, by far the largest NEA affiliate with 10.6% of the total number of delegates, is expected to support the merger. But CTA’s State Council has yet to address the issue and, according to one CTA official, “there is no enthusiasm for it.”

Delegates will vote in secret and so it is impossible to predict the outcome with absolute certainty. However, NEA President Bob Chase is faced with two equally formidable options: 1) He must win virtually unanimous support in California, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other large affiliates, plus win victories in virtually ALL the undecided states, or 2) He must siphon off significant blocs of delegates in New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois. It doesn’t look good . His margins of victory have been smaller than his margins of defeat.

+ You won’t see much news like the above in your local newspapers, because the press is relying on NEA and AFT headquarters for merger information. So, while Maddox was making his speech and the MEA assembly was taking its vote, the Associated Press was running a story headlined “Teachers Unions Merger Moves Ahead.” The story closely followed the text of NEA’s press release of the vote of its Board of Directors. “In a historic vote,” the release read, “the Board of Directors of the National Education Association (NEA) voted overwhelmingly to recommend that the NEA Representative Assembly approve guidelines for uniting with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to form a new national organization.” While the vote was overwhelming by majority vote standards, neither NEA nor the Associated Press, nor any of the media outlets that picked up the AP story, noted that the vote (106-53) was exactly 2-1. Will NEA be able to duplicate that margin among the rank-and-file delegates, voting in secret?

+ A dissident group of of delegates to the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s assembly met to consider splitting from the parent union. The dissidents, which included delegates from Madison, Fond du Lac and Racine, were upset with the WEAC assembly’s rejection of their resolution calling for statewide protests and possible work stoppages over school funding equity. They walked out of the assembly in protest after the vote. WEAC President Terry Craney downplayed the dispute. “I think this is going to work itself out,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I certainly hope it does.”

+ An arbitrator in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ruled in favor of the local unions’ pay package — a 4.19 percent raise in salary and benefits. But he also approved the district’s plan to eliminate 11 additional teacher jobs to pay for the raise. “I trust the teachers association will assist in the process of staff reductions by explaining to teachers and parents why they were willing to sacrifice teacher positions for higher salaries,” said Associate Superintendent Greg Reed.

+ Circuit Judge Riki May Amano ruled that substitute public school teachers in Hawaii are entitled to collect unemployment benefits during summer vacation. The state Department of Education sued to end the 20-year practice when it took over the task of paying unemployment compensation to teachers last year from the Labor Department. The Labor Department had paid the compensation because substitutes aren’t given “reasonable assurance” that they will be employed once classes resume.

+ Quote of the Week: “Our challenge is to come out of these campaigns with more activists, and to win at the ballot box as well. If we just emphasize television advertising, we won’t be any stronger afterwards than we are today. And if we concentrate just on activists on the ground, we won’t reach out far enough, and we’ll fail at the polls. We have to do both. If we win 75% of our own members, and 45% of everybody else, then we’ll win.” — Kenneth Burt, political director of the California Federation of Teachers, describing union strategy to defeat Proposition 226, the paycheck protection initiative.

I’ll be on vacation for the rest of the month, but I won’t leave you totally in the lurch. In the interim I’ve scheduled a few forgotten items from the EIA vault. I hope you enjoy them.

As discussed yesterday. Here’s the press release from AFT:

AFT Places WTU Under Administratorship
To Handle WTU Internal Election

WASHINGTON—The American Federation of Teachers today placed the Washington Teachers’ Union under administratorship to ensure that democratic procedures are followed promptly for the 2010 WTU internal elections. This action is part of an ongoing effort by the AFT to ensure that the WTU elections are carried out in a manner consistent with the WTU constitution and does not currently involve the day-to-day operations of the WTU.

According to the WTU constitution, elections were supposed to be held last spring, with the installation of new officers by July 1. For various reasons, starting with the failure to properly elect an elections committee, that election was delayed. The AFT intervened to manage that initial concern, but unfortunately, the new election committee was stymied in its attempt to carry out the election.

“The AFT intervened for one purpose only—to ensure that the WTU membership has the right to a timely and fair election of its officers,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “Intervention like this is uncommon, and we avoid in every way possible involving ourselves in political differences between union officers.”

The AFT said the WTU is refusing to comply with an Aug. 4 AFT executive council order requiring the union to begin election procedures immediately. This order was the result of an investigation conducted by the AFT in July. The investigation produced a number of findings, one of which was that the election process should begin immediately, with the AFT managing the proceedings.

In an Aug. 16 letter, the holdover officials of the WTU—President George Parker and the WTU executive board—informed the AFT that they did not intend to adhere to the ruling of the investigative committee, prompting the AFT to declare the administratorship.

“The 4,000-plus members of the WTU deserve an election process that is democratic, fair, transparent and timely,” Weingarten said. “We are confident in our ability to work through the current difficulties to provide them with the chance to properly elect their leaders.”

UPDATE: WTU mans the barricades.

The Washington Post‘s Bill Turque reports that AFT President Randi Weingarten has given Washington Teachers’ Union President George Parker until noon today to comply with an order to hold an election for union officers next month.

If he doesn’t, AFT will appoint an administrator over WTU… again.

Click here to read:

1) 475 Teachers’ Unions Failed to File IRS Forms for Three Years

2) The Last Stand of the 300… Thousand

3) California, Colorado and Connecticut Spending Tables Posted

4) Scheduling Note

5) Last Week’s Intercepts

6) Quote of the Week

When we learned that the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association was suing to have its Viagra benefit restored, we all took the easy path of ridicule and bad puns. All of us, that is, except one.

Joel McNally of the Capital Times in Madison not only defends MTEA’s actions, but does it in such a way that calls to mind Clarence Darrow defending John T. Scopes. Imagine the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing softly in the background as you read this paragraph:

Many people are blind to the fact this important role of unions does not just benefit the union’s members. It benefits all of us. We are still emerging from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Every time a job is saved by a union, every time an insurance benefit provides coverage for medical treatment — even treatment subject to mean-spirited jokes — money is being spent that helps the nation’s economy recover for everyone.

That’s right, America. When unions sue for erection pills, they’re doing it for us. Apparently Viagra has the ability to prop up the economy, too. (Thankfully, McNally refrained from using the “It’s For the Kids” defense.)

We salute you, Joel McNally, and, in honor of your noble cause, we will remain standing for four hours, after which we will call our doctors.