Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for February 28, 2006 NEA & AFL-CIO "PARTNERSHIP/MERGER"

Parnership? Merger? Nothing new?

Presenting a true "Balanced News" approach and employing a more realistic "Double Spin Zone", you decide...

The official press release from the NEA web site...

The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 2.8 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.

From the "Dark Side"...

The Education Intelligence Agency

COMMUNIQUÉ – February 27, 2006

On the Web at http://www.eiaonline.com

AFL-CIO/NEA Agreement: Of DANLs, DALUs and Dollars

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.

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The Education Intelligence Agency conducts public education research, analysis and investigations. Director: Mike Antonucci. PO Box 580007, Elk Grove, CA 95758. Ph: 916-422-4373. Fax: 916-392-1482. E-Mail: EducationIntel@aol.com