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A unity Q & A
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Q: What do NEA members have to gain from unifying?
A: Ever since the early 1960s, competition between NEA and AFT has diverted attention – and resources – away from serving children. Over the course of this sometimes bitter and always costly rivalry, NEA has spent tens of millions of dollars in representational battles with AFT – $52 million from 1973 to 1992 alone. In this same period, state affiliate expenditures on the competition with AFT totaled an estimated $60 million. With unity would come an end to this waste of resources and a giant step toward making every dues dollar count for schools and students.
Q: What do NEA members have to lose from unifying?
A: NEA has survived and thrived as an organization for 141 years. Generations of NEA members have proudly belonged to an organization with a long and storied tradition of service to America. What NEA members stand to lose is this connection to the past. If a new organization is created, NEA would cease to exist as a separate organization.
Q: Why now?
A: Serious national discussions about uniting actually go back over a quarter-century. In 1972, NEA and the AFT each formally adopted the unity of all educators as an organizational goal. But the direct catalyst for the current unity talks was a vote taken by delegates to the 1995 NEA Representative Assembly. They adopted a new business item that mandated the NEA president to invite AFT to resume unity discussions.
Q: When would the United Organization begin?
A: If delegates approve the Principles of Unity this summer, the United Organization would come into formal existence by 2002, and NEA and the AFT would cease to exist as separate organizations.
Q: What would the name of the United Organization be?
A: Negotiators have not yet tackled the name question — and won’t before the voting this summer. It would not be called either the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers.
Q: Who would be in charge of the United Organization?
A: The members. The United Organization’s highest decision-makers would be the delegates members elect to the UO convention. These delegates would elect all national officers and all the members of the organization’s Executive Board.
Q: How would governance differ from NEA’s?
A: What would remain most consistent between NEA’s current structure and the United Organization’s structure would be the decision-making supremacy of convention delegates.
What would be most different would be the size of the UO governance bodies that would meet between conventions. The current NEA Executive Committee has nine members, the three officers plus six other members elected at the Representative Assembly.
The Executive Board of the United Organization would have 37 members, all elected by convention delegates. Of the 37, seven would be the national officers.
Similarly, the Leadership Council proposed for the United Organization would be larger – and more diverse in representation – than the current NEA Board of Directors. With approximately 400 members, the Leadership Council would be more than twice the size of the current NEA Board.
Current NEA Board members are elected, with few exceptions, on a geographic, state-by-state basis. The new Leadership Council would continue to have members elected from the states, but representation for other constituencies would be built into the make-up of the Leadership Council.
Q: Would UniServ staff continue to be employed in the United Organization?
A: Yes. The NEA UniServ program has, ever since the early 1970s, moved national dues dollars back to the grassroots level to help fund the cost of staff who deliver services directly to members. The United Organization would continue to provide this funding support for grassroots staff, and no current NEA affiliates would see a decrease in UniServ staff allocations.
Q: Would NEA members lose any services that staff currently provide?
A: No. Joining NEA and AFT together would produce economies of scale that would enable services to be enhanced, not reduced.
Q: Would unity translate into higher dues for individual NEA members?
A: NEA members and AFT members currently pay just about the same national dues. Members in professional education employment are paying $109 annual national dues in NEA and $114 in AFT. The national dues figures for educational support personnel are $56.50 in NEA and $57 in AFT. In a united new organization, the national dues would be no higher for NEA members than what they would have been if NEA remained a separate organization. State and local affiliates of the United Organization would set their own dues levels, just as they do now in both NEA and AFT.
Q: Would current NEA and AFT affiliates have to take action to join the United Organization?
A: No. All existing NEA and AFT affiliates would automatically become affiliates of the United Organization.
Q: Would creation of a new organization force existing NEA state affiliates to merge with AFT affiliates?
A: No. The United Organization would encourage current NEA and AFT state affiliates to merge, but the decision whether to create a united single state affiliate in these cases would be up to the state affiliates involved.
Q: Would people who don’t work in education be allowed to join the United Organization?
A: Yes, in two different categories – first, students studying to become educators and educators who have retired from active service; and second, professionals and technical staff within state and local government and health care. AFT currently represents about 85,000 professional and technical employees in state and local government and health care. NEA represents about 36,000 state government employees who work in educational settings – prison staff who tutor inmates, for example.
Q: How many members does the AFL-CIO have?
A: The AFL-CIO has affiliates, not individual members. The 72 unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO have 13 million members. There are more than 4 million professional employees in AFL-CIO affiliated unions. These professionals include scientists, engineers, and technicians employed by local and state governments as well as professionals in health care and other private industries.
Q: Who pays dues to the AFL-CIO?
A: No union members, as individuals, pay dues to the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO’s affiliated unions, as organizations, send the AFL-CIO a per capita payment based on their number of members. The current “per cap” is 45 cents per member per month.
Q: What authority does the AFL-CIO have over affiliated unions?
A: None. The AFL-CIO is a voluntary federation of autonomous unions, each of which controls its own affairs.
Posted April 3, 1998
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