Special Interests in the Classroom
By Charlene K. Haar
You cannot understand the plight of America’s public schools without understanding the force that exercises the most power over them. No, it’s not the pta. The strongest players in the schoolhouse game are the two teachers’ unions, the National Education Association (nea) and the American Federation of Teachers (aft). Together they enroll about three-fourths of all K-12 public school teachers in the United States. That’s a lot of people power. I estimate nea and aft revenues to be about $1.3 billion annually, not counting their pacs, foundations, and special purpose organizations. That’s a lot of cash to buy influence and create favorable images, and nobody does it better than they do. Mix these ingredients with more than 5,000 well-paid staff (more than half making over $100,000 annually in salary plus benefits), and you have a huge, powerful political machine with enormous influence over educational decisionmakers from the school house to the White House.
On educational, legislative, and political issues, there are no significant differences between the two unions. They are both closely aligned with the Democratic party. Their staffs have been working in the Clinton/Gore re-election campaign since 1995; former staff members hold high-level positions in the Clinton administration, and the nea’s former head lobbyist is running this year’s Democratic national convention.
The nea and aft do differ in membership, resources, structure, and leadership. aft’s membership is more concentrated in large urban centers; the nea is much stronger in suburban and rural areas. Although these demographic differences sometimes result in policy differences, the two unions share basic objectives. In the 1960s and ’70s, when the nea and aft competed over who would represent teachers, their rhetoric exaggerated their differences. Since then, the nea and aft have made a "no-raid" agreement and now are talking merger.
In 1959 the Wisconsin legislature passed the first law granting teachers’ unions the authority to bargain "collectively" to determine terms and conditions of employment. By 1996, 34 states had followed suit. Even where no such law exists, mostly in right-to-work states, the nea and aft enroll hundreds of thousands of members and receive hundreds of millions of dollars in dues. In many states they generate huge revenues from subsidiary organizations they control—insurance operations, data processing centers, retirement homes, credit unions, educational foundations, credit card operations, and real estate holdings.
The unions’ power rests on two state-imposed privileges: a bargaining monopoly and the collection of service fees from nonmember teachers in most states with collective bargaining laws. In those states, all public school teachers are compelled to accept an nea or aft affiliate as their representative when a majority says so. In most of these states, nonmembers must pay the nea and aft for services they don’t want, either by state law or by the contractual agreement between the union and the schoolboard.
Political operatives known as "UniServ directors" act as negotiators for nea’s local affiliates, financed by the national organization, the state affiliates, and sometimes the locals. UniServ directors serve as chief negotiators or consult with local affiliates in negotiations, contract administration, grievance matters, organizing, and political activities. In the aft, local elected officers are expected to negotiate affiliate contracts. National representatives assist when necessary. nea and aft staff members thus legally are the "voice" for public school teachers and for many support personnel. And parents, teachers, taxpayers, and school boards have steadily lost effective control over school management.
School boards ostensibly formulate educational policy. But the terms and conditions of teacher employment are negotiated with the union—and those terms cannot be separated from educational policy. Suppose a school board wants to assign its most experienced teachers to inner-city schools. Is that educational policy? Not to the union. It will treat the proposal as a transfer policy subject to bargaining. With over 70 percent of the nation’s 2.9 million public school teachers working under collective bargaining agreements, their unions obviously play a key role in making and carrying out educational policies.
Because nea and aft dues and fees rise in proportion to members’ salaries, their operatives vigorously pursue salary increases, regardless of any other considerations. When negotiations break down, teachers’ unions seldom hesitate to interrupt the education of youngsters to achieve their objective. As education authority Myron Lieberman—who once ran for president of the aft—puts it, "When the teamsters or auto workers strike, no one doubts that they do so for their benefit; when teachers strike, it is always ‘for the children’ or ‘for education.’"
Combined local, state, and national dues for nea and aft members range from $300 to $700 annually. Most school boards deduct dues from teachers’ pay and forward the money to the union automatically and free of charge. The nea and aft local affiliates keep their share, then divide the rest between their state affiliates and the national headquarters. According to their publications, the national headquarters take in over a quarter of a billion dollars in dues, more than $1 million every working day. But that hefty sum is less than a fifth of the monies going to the state and local affiliates.
What’s good for teachers’ unions is not necessarily good for children and parents. Many nea and aft contracts include provisions that harm students. For example:
• restrictive procedures for evaluating teachers make it difficult to fire incompetent ones
• adverse material in teacher files must be removed, usually after two years, making it difficult to identify teachers who are incompetent or who have undesirable backgrounds
• as a condition of employment, all teachers must join the union or pay agency shop fees; non-compliance requires dismissal
• only persons with education certificates may be hired by the school board; good people with military, business, or professional backgrounds are not permitted to teach
• leave time is excessive, creating discontinuities in an already-limited school year
• teachers receive allowances or tuition reimbursement for taking courses that are irrelevant to their assignments but that permit the teacher to advance on the salary schedule
• salary schedules pay all teachers the same, regardless of grade level, subject, or competency
• assignments are made by seniority, rather than by district needs
• layoffs are based on last-in-first-out rules, regardless of individual merit
• promotions must be filled by appointments from within the bargaining unit, to the exclusion of better-qualified outsiders.
The teachers’ unions also discourage volunteer services if unions are seeking compensation for the same work. Some teachers volunteer anyway, but the dynamics of collective bargaining make it less common than it would be.
Even the occasional union proposal that appears to foster achievement often does the opposite. For instance, the unions invariably propose reductions in class size. The question, though, is not whether reducing class size improves student achievement, but whether the money spent to do it (by hiring more teachers) could be used more effectively some other way, such as to purchase better instructional materials. In a national poll last year, parents rated class size as far less important than the quality of teachers.
The unions’ obstructionist policies have led critics to assign unions much of the blame for students’ poor performance. As one prominent advocate of school choice, Wisconsin state assemblywoman Polly Williams, has repeatedly asked, "What are the public schools accountable for? What good is all this talk of accountability if a child goes there for 12 years and then comes out unable to read and write?"
Others are asking similar questions. At a press conference during the nea’s 1996 convention, the Education Policy Institute and several other organizations called on nea delegates and the media to scrutinize the union. "Investigate the tremendous gap between nea rhetoric and the reality of what the nea and its state and local affiliates are doing," the group implored. nea’s press release shot back: "The nea has a proud history of advocating for legislation that benefits children and schools."
True, the nea certainly does advocate more legislation (read: more federal and state funding) as the solution for the problems of public education. John Berthoud of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution reviewed the nea’s legislative program for Congress and found that, if enacted, it would increase federal spending by at least $702 billion a year. But Berthoud disagreed that the program would benefit children: "For each dollar in new spending on children and education that the nea proposes (over $24 billion annually), it advocates $5.24 in new spending on Social Security." Increasing the welfare state, not improving children’s education, is uppermost on this agenda.
Of late, the image-conscious nea has been de-emphasizing the union sound of its rhetoric—while tightening its grip on American education. nea publications now emphasize "restructuring," "partnerships," and "collective initiatives" instead of "collective bargaining." Yet a top nea priority is to pass collective bargaining laws in states that do not yet have them.
The new rhetoric seems to embrace reform, but parents and taxpayers should beware. With great fanfare, for example, the nea announced its intention to operate five charter schools. Yet any nea charter schools will still be public schools, constrained by union prerogatives that will leave them unresponsive to parents and students.
Despite their rhetoric, the nea and aft routinely sabotage efforts for meaningful reform. In particular, the unions have mounted formidable opposition to school vouchers, privatization, and similar market-oriented reforms within the public system. Both publish step-by-step manuals on how to sabotage school board efforts to contract out for services. Details from orchestrating press coverage to filing law suits are included. While they oppose school board efforts to do so, the aft, the nea, and affiliates with unabashed hypocrisy contract out for services themselves. The unions say "efficiency," "competition," "productivity," and "accountability" would hurt children. Nonsense. The nea and aft are merely protecting themselves at the expense of children.
Nowhere is the unions’ clout more evident and more self-serving than in politics. Every year, the nea and aft invest millions to elect friendly politicians. The nea’s UniServ directors are part of a cadre of union political operatives. More than 1,500 such directors organize political activities in every congressional district in the nation. School boards, judges, county officials, state legislators, and of course congressional candidates and presidents are elected with support from the nea, which actually employs more full-time, paid political operatives than the Democratic and Republican parties combined. The aft has counterparts who perform similar jobs. Both unions recruit candidates, help organize campaigns, sponsor fundraisers, pay for consultants, prepare and pay for advertisements, coordinate voter registration, sponsor rallies, coordinate "volunteer" activities, and get favorable voters to the polls.
Cash contributions to candidates—as opposed to "voluntary assistance"—come from the nea and aft political action committees. The nea established its pac in 1972 and since then has endorsed every Democratic candidate for President. The aft’s Committee on Political Education (aft/cope) overwhelmingly endorses Democratic candidates. The nea trumpets its "bipartisanship," yet by mid-June 1996, nea-pac had endorsed 185 congressional candidates—all Democrats. Together, nea-pac and aft/cope are an $8 million operation. In addition, a network of nea and aft state and local affiliate pacs pour millions more into school board, local, county, judicial, and state legislative races. Members are responding to the call to arms: At its 1996 convention, nea delegates contributed over $724,000 to nea-pac during the five-day meeting.
The unionization of teachers and the political power of the nea and aft mark a basic change in the character of the American labor movement. In 1953, public employees constituted only 6 percent of union membership; now they will soon be the majority. These days, about four of every ten public sector union members are enrolled by the nea or aft. "Public-sector unionism’s durability and ascending growth curve are the result of its virtual immunity from competition and government policy, which enhances its monopoly power," says union-watcher Leo Troy.
That immunity could change after the 1996 elections. State lawmakers have begun to respond to parent and taxpayer concerns over nea and aft domination of education. Legislation to eliminate agency fees and union pac deductions, to restrict mandatory subjects of bargaining, and to create school choice options has been proposed and in some cases enacted. Both the nea and aft acknowledge they are fighting to hold on to power. If the 1996 elections are similar to 1994, expect more legislation to reduce teachers’ unions’ revenues and weaken that power.
With the majority of teachers now unionized, expanding the nea and aft membership is a constant challenge. Rapid growth in the last 30 years has brought the nea to 2.2 million members, the aft to 872,000. Most nea and aft members are teachers. Now the race is on to organize bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and other school employees. Independent unions, as well as a dozen or more afl-cio unions, are competing with the nea and aft to gain the support of these employees.
Meanwhile, tight budgets are forcing school boards to consider contracting out many of these jobs. When janitors, bus drivers, school secretaries, lunchroom workers, and school nurses unite with teachers under the same banner to resist that option, conflicts are inevitable. Although the nea and aft are opposing any such privatization efforts with all their might, school administrators and boards will increasingly insist on their right to determine how services are provided, including the right to use the private sector.
The most important question is not whether the provider of a service is "public" or "private," but whether the service is available under competitive or monopolistic conditions. Private companies are generally more responsive than public employees because they have a powerful incentive to perform: If they don’t, they will lose out to their competitors.
aft president Shanker has said, "If you take certain things like vouchers and replacement of public school teachers by private companies—if these are ‘reforms,’ yes, unions stand in the way." It is safe to say the nea and aft will not get out of the way until they are forced to do so.
Charlene K. Haar is president of the Education Policy Institute and a research associate of the Social Philosophy & Policy Center, Bowling Green State University.
