The Chronicle of Higher Education
Date: November 16, 1994
Section: Personal & Professional
Page: A25
By Mary Crystal Cage
For decades, the local chapters of the nation's two largest teachers' unions fought one another for the right to represent instructors at Minnesota's technical colleges. Now a spirit of cooperation has replaced the competition.
Today, Bruce Hemstad and Bob Menne, two former union rivals, are co-presidents of the United Technical College Educators. They are traveling across the state as a team to answer questions from instructors about the year-old union, a merger of the local affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
The two have discovered that any concerns teachers once had about joining forces with their adversaries have faded. "The questions being asked are about bread-and-butter issues," says Mr. Menne, who is the former president of an A.F.T.-affiliated union.
Mr. Hemstad, who used to head an N.E.A.-affiliated group, says that in the past, the unions waged brutal campaigns to win representation rights at individual campuses. "It was costly and very demoralizing," he says. "Finally we realized those sorts of things were self-defeating."
Many faculty members and teachers across the country say they feel the same way. Indeed, the grassroots interest in combining local operations in Minnesota and elsewhere prompted the national officers of the N.E.A. and A.F.T. to appoint a joint committee in 1993 to draft a plan for a nationwide merger. The A.F.T. has been in favor of the idea for years. The N.E.A. is expected to present a recommendation on the plan to its members in 1995.
Unlike some unions whose memberships are dwindling, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers say their rolls are growing. The N.E.A. has more than 2.2 million members; the A.F.T. has more than 850,000. Many people in both unions say that the need to confront common problems, such as state budget cuts, now far overshadow the interest in building separate organizations by stealing members from one another.
In a statement about the merger talks, Albert Shanker, president of the A.F.T., said: "There's a lot that needs to be done to improve the quality of American public education. It makes sense for us to join forces on those issues, instead of expending talent and resources in battles with each other."
College and university people, however, will play a minor role in whatever accord is reached. Only 100,000 A.F.T. members and 85,000 N.E.A. members work at postsecondary institutions.
Still, the unions, along with the American Association of University Professors, which is the bargaining agent for about 20,000 faculty members, represent a significant proportion of university professors. More than half of the 414,000 full-time professors at public institutions and about 6 per cent of the 179,000 at private colleges work under union contracts.
James E. Perley, president of the A.A.U.P., says that if the teachers' unions merge, "it will probably change the nature of negotiating in higher education. But it will be in ways that are difficult to predict."
Frank R. Annunziato, director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, says the new union would be the nation's largest. "That would have consequences in education, legislation, and political action," he says. His center is at Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York.
Many educators are attracted by the idea of a merger. Joan-Marie Shelley, president of the United Educators of San Francisco, says that merging the schoolteachers' unions there in 1989 has allowed them to focus on crucial issues, such as winning voter approval of an increase of the local sales tax in 1991. The increase provides extra money for city schools and community colleges in San Francisco.
Until last year, some faculty members at Eastern Washington University belonged to the A.F.T. while others were members of the N.E.A., but neither group had a contract with the university. The two units have created a joint union that they hope will give them the bargaining clout they need to negotiate their first contract.
In addition, state officers of the Minnesota Education Association and the Minnesota Federation of Teachers are drafting an agreement that would lead to the creation of a single statewide teacher and faculty-member union that would have nearly 80,000 members.
Says Judy Schaubach, president of the Minnesota Education Association: "We need collegial action, not collegial war."
If the Minnesota state affiliates merge, the move will be voluntary. A 1991 state law, however, was the impetus for cooperation between the Minnesota technical-college unions. The law created a single governing board for 62 public colleges and required the board to negotiate with a single union for technical-college instructors. That left the unions with two choices: fight or merge. They chose the latter.
At the first meeting to discuss merging the technical-college unions, says Sandra Peterson, president of the Minnesota Federation of Teachers, "You could have cut the air with a knife. But at the end of three months, they were together."
Many university professors in Florida also think a nationwide merger makes sense, says Kris Anderson, president of the United Faculty of Florida. Her union, an N.E.A. affiliate, represents faculty members at 11 universities and six community colleges.
While Ms. Anderson's group is the largest faculty union in the state, professors at other Florida colleges are represented by the American Federation of Teachers or the American Association of University Professors. "It doesn't make sense to have three organizations representing higher education," she says.
Despite the growing interest in a merger, some N.E.A. members strongly oppose affiliation with the American Federation of Teachers. Part of that opposition stems from historic differences between the two groups. The N.E.A. is a professional association that gradually became more involved in union activities. The A.F.T., which is a member of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., is a union that gradually became more interested in professional development for its members.
The two unions also have different governance structures. For instance, A.F.T. officers have unlimited terms; N.E.A. officers do not.
Edward Gallagher, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, says 94 per cent of the teachers in his state belong to the N.J.E.A. "There is little to be gained by a merger," he says.
Some predict that the N.E.A. might adopt an alternative to a nationwide merger because of opposition from state affiliates, like the one in New Jersey. It might adopt rules, for example, that make it easier for local and state affiliates to merge on an individual basis.
One opponent of such a strategy is Gregory S. Nash, president of the N.E.A. of New York. His unit had 110,000 members before it merged with the A.F.T. affiliate in 1972. The merger was dissolved in 1976, and today the N.E.A. affiliate has only 38,000 members. The A.F.T. affiliate, which had about 60,000 members in 1972, now has 330,000. Mr. Nash says the unions merged because New York was in the midst of a budget crisis and public labor unions were under attack. But the new union eventually severed its ties with the National Education Association.
He says a merger must occur on the national level to be effective. "You can't have a lot of different sets of operating procedures across the country," he says. "Those things last for a period of years, but they don't last forever."
Patrick Nichelson, president of the California Faculty Association, an N.E.A. affiliate, says the feelings among his members run from neutral to positive regarding a national merger. Mr. Nichelson, a professor of religious studies at California State University at Northridge, says: "The logic of it is just self-evident."
About 10 years ago, the American Federation of Teachers lost an election to the National Education Association to represent California State University System professors by "a handful of votes," he says. Not only were A.F.T. members welcomed into the California Faculty Association; many of them are now officers of the union.
Unlike some N.E.A. affiliates, the California union is a member of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Mr. Nichelson says that its ties to organized labor have been beneficial because of labor's political clout.
"We might be sanguine about merger out here," he adds. "On the West Coast, particularly in higher education, the N.E.A. is so strong that the A.F.T. locals are not seen as a threat. It just makes sense to us to work together."