CHAPTER 8 -- Merger IssuesThis chapter is devoted to various organizational and governance differences between the NEA and AFT. These differences must be resolved to effectuate a merger. It must be emphasized, however, that the differences to be discussed may be overshadowed by many others as serious merger talks proceed. Obviously, one of the most critical issues will be who gets what job in NEA/AFT, but the resolution of this issue will undoubtedly be deferred until a basic agreement on structure and governance is in sight. After all, it would be foolish to negotiate personnel issues before there was any likelihood that the organizational issues had been resolved, or were near solution. In fact, without prior agreement on the structure and govern-ance issues, the negotiating teams would not know what positions were to be filled, let alone who would fill them.
Professionalism as a merger issue
Long before the 1993 NEA convention, many NEA members regarded affiliation with the AFL-CIO as incompatible with professional status. In fact, although most NEA members accept the fact that the NEA is a union, some NEA members still oppose merger on the supposition that the NEA would lose its character as a "professional" organization by merging with the AFT. To understand the relevant issues, we must first clarify the different meanings of "professional" (Lieberman, 1956).
The term "professional" is frequently applied to or denotes expertise, regardless of other considerations. The term is also often applied to individuals who exhibit a strong devotion to clients or consumers. In these contexts, "professional" refers to individual characteristics that are not necessarily related to any particular occupation or organizational structure. Thus one might refer to an editor as a "professional," meaning that the individual resolves editorial and business issues promptly and efficiently.
For most practical purposes, merger is irrelevant to these definitions of "professional." If an individual teacher is highly competent, the term "professional" applies, merger or no merger. Similarly, if a teacher shows a deep concern for pupil welfare, the term would be applicable independently of organizational issues. In practice, however, the concept of dedicated teachers as "true professionals" has occasionally come into disrepute within the teacher unions; in some situations, "professional" is a pejorative term, especially in the AFT. Thus at the 1981 Annual Convention, AFT President Albert Shanker commented that "a professional is the closest thing to a propped up dead body that I know of." Shanker's comment illustrates the union tendency to equate "professionalism" with meek acceptance of administrative edicts, especially on terms and conditions of employment.
Despite Shanker's denigration of "professional," teacher union
publications, conferences and policy statements often express a
teacher yearning to be considered "professional" in one sense or
another. Thus, referring to a brochure entitled How Collective
Bargaining Works, the AFT Publications catalog states that
"special emphasis is placed on the AFT's use of collective bargaining
to improve professionalism." Referring to a brochure on the obstacles
teachers face, the catalog mentions "commitment to education reform
and professionalism for teachers" (AFT Publications Catalog,
1992). These sentiments may simply reflect a vague wish to be a
prestigious
well-paid occupational group. In any event, we shall adopt and follow
the definition proposed by economic historian Richard H. Tawney, to
wit, "a profession may be defined most simply as a trade which is
organized, incompletely, no doubt, but genuinely, for the performance
of function" (Tawney, 1920). However, it is essential to recognize
that Tawney assumed that protection of clients/consumers was one of
the functions of a profession.
According to the foregoing concept of the professions, a wide range of occupations could be "professions." For instance, when most citizens need automobile repairs, they must depend on the recommendations of automobile mechanics. The latter frequently have opportunities to advance their own economic interests by recommending services and parts that the car owner does not really need. The situation is similar to the one in which physicians might prescribe drugs that augment physician income but are not helpful to patients. The practical difference is (or was) that pharmacists, not physicians, sell drugs to patients, thereby lessening physician incentives to prescribe drugs on the basis of economic benefits to the physicians.
The suggested concept of professionalism is more applicable to fee takers than to salaried employees, such as teachers. With salaried employees, the employer/consumer has ample opportunities to evaluate the services and to adopt safeguards against unethical conduct. It should be emphasized, however, that under the proposed definition, there are no pejorative implications to the absence of professional status. Professional status is not related to level of education, autonomy in the workplace, or practitioner skill and knowledge but only to whether the occupational group is organized to protect the consumers of the services. Teachers are highly organized, but the purpose of their organizations is to advance the interests of teachers, not of students, parents, taxpayers, or the public at large. Of course, teachers characterize (and often sincerely believe) that their organizational efforts are devoted to the welfare of students or the public, but all interest groups characterize their efforts this way.
Legally and practically, unions are organizations established to protect and defend the interests of their members, not consumers or clients. Of course, unions sometimes act to protect consumers in ways that do not conflict with their producer role, but this is not a major union activity. On this view of professionalism, affiliation with the AFL-CIO is irrelevant to professional status. It may be relevant to public perceptions of teachers as an occupational group, but it is irrelevant to professional status as we have defined it. According to the suggested concept of "profession," the NEA abandoned the rationale for professional status when it became a union (Lieberman/Hostetler 1980, 1989). Despite its code of ethics, the NEA adheres to the view that it is the employer's (school administration's) responsibility to discipline teachers who are incompetent or act unethically. The teacher unions cannot serve as prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge when teachers are accused of misconduct. The effort to do so makes more sense in the fee-taking professions, where the employment relationship is too intermittent and too limited to enable employers to protect themselves from incompetent or unethical conduct. This is not the case with full-time salaried employees who work for a single employer; the latter should be able to deal with misconduct or incompetence in appropriate ways.
Teachers, like union members generally, join unions and pay dues for protective purposes. If their protector becomes their prosecutor, to whom do teachers accused of misconduct turn for representation? For better or for worse, teacher bargaining has laid to rest the idea of education as a self-governing profession; merger and/or affiliation with the AFL-CIO are irrelevant to this issue. A small minority of teachers in the NEA will oppose merger and affiliation with the AFL-CIO on the grounds that these things are contrary to professionalism; their misplaced beliefs will be countered by the equally misplaced claim that merger and affiliation are the path to "true professional status." Be that as it may, NEA and AFT leaders as well as most union members accord the highest priority to the protective role of unions, and the dynamics of teacher bargaining and union governance would propel them in this direction even if they opposed it.
To be fully effective, a union must avoid competition to perform the work done by union members at a lower rate. For this reason, unions discourage contributed services if the union is seeking or plans to seek compensation for the kind of work involved. This is not to say unionized teachers never do more than what they are contractually required to do. Of course, some do. The point is, however, that the dynamics of unionization and collective bargaining weaken the tendency to perform beyond the legal requirements of the job. To illustrate, suppose that because of budgetary pressures, a school district cannot pay teachers to supervise various extracurricular activities. The teacher who volunteers to supervise the activities without additional compensation is likely to be criticized by other teachers for doing so. In their mind the contributed effort sets a bad example; as the administration ponders what items to cut, it will be more likely to cut the extracurricular budget if it believes that teachers will supervise extracurricular activities for nothing or for a lower stipend. Or let us assume that the union is negotiating for payment to teachers to meet with parents in the evening, or on Saturdays. The teachers will naturally feel that the way to achieve such payment is not to have the service performed without it. Teachers who agree to meet with parents without pay weaken the union's argument in this regard. In short, any time a teacher is willing to contribute his or her services, there is an erosion or potential erosion of union solidarity on getting paid more for doing less work.
As a matter of fact, the tendency of unionization to discourage contributed services applies even to services contributed by parents. To illustrate, consider an actual situation involving a union representing support personnel in a district forced to undergo severe economic retrenchment. Because of financial exigencies, the district was forced to lay off a nonteaching employee who was responsible for financial management of the student bookstore. As a result, the bookstore, which had been a source of revenue for student activities, was forced to shut down.
Upon learning of the situation, a group of parents volunteered to contribute the services that had formerly been provided by the aforesaid district employee. When the bookstore reopened with parent volunteers, however, the union representing the support personnel filed unfair labor practice charges against the district for utilizing the contributed services. The charge was that the district had contracted out unit work without first bargaining on it to impasse with the union. Among the arguments made in its defense, the district pointed out that by the time the bargaining and the impasse procedures were exhausted and the district was free to act unilaterally, it expected to have sufficient funds to rehire the bookstore clerk. The district's argument was to no avail; a hearing officer upheld the union's charges, thereby preventing the district from utilizing contributed help from the parents in operating the bookstore (California School Employees Association and its South Lake Tahoe Chapter No. 286 v. Lake Tahoe Unified School District, 1983).
The NEA's approach to professional ethics reflects its union orientation to ethical issues. Prior to its becoming a union, the NEA had a code of professional ethics, but it was largely a collection of platitudes (Lieberman, 1956). The items deemed "unethical" included such conduct as breaking one's contract to accept a better job in another district. Not only was the role of the school employer ignored but specific items in the code frequently revealed a management orientation. In the 1960s the NEA tried to draft and enforce a more meaningful code of ethics. This effort could not overcome the basic problems. First, NEA members did not want to accept any serious restrictions on their activities, and second, the practical problems of having the union exercise a role as prosecutor and judge with respect to members who have paid for defensive purposes, were insuperable.
Essentially the code underwent still another metamorphosis in 1975. Actions that weaken union discipline and unity, such as "preventing the practice of the profession by unqualified persons," became a focal point of unethical conduct (NEA Handbook, 1993-1994). Essentially, this is where the matter stands; to satisfy the popular view that professionals have a code of ethics, the NEA has one, but the code is little more than a rhetorical gesture to maintain the image of professional status.
Guarantees of minority participation
The resolution on merger talks adopted by the NEA provides that "any organization that is proposed shall guarantee minority group participation in the governance and operation of said organization." In contrast, the AFT's constitution includes no such provision. As a matter of fact, during the time the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) was affiliated with both the NEA and AFT, it tried to eliminate the minority guarantees from the NEA constitution. Its failure to achieve this objective was instrumental in its withdrawal from the NEA.
Insofar as we know, the NEA has embraced ethnic quotas more extensively than any other major organization in the United States. Some of the relevant provisions in the NEA's constitution and bylaws are as follows:
In contrast, minority participation in AFT affairs is resolved politically, not by constitutional provisions. Even without any governance provisions on the issue, the 40-member AFT Executive Council includes a significant proportion of black members. Many if not all will oppose the guarantees in the NEA governance structure. The minorities in the NEA are more likely to support them or split sharply on the issue. NEA leadership may find itself in a quandary if there is significant minority opposition to eliminating the quotas. In that case, a vote to eliminate them runs the risk of alienating minority support within the NEA.
Note that both the Democratic and Republican parties professed to oppose quotas during the debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The main issue in the debate was whether the proposed legislation would have led to quotas even though it did not explicitly require or authorize them. President Bush and the Republicans in Congress insisted that the legislation was a "quota bill"; the Democrats denied that the legislation would have this effect. Thus the argument was not over the undesirability of quotas but whether the legislation would lead to them.
In the instant case, however, ethnic quotas are clearly mandated by the NEA's constitution and bylaws. As a matter of fact, one can easily visualize a situation in which the NEA convention has to grapple with such questions as "Who is black?" or "Who is a Native American?" Suppose, for example, a candidate with one black grandparent is elected to the NEA presidency. Would the election of such person fulfill the language and intent of the NEA's constitutional provision requiring that "legally permissible" steps be taken "to elect a member of an ethnic-minority group"? The prospect of an organization representing millions of teachers having to debate and resolve such issues seems appalling, but it has not been considered by the NEA or its state and local affiliates.
The NEA's vulnerability on the minority guarantees is rather
obvious. Aren't NEA delegates able or willing to evaluate candidates
on the basis of qualifications, not ethnicity? Why the concern over
ethnic but not religious or other kinds of invidious discrimination?
Is the NEA prepared to decide who is black, Hispanic, Asian-American,
whatever, if someone challenges a nomination or an election outcome
on the basis that individuals of mixed ancestry have not been
categorized properly? And so on. The merger problem is not whether to
get rid of the minority guarantees;
it is how to eliminate them without appearing to be making a major
concession to the AFT on what is supposed to be a nonnegotiable NEA
position.
Inasmuch as the case for eliminating the guarantees is even stronger now than in the 1970s, it is difficult to see how the AFT can compromise on the issue. Strategically, it has no reason to do so; the NEA will face a media disaster unless it finds a way to eliminate the guarantees.
Aside from legal action, which would be greatly embarrassing to the NEA regardless of the outcome, the parties might simply agree to sunset any existing minority guarantees. The AFT would be foolish to concede more, since the NEA's ethnic quotas are likely to evoke widespread criticism and dismay when they are widely publicized outside the union. Perhaps even more important, AFT President Albert Shanker has expressed strong opposition to the quotas, and he would lose a great deal of external support and prestige by compromising on the issue.
The secret ballot
issueIn authorizing merger talks, the NEA required that any merged organization that is proposed include "the use of the secret ballot to elect the officers and change the governance documents of said organization." This position differs from the AFT's.
Both the NEA and AFT are subject to the Landrum-Griffin Act, a federal statute that regulates the conduct of unions in the private sector. However, inasmuch as both NEA and AFT have organized some private sector employees, they are subject to the provisions of the Landrum-Griffin Act; most of their state and local affiliates are not.
The Landrum-Griffin election provisions require that national unions follow one of two procedures regarding the election of delegates to union conventions. If delegates to union conventions are elected by secret ballot, voting at the conventions can be by open ballot. If delegates to conventions are not elected by secret ballot, their votes at union conventions must be by secret ballot (U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1990).
Both the NEA and AFT require that delegates to their national convention shall be elected by secret ballot. In addition, Article VI 1(a) of the NEA Constitution provides that "The executive officers and the six (6) members of the Executive Committee shall be nominated and elected at large by the Representative Assembly by majority vote and by secret ballot for each individual office."
There is hardly any mystery why the AFT is opposed to the secret ballot at AFT conventions. After gaining bargaining rights in New York City, the United Federation of Teachers enrolled about one-third of AFT membership. Because it was practically impossible to be elected to AFT office without UFT support, the UFT preferred open voting at AFT conventions. Under open voting, it was impossible for candidates to renege on their commitments or to conceal a vote that displeased the leadership of the UFT. The use of the secret ballot in UFT elections to choose delegates to AFT conventions posed no problem for UFT officers and leaders. They controlled union publications and meetings and could otherwise render it all but impossible for dissident candidates to oust them in secret ballot elections. Thus the open ballot ensured control of the AFT by the UFT, led by Albert Shanker, its president. Although the UFT now constitutes a lower percentage of all AFT members, it is practically impossible to deviate broadly from the positions of Shanker's caucus and be elected to AFT office. This situation led some NEA leaders to fear a similar outcome if the secret ballot for NEA officers at the convention is dropped in the merger agreement. It is difficult to say precisely what impact this could have politically in NEA/AFT; it is possible that a Shanker led caucus might gain more at the local level than it would lose at the convention level. In a large diverse merged organization, there will be considerable pressure to have a voting procedure that enables influential leaders to monitor any deals they make. In any event, although it meets federal requirements, the NEA position is likely to be dropped in any merger agreement. One reason is that even in the NEA, the use of the secret ballot at the convention is restricted to the election of officers and to constitutional amendments. Furthermore, there is an accountability problem with the secret ballot on convention issues. Imagine trying to hold a member of Congress accountable if his/her vote on constitutional amendments was by secret ballot. Or suppose that the vote for Speaker of the House of Representatives was by secret ballot. Everyone recognizes that elected representatives are not entitled to a secret ballot, if they are to be accountable to their electorate.
Although the secret ballot issue had not been resolved in the
merger talks by early 1994, open voting at the convention of the
merged organization appears to be the most likely outcome.
Undoubtedly, delegates sometimes vote differently, depending on
whether the vote is public or secret. Delegates may cut deals that
would displease their constituents; this is much more likely to
happen under a secret ballot. To be sure, a secret ballot also
enables delegates to stand on principle when doing so would be
politically risky. On balance, however, the secret ballot is much
more likely
to be abused than it is to be used to support principled but
unpopular positions.
Staff vs.
membership controlThe NEA and AFT differ in their approaches to membership control. The NEA and its state affiliates have adopted term limits for Association officers. As of early 1994, the NEA limited its executive officers and executive committee to two three-year terms. At the same time, the state associations affiliated with the NEA typically imposed term limits on their elected offi-cers; the latter are usually elected for one or two terms of one or two years and then supposedly return to their regular positions. Some state officers use their term of office to line up an organizational position but the ideal is supposed to be a return to the classroom. To provide continuity, the state associations employ an executive secretary or executive director who is nominally subordinate to the elected officers.
In contrast, the AFT, like most unions, provides for the election of full-time officers who can run for reelection as often as they wish. Albert Shanker has been AFT president since 1974, and many members of the AFT Executive Council have held that office for a decade or more.
The widespread belief in the NEA is that its structure maximizes membership control over staff, whereas the AFT structure supposedly weakens it. This belief was evident in the opposition to the merger talks at the 1993 convention. Although widely held, there is little evidence to support the belief, and there is a great deal of evidence to contradict it. In the past at least, the executive secretaries in the NEA structure have been every bit as dominant and as long lasting as union officers who are reelected for several terms of office.
In recent years, the executive secretaries have lost some of their power in the state associations. One reason is the erosion of term limits on the elected officers. Obviously, the longer elected officers can remain in office, the less influence is exercised by staff members.
Suppose a teacher is elected president of a state association for a one-year term. In many cases, the teacher does not even move to the state capital where the state association is located. The failure to be present on a daily basis obviously weakens the teacher/president's day to day control. If the teacher moves to the association headquarters, the teacher must also move back, a time-consuming process in a one or two year span. The teacher is usually inundated with a host of ceremonial duties, and his or her executive assistants, if any, owe their primary allegiance to the executive secretary, who will be present long after the teacher/president has left the scene.
It is practically impossible for such rotating presidents to conduct a sustained effort to achieve a policy objective; each president adopts a new theme on taking office or running for office, and the previous one is shunted aside, just as the incumbents will be in the future. Understandably, officers elected this way become heavily dependent on the staff they are supposed to direct and control.
This is not so true of the national NEA as it was when NEA officers were elected annually for one year terms. From 1976 to 1983, NEA presidents were limited to two two-year terms and from 1984 to 1990, to three two-year terms, and since 1991, to two three-year terms. With the increasing longevity of the elected officers, the position of Executive Secretary, now Executive Director, has receded in importance although it is still a very important one. By and large, the state associations affiliated with the NEA have also been moving to longer and more frequent terms of office for elected leaders.
In or out of education, there is no evidence that the NEA structure results in greater membership control. After all, when the elected officials come through a revolving door, it is virtually impossible for them to develop a sustained effort to achieve any substantive objective. The media and politicians prefer to deal with the executive secretaries, who are here today and will be here tomorrow. At the same time, the elective offices tend to be honorific positions handed out more to reward or honor activists than to move the association's program forward.
This is not to say that there is much membership control under either structure. Under both structures the idea of membership control is hazy to begin with. What are the criteria by which one measures it? What data demonstrates the superiority of the revolving officer structure? In practice, the issue is debated in vague generalities from which partisans on both sides draw whatever conclusions they wish. It is hardly open to dispute, however, that in most organizations with annual or biannual term limits, the executive secretaries and association staff tend to dominate or overshadow the elected officers.
The status of
support personnelAccording to an AFT brochure published in January 1993:
For years, NEA prided itself as an elite professional association and deliberately excluded non-teaching school employees from its membership. Anyone who wasn't a classroom teacher or a school administrator was considered a "non-professional" and unworthy of membership. Faced with a declining teacher membership in the 1970s, due to layoffs and the growth of the AFT, the NEA finally began to accept some categories of school employees as limited members.
NEA has a long history of disrespect and discrimination against its school employee members. NEA treated its school employee members as second-class citizens by not allowing them the right to vote in NEA elections or on NEA policy, or to hold NEA office until 1980. (NEA teachers, administrators, student members and even retired members had long enjoyed these basic union rights.) (AFT, 1993).
The AFT brochure then goes on to assert that the Federation has always offered support personnel full membership rights but that the NEA did so only under legal duress. The brochure alleges that as of September 1989:
1. State associations (Georgia, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee) took dues from support personnel but did not allow them to vote or hold union office.
2. State associations in Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Rhode Island, West Virginia sell services to organizations of support personnel in order to avoid having support personnel participate in the affairs of the teacher union.
3. State associations in California, Nevada, Nebraska, provide publications but no bargaining, legal, or insurance services for support personnel.
4. State associations in Minnesota and Utah do not allow membership to support personnel (AFT, 1989).
Inasmuch as the AFT brochure refers to conditions existing in 1989, the conditions referred to probably have been changed in at least some states. Otherwise, the AFT would not have referred to them in the past tense. Even so, the policies of the NEA and AFT are not fully consistent with respect to organizing support personnel. It is very doubtful that the AFT would accept a state option that might weaken the rights of its 100,000 or more school related personnel. Such an option in the merger agreement would risk defections by support personnel to other unions or to the independent associations of support personnel.
The history of the relationships between teachers and support personnel sheds some light on the organizational differences. The large cities organized by the AFT tended to have heavier concentrations of paraprofessionals. Indeed, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the AFT and AFSCME were competing for bargaining rights for paraprofessionals in New York City. The United Federation of Teachers offered AFSCME jurisdiction over school related personnel outside the classroom while the AFT would or-ganize the educational workers inside of them. Most of the paraprofessionals in the New York City schools were blacks. Anticipating black resentment against the UFT over its strike against the dismissal of white teachers and administrators by predominantly black community boards of education, AFSCME rejected the offer but the UFT won the representation election. Within the UFT, there was some resentment against the inclusion of the paraprofessionals in the UFT but Shanker's views on the issue prevailed.
At that time, most NEA affiliates showed little interest in organizing school related personnel. Consequently, the AFT established a large beachhead on this front. Over time, state and local affiliates of the NEA came to accept, or at least to tolerate, the inclusion of school related personnel in their organizations.
It is likely that merger will provide for little or no restriction on the inclusion of school related personnel; we expect a vigorous effort by NEA/AFT to organize them in every state where such workers are not already in the NEA or AFT. The upshot will be a vast industrial union, that is, a union that includes all the skills and crafts within a single school district. There may be some holdouts in the NEA, but it is difficult to see how they can prevail. The AFT cannot accept less than it now provides support personnel; to do so would risk their defection to a different union or association of support personnel. AFT rhetoric criticizes the alleged second class citizenship of support employees in the NEA and charges that the NEA continues to organize such personnel only because of declines in teacher members and dues revenues. Perhaps, but AFT leaders are also aware of the potential revenues and political influence provided by the inclusion of school related personnel.
The NEA's tax
exemptionThe NEA is one of a small group of nonprofit organizations, such as the American Legion and the American Red Cross, that are chartered by Congress. The NEA's charter exempts its property in the District of Columbia from federal taxation provided that the exemption "not apply to any property which . . . shall not be applied to the educational purpose of the corporation."
Unquestionably, the 1907 Congress would not have exempted the 1993 NEA's property from federal taxation. The NEA that was chartered by Congress in 1907 was an organization devoted to disseminating information about education; as the AFT has pointed out, the NEA's union role and lobbying activities violate both the spirit and intent of the purposes under which the tax exemption was granted. In 1978, the Internal Revenue Service reclassified the NEA from a "professional association" to a labor union; and in 1979, a federal court held that the NEA was a labor union subject to the Landrum-Griffin Act. Nevertheless, when the AFT subsequently questioned the continuation of the NEA's tax exempt status, the Director of Finance for the District of Columbia astonishingly asserted that "the activities of the organization and the use made of the property is consistent with the purposes and objects provided in their Articles of Incorporation."
What is especially interesting here is that under President Albert Shanker, the AFT sought to remove the exemption but in a way that did not leave AFT's fingerprints on the action. Indeed, on this issue, the AFT was willing to work with "right wing" forces that both the NEA and AFT normally condemn for their alleged hostility to public education and to teacher unions.
Will the AFT merger team now try to persuade the NEA to forego its tax exemption? In view of the probability that the AFT will benefit from the exemption, this is not very likely. Clearly the NEA has protected its exemption from District of Columbia taxes; although District of Columbia officials take a benign view of the issue, District taxpayers may see it differently. Ironically, both unions have expressed opposition to tax exemptions that adversely affect school revenues, as is certainly the case regarding the NEA's exemption.
The tax exemption is not the most important merger issue, but it illustrates how little the public or the rank and file members of the NEA and AFT understand what is at stake in the merger talks. The question of who has the authority to remove the tax exemption is a complex one. As the AFT recognized, it would not be necessary to change or revoke the NEA's Charter to eliminate the exemption. Probably, it would only be necessary to have the appropriate District of Columbia officials rule that the NEA was not in conformity with the conditions under which the exemption was granted. Legally, Congress could change or revoke the charter, but in view of NEA's influence in Congress, Congressional action to eliminate the exemption is extremely improbable. The NEA undoubtedly has considerable influence among the District of Columbia officials as well as among Congress, but at least the District would benefit from eliminating the exemption.
Merger and
organizational differences: Concluding observationsAs emphasized at the outset, the organizational issues that have surfaced will not necessarily be the most difficult to resolve. Furthermore, many agreements might be unacceptable in isolation but acceptable as part of a comprehensive package. As of early 1994, the NEA and AFT teams holding the merger talks seemed to be making good progress, but very little about the specifics has been made available for rank and file or media consumption. The NEA's Representative Assembly placed so much emphasis on being informed about the progress of the merger talks that it may be difficult, especially for the NEA team, to continue in this mode before the talks have concluded. Until that time, however, the resolution of specific differences must take into account the possibility that any agreements may be modified by others not yet reached or announced. Similarly, any conclusions about the merger should be based on an analysis of the entire merger agreement. We surmise that, as in most situations of this nature, the career interests of leading parties to the merger will play a significant role in its provisions, but the specifics may not be known for years to come, if they become known at all.
Copyright 1994, Charlene Haar, Myron Lieberman, Leo Troye-mail (info@educationpolicy.org)