Rare News Desk
The American Federation of Teachers suffers from diminishing influence these days, but at least it can still claim that it is adding more rank-and-file members.
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However, there is a wrinkle. Very few of these new members are actually teachers.
Lately, the AFT has been ginning up growth by expanding to nurses, other public-sector employees, and even staffers working for the United Nations. For teachers represented by the AFT, it is another sign that perhaps they should abandon the nation’s second-largest teachers union for something better.
Between 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, the AFT’s rank-and-file membership increased by 50 percent, according to an analysis of filings with the U.S. Department of Labor by Dropout Nation. Few of these new members are working in classrooms.
Among the AFT’s new rank-and-file members: 112,000 nurses working in hospitals and in schools throughout the country. Thanks to an affiliation deal it struck with National Federation of Nurses, the AFT is now the second-largest nursing union (after the 150,000-member National Nurses United) and a competitor with the much-larger Service Employees International Union for supremacy in healthcare.
Another group of AFT members is the United Nations Staff Union, which represents the bureaucrats working at its headquarters in New York City. Over the past few months, AFT has been active in helping the affiliate (along with unions for 60,000 U.N. workers) battle with the intergovernmental organization over a new collective bargaining agreement.
Then there are teachers working in early childhood education programs, a fast-growing group thanks to efforts by Democrat and Republican politicians to increase funding for preschools and daycare centers.
The AFT scored a possible victory this month when Congress approved an updated version of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act, the federal law that governs the $5.3 billion spent every year on providing prekindergarten and day care programs for poor families.
Driving the AFT’s efforts to unionize workers out of education is the reality that there is little growth to be had in public education. A 25-year teacher hiring spree, which saw the number of teachers rise by 45 percent, has come to an end. The current economic malaise, along with the retirement of Baby Boomers, and successful efforts in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Michigan to stop teachers unions from forcing school employees to join their ranks, is hitting the Big Two unions hard.
The AFT is particularly vulnerable. Unlike the much-larger National Education Association, the union represents teachers in big city districts that are the epicenters of school reform efforts that threaten its bottom line.
The AFT generated $203 million in revenue (excluding $117 million it borrowed and repaid from its line of credit) in 2012-2013, a 15 percent decline over the $238 million generated (excluding $88 million in debt borrowings) during the previous year.
So the AFT has decided to expand into every part of the public sector, borrowing from the growth-at-any-cost model that has made SEIU the nation’s second-largest labor union. The union already represented school nurses in its rank-and-file. Expanding into healthcare came naturally.
Meanwhile the AFT is working overtime to increase the number of part-time union members paying into its coffers. The AFT boosted the number of so-called one-eighth members increased by a ten-fold, from 3,453 members in 2011-2012 to 33,042 in 2012-2013, while increasing the number of one-quarter members by a three-fold in the same period.
While they don’t pay nearly as much into the coffers as fulltime rank-and-filers, they help keep the union afloat.
The AFT is also benefiting from the efforts of locals such as the United Federation of Teachers in New York City to reward retiring teachers for paying dues. Retirees now make up 21 percent of AFT members.
None of this is good for teachers within the AFT’s rank-and-file, who now make up just 46 percent of membership. Because the AFT has to attend to the demands of workers outside of education, it is even less focused on classroom concerns than before.
Particularly for younger teachers, who make up the majority of classroom teachers within the AFT, the union’s greater concerns for growth over helping them improve the teaching profession will likely lead them to leave when the U.S. Supreme Court inevitably strikes down the four decade-old Abood decision giving them the ability to forcibly collect dues.
But this diverse portfolio is also a problem for nurses and other workers now in the AFT fold. The union can now use their dues to help out teachers at their expense. This is clear in the case of the New York State Public Employees Federation, a longtime AFT affiliate (as well as of SEIU) which represents the Empire State’s civil servants.
Within the past two years, the union has poured plenty into the coffers of senators on the state senate’s education committee. Nurses and others can count on AFT President Randi Weingarten encouraging their locals to do to the same, benefiting them hardly at all in the process.
Ultimately, teachers, nurses, and other public employees will find that AFT stands for American Federation for Taking Their Money.
