Special Interest Groups

• WHAT IS ITS MISSION?
• HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?
• PRIMARY FUNCTIONS
• PROGRAMS
• BUDGET INFORMATION
• HISTORY
• FAST FACTS
• CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES
• FAST FACTS
• FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• GROUP RESOURCES
• GROUP PUBLICATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

ESTABLISHED: April 1916
EMPLOYEES: 200
MEMBERS: 1,000,000
PAC: American Federation of Teachers Committee on Political Education (AFTCOPE)

Contact Information:
ADDRESS: 555 New Jersey Ave. NW Washington, DC 20001
PHONE: (202) 879-4561
TOLL FREE: (800) 238-1133
FAX: (202) 879-4537
URL: http://www.aft.org
PRESIDENT: Sandra Feldman

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was founded to give teachers an independent, organized voice before school administrators and the public. Its traditional mission as a union is to seek improved pay, benefits, and working conditions for its members through collective bargaining contracts. However, former AFT President Albert Shanker asserted that "it is as much the duty of the union to preserve public education as it is to negotiate a good contract." In the political arena the AFT is an advocate of expanding and improving public education and social programs that benefit children. The AFT describes itself as "a dynamic force for quality education and human services as well as economic and social justice for this and future generations of Americans."

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

The AFT is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The AFT is governed by an executive council composed of a president, secretary-treasurer, and 38 vice presidents who are elected at biennial conventions of delegates from the roughly 2,100 local unions affiliated with the federation. The convention also establishes the organization's policies and priorities.

The national headquarters represents members before the federal government and the national media, and provides support services to the local unions and state federations. The organization maintains separate departments to handle legislative relations, public affairs, and organizing, as well as departments to serve particular segments of the membership such as the Higher Education Department and the K-12 Teachers Department. Other departments include the Department of Research, which generates reports on educational and collective bargaining issues; Financial Services, which assists local union treasurers; Human Rights and Community Relations; and International Affairs.

State federations, chartered by the AFT in most states, serve as a communications link among local unions. Working with the national headquarters, they organize political action campaigns, lobby at the state government level, conduct organizing drives for new members, and deliver services to the locals such as help with contract negotiations or leadership training.

Because the American educational system is very decentralized with most policies on pay, teacher standards, and curriculum determined by individual school districts, the local unions are the most important component in the organization's structure. Local unions, typically chartered by the AFL to represent members employed by a common employer, enter contract negotiations with employers over pay, working conditions, and other labor-management issues. They handle member grievances with employers and represent members before their communities and local authorities. While most members are organized through local unions, there is an associate membership program that allows educators with a professional interest in the issues handled by the AFT to join the organization without gaining local representation before employers.

The largest segment of the AFT membership is public and private school teachers of kindergarten through twelfth-grade classes. The union represents many other school-related personnel, from teaching assistants and guidance counselors to janitors and cafeteria workers. The membership also includes over 100,000 faculty and professional staff at colleges and universities. Smaller segments of the AFT's membership include nurses, other health professionals, and state and local government employees.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

The main goal of the AFT in the workplace is to obtain fair pay, benefits, and working conditions for its members. Contracts often cover issues such as class size, class loads, and teacher responsibilities. To support local union leaders in their contract negotiations, the national office provides services such as training, financial analysis, evaluation of health insurance and pension plans, and sample contracts. When contract negotiations fail, the union can resort to rallies, demonstrations, and strikes to achieve their goals.

The AFT is very politically active; it lobbies national, state, and local governments and it evaluates, endorses, and makes financial contributions to candidates. The AFT's political action committee (AFTCOPE) contributed $1,619,635 to candidates for federal office in the 1995–96 election cycle, with over 98 percent of these funds going to Democrats. Perhaps a more valuable contribution is comprised by the time and labor of AFT members who are frequent and reliable volunteers in political campaigns and drives to turn out voters. Members are also encouraged to become delegates to the Democratic National Convention where the party platform and nominations for presidential candidates are determined—in 1996 over 100 such delegates were AFT members. Because teachers are an important constituency for the party, Democratic politicians often consult with AFT leaders in the formulation of policy proposals.

The AFT leadership and national office staff try to influence the opinions of the public and policymakers through a continuous public relations effort and the building of ties to other organizations. The AFT runs a weekly essay in the New York Times; written by the organization's president, it is entitled "Where We Stand" and explains the union's position on current issues of concern to the AFT, teachers, parents, and children. The AFT frequently issues press releases and reports to publicize its positions. AFT leaders are often appointed by presidents, governors, and mayors to serve on commissions and task forces concerned with education, child welfare, and other social and economic issues. Leaders also maintain ties to civic organizations by serving on their boards. For example, AFT President Sandra Feldman has ties to the National Council of Americans to Prevent Handgun Violence, the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and United Nations Children's Fund.

In keeping with its commitment to preserve public education, the AFT seeks to improve the quality of teaching and public schools through research and teacher training. The AFT analyzes and publicizes other organizations' research on educational issues and conducts its own original research. Reports such as the annual Making Standards Matter assess academic standards and student performance across school districts, states, and nations. Other reports and training materials are designed to provide teachers with new, effective teaching tools or techniques and to discourage schools from resorting to methods that have failed. The union has set up task forces to examine educational problems such as the AFT Task Force on Low Performing Schools, which developed a resolution on ways to improve schools that was adopted by the 1998 national convention. The AFT also sponsors conferences and workshops where teachers gain information and training in new teaching methods.

PROGRAMS

The AFT offers a number of training programs. The Educational Research and Dissemination Program (ER&D) is designed to share research with educators to improve the performance of teachers and students. The program offers a number of short-term courses across the country. The Union Leadership Institute (ULI) is run by the Department of Organization and Field Services to help local unions and state federations develop leaders, organizers, and activists and to educate members about the union's goals and activities. It offers training materials and annual schools for elected leadership and staff.

As part of its public relations effort, the AFT launched an ongoing campaign entitled "Lessons for Life: Responsibility, Respect, Results" with the motto "Other education reforms may work; high standards of conduct and achievement do work—and nothing else can work without them." The campaign is designed to call public attention to proven solutions for improving public schools and to build support for public education. The campaign includes materials to help union locals participate and projects that can be set up on a local level.

As part of its international efforts, the AFT runs the Education for Democracy/International Project which promotes the teaching of democracy and civics throughout the world. In one instance, the AFT participated in a project to reform civics education in Nicaragua. The project has also offered short-term training programs in countries such as Mongolia, Poland, and Romania and cosponsored national civic education conferences in Nicaragua and Russia. The project includes a Classroom-to-Classroom program that links students and teachers to their peers around the world.

BUDGET INFORMATION

Not made available

HISTORY

In the late nineteenth century, teacher salaries were very low, benefits such as pensions were insufficient or nonexistent, and school administrators denied teachers a voice in the way schools were run. In 1897 the Chicago Teachers' Federation (CTF) was founded by elementary school teachers to improve members' work conditions. The leaders hoped to form a national teachers' union that would challenge the National Education Association (NEA), which was dominated by school administrators and college professors and put little emphasis on improving conditions for teachers—even though they were the majority of the membership. In 1902 the CTF joined the local affiliate of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). This move, along with the CTF's support for social welfare causes such as child labor laws, marked a break from the policies of the National Education Association.

The CTF's interests were adopted by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) when, in 1916, it was founded by three Chicago teachers' unions and a nearby Gary, Indiana union. Within the year local unions from New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. joined the organization. Like the CTF, the AFT promptly affiliated with the AFL and, unlike the NEA, it focused on teachers' grievances. Charles Stillman was elected the AFT's first president. This period marked the beginning of a bitter rivalry between the AFT and the NEA that persisted for decades. The NEA, which considered affiliation with organized labor and involvement in politics to be unprofessional, encouraged local authorities to launch drives against the AFT which hurt the organization's ability to grow and push for change. But the AFT gained a great deal of help from the AFL in organizing and by 1920 its membership stood at 10,000.

Teachers, like other workers, were hurt by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Salaries were lowered and unemployment was high. The AFT had trouble maintaining a stable membership and many locals were not effective in gaining concessions from administrators because often only a minority of teachers in a district were members. Political, ethnic, and religious diversity among the mostly urban local unions made it difficult for the national organization to develop a unified mission. Some locals wanted to focus exclusively on the material needs of teachers while others were more interested in social and political issues. This produced conflicts at the national level and contributed to the short tenure of AFT presidents in the 1930s and 1940s. However, social and political liberals dominated the AFT and the organization was an early advocate of causes such as racial equality and women's rights. The politics surrounding World War II shook up the union and in 1941 the AFT convention voted to expel four locals that were heavily influenced by Communists, causing the AFT to lose almost a third of its membership.

Teachers did not share in the economic prosperity of the post-World War II period. Teachers noted the gains unionized industrial workers were making through strikes and collective bargaining, and interest in these standard union practices developed within the AFT. The 1946 convention called for a study of collective bargaining and a reevaluation of the union's no-strike policy. Although the no-strike pledge was not officially withdrawn until the early 1960s, many AFT local affiliates engaged in strikes in the late 1940s and 1950s. Carl Megel assumed the presidency in 1952 and served until 1965. He brought stability to the organization and worked to improve the administration of the national office. The union's finances improved and it developed a network of state federations with full-time staff and a commitment to organizing new locals.

Events in the early 1960s forever changed the AFT and the American education system. The political environment had historically been hostile to unionization and collective bargaining among public employees such as teachers. But in 1959 Wisconsin passed the first law allowing public employees to bargain collectively, and three years later President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which allowed federal employees to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. New York City, during the Administration of pro-labor Mayor Robert Wagner, became the focus of AFT activity.

New York's United Federation of Teachers (UFT) gained assistance from the AFT and the AFL-CIO to launch a massive organizing drive in 1960. Following a couple of one-day strikes and highly politicized negotiations, the UFT became the exclusive representative of the city's 40,000-plus teachers. By 1964 the AFT had negotiated a series of contracts that secured measures including sizable salary increases, reductions in class loads, and limits on class size.

After the high-profile events in New York, the AFT quickly gained collective bargaining rights and contracts in a large number of northeastern cities. By 1970 membership exceeded 200,000 and it more than doubled over the following decade. But the AFT failed to move much beyond its existing geographic base into rural and suburban areas or the South and West, where the NEA has traditionally been stronger. At the same time, however, the success of the AFT strategy to behave more like a union and less like a professional association encouraged imitation by the much larger NEA.

Albert Shanker, the longest serving president in the AFT's history, assumed office in 1974. The charismatic Shanker had made a name for himself within the labor movement as one of the UFT leaders that brought collective bargaining and teacher militancy to the AFT. Shanker encouraged teachers to become more politically active and initiated a political activism training program for members. The AFT was an early supporter of winning Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, who promised more money for public education. Under Shanker's leadership the AFT was critical of Republican presidents Reagan and Bush, who endorsed cuts in social services and proposals the union viewed as threats to public education such as tax credits for parents who send their children to private and parochial schools.

Faced with growing criticism of the quality of public education in the 1980s and 1990s, Shanker gained notoriety as an outspoken advocate of educational reforms. He had always argued that the standards for teacher certification, which varied from state to state, should be raised and that teachers should be required to take a national examination of basic skills and knowledge in the subjects they taught. By the mid-1990s he advocated changes in many of the procedures unions had once fought for, such as pay based on performance rather than a uniform scale based on years of service and the streamlining of due-process protections in the handling of grievances and the firing of unsatisfactory teachers. Shanker argued that "unless we restore the public's faith in what we do, public education is going to collapse."

The AFT was one of the first and most active of unions to support Bill Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992. Clinton endorsed many of the AFT's proposals such as the call for national education standards and the limiting of social promotion in schools in which unprepared children are advanced to the next grade.

Sandra Feldman became AFT president in 1997 after Shanker became ill. She endorsed and expanded on the educational reforms he advocated. In response to the conservative proposal to eliminate tenure in order to make it easier to fire incompetent teachers, Feldman endorsed peer review and intervention in which experienced teachers evaluate the performance of other teachers and work to assist those found lacking in skills.

Feldman's other major focus has been to bring about a merger of the AFT and the NEA—an idea that has been entertained by the two organizations for a generation. The rejection of the merger plan by delegates to the NEA's 1998 summer convention temporarily set back the merger. The AFT convention delegates, however, gave overwhelming support to the merger and negotiations between the two organizations have resumed. Meanwhile, a number of local affiliates of the AFT and the NEA have already merged and at the end of 1998 the Minnesota state affiliates merged into one organization.

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

The AFT often coordinates its political activities with the AFL-CIO and it is a strong supporter of the Democratic Party and liberal causes such as expanded rights for minorities and women. The AFT advocates increased funding for public and higher education and suggested in the early 1990s that the "peace dividend" brought about by the end of the Cold War be spent on education and programs benefiting children. Beginning in the late 1970s the AFT called attention to the rising problem of drugs, crime, and violence in and around schools and it has been a vocal supporter of increased discipline in public schools. Most AFT members teach in urban schools, many of which are attended by disadvantaged children. The union argues that poverty, homelessness, hunger, poor health care, and other social and economic problems make it difficult for these children to learn. Thus the AFT has been a strong advocate of social programs such as Head Start, which provides preschool classes for impoverished children, and President Clinton's failed 1994 proposal to provide universal health care.

Teachers unions have themselves become a controversial political issue. Despite the AFT national leadership's endorsement of educational reforms, critics argue that politically powerful unions continue to be roadblocks to educational reform and improvement. Critics believe union contracts protect incompetent teachers through seniority rules and due-process procedures that make it very difficult to fire bad teachers. Critics further argue that teachers' unions cling to a system where teachers are promoted and paid based on years of service rather than merit and that they protect licensing systems that prevent or discourage bright people without degrees in education from teaching in public schools.

A 1998 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed that 41 percent of the public believes unions are part of the problem with public education. Politicians, particularly Republicans, have tried to capitalize on this public sentiment by attacking the AFT and the NEA. In a highly publicized statement that caused teachers' unions to redouble their campaign efforts for Clinton, Republican challenger Bob Dole announced at the 1996 Republican national convention, "To the teachers' unions, I say, when I am President, I will disregard your political power . . . . If education were a war, you would be losing it." The AFT has responded by publicizing research that shows student performance is actually better in states with high levels of unionization.

The AFT argues that in addition to the influence of larger social problems such as single-parent households and income inequality, the real problem with many schools is inadequate funding, poor administration, and insufficient standards. Although the AFT has accepted some reforms, it fiercely resists market-based approaches to school reform such as turning over public schools to private companies. The union is also against voucher programs in which students are given government-issued certificates that pay for attending private schools.

Case Study: School Vouchers

Vouchers have been proposed as a solution to the poor state of public schools, particularly in economically depressed inner cities. Proponents of vouchers argue that the public schools are an education monopoly, free from the market competition that would force them to adequately educate students or go out of business. They argue that giving students and parents the opportunity to choose schools would increase the flow of resources and students into high performing schools and cause bad schools to either improve or close. Critics of vouchers counter that such programs would only benefit a small minority of students and undermine many public schools by siphoning off money, the best students, and the most dedicated parents—leaving the majority of students isolated in even worse schools. They argue that many poorly performing schools have very troubled students who would not be accepted by private schools and, even if they were, would still do badly. Critics fear that not enough good schools would emerge to meet the demand and that most programs would end up subsidizing well-off students who would have attended private schools anyway.

The AFT and the NEA, advocates of public education in colleges and universities, liberal think tanks, and the federal government have been the major opponents of voucher initiatives. Proponents of school vouchers include free enterprise advocates and organizations from the religious right such as the Christian Coalition, who think vouchers will give parents more control over their children's education and the resources to send their kids to religious schools or to school them at home. Conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and organizations with the primary goal of advocating school reforms such as the Center for Education Reform support the use of vouchers. Some African American activists have come to support voucher programs as a way of offering poor, inner-city children the same educational choices as more advantaged students.

The AFT joined with the NEA to fight voucher initiatives in a number of states and local political jurisdictions. In a high profile battle in California in 1993, the teachers' unions in alliance with the PTA poured millions of dollars into a successful campaign to defeat a referendum that would have set up a statewide voucher program. The unions stalled the Republican efforts in the Congresses elected in 1994 and 1996 to pass bills creating voucher programs for the District of Columbia. They lobbied AFT supporters in the Senate to threaten a filibuster and President Clinton to veto such proposals. The AFT has also worked to defeat candidates for Congress and state offices that are strong proponents of vouchers.

Only two publicly funded voucher programs have been approved and put into operation—one in Cleveland, Ohio and one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Having lost the fight against these initiatives, the AFT is now pursuing a strategy of publicizing their weaknesses and preventing their expansion. The AFT released a report on the Cleveland program in 1997 that argued the program was more expensive than its advocates predicted, that over a quarter of the students who used the vouchers had attended private schools before the program was enacted, and that many students who qualified were not able to participate, perhaps because they were not accepted by the private schools of their choice. The AFT has joined the NEA in filing a lawsuit to prevent the expansion of the program. The program in Milwaukee has been challenged by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which opposes the voucher system because it gives public funds to religious schools. In 1998 the AFT released a report based on the two voucher experiments that found small class size was more effective in improving student performance than vouchers.

The AFT also seeks to disarm the voucher movement by promoting alternative educational reforms. AFT leaders argue that voucher programs are designed to grab headlines for politicians but that genuine improvements in education will only be achieved through high, uniform standards for teachers and students and ongoing professional development and training. Many local unions have conceded to experiments with merit pay and charter schools where bureaucratic rules including union contract provisions are not enforced. In cities such as Houston, Texas and Newark, New Jersey the AFT has sponsored or helped design charter school programs. The union hopes that by proving its commitment to school reform and improving student performance it can discourage demands for abandoning the public school system through programs such as voucher systems.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

AFT President Sandra Feldman asserted in a speech at the organization's 1998 convention that "we must do everything within our power to make turning around low-performing schools—improving all schools—the top agenda of every community in this nation!" Encouraging the local unions and rank-and-file members to endorse and demand educational reform as outlined in the resolution on redesigning low-performing schools adopted by the 1998 convention will be a main focus of the AFT in the future.

The AFT will also work to merge the AFT and the NEA. The rivalry between the AFT and the NEA has gradually been replaced by a need for unity in the face of what both unions see as efforts by conservative politicians and organizations to undermine public education. Leaders of the two organizations hope to create a mega-union of 3.3 million members that will have more clout in schools and in politics.

GROUP RESOURCES

The AFT has an extensive Web site at http://www.aft.org which includes information on officers, programs, and educational and political issues as well as recent press releases, reports, and publications. More information about the AFT can be obtained by writing to the American Federation of Teachers, 555 New Jersey Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20001 or by calling the Public Affairs Department at (202) 879-4400.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

In addition to numerous reports and manuals, the AFT publishes two journals covering educational issues. The American Teacher is issued eight times a year and the American Educator is published quarterly. Many of the reports are available on-line at http://www.aft.org. Journal subscriptions and publications may be purchased by writing the American Federation of Teachers Order Department, 555 New Jersey Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20001; or by calling 1-800-238-1133.