NEA tries to preserve image as professional group, not a union

Thursday, November 30, 2000

By Charles J. Shields

(Editor's note: The following is the third in a series of About Education columns in which Charles Shields questions the power and tactics of the National Education Association.)

The National Education Association (NEA) — the world's largest union with teachers, clerical staff, bus drivers, school health officials, food service employees, maintenance staff, students and retirees among its members — is the only labor union in the United States with a federal charter.

Its charter was granted in 1906 when it was, indeed, a professional organization dedicated to promoting the education of the general public.

Today it is a bare-knuckled labor union.

No other professional organization or labor union has been chartered by Congress. In addition to the NEA, Congress has chartered only the American Legion, AMVETS, American War Mothers, the American National Red Cross, the Boy Scouts of America and the Disabled American Veterans.

But for 25 years now the NEA has been recognized by the federal government as full-fledged a labor union. The filing requirements placed on the NEA by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Labor are the same as those placed on the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The NEA, however, refers itself internally as "the Association," and it greatly downplays its union status when dealing with the media.

At the NEA's most recent convention in July, none of the printed materials handed out to delegates had the word "union" on them.

This spin has been so successful that many NEA members don't even believe they belong to a labor union.

But they do belong to a labor union, and because they do, the image of teachers has suffered in the public eye.

A November 1999 Gallup poll, for instance, asked people to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in various professions. Labor union leaders ranked 30th of the 45 professions named, with only 17 percent rating them high or very high in ethical standards.

This perception of labor unions rubs off on teachers — I guess you could call it "guilt by association," the NEA being an "association," that is.

The California Teachers Association commissioned a poll in 1995 and found that 85 percent of the public had a favorable impression of teachers. But when asked about teacher unions, the favorable impression dropped to 48 percent.

A report by Carl Van Horn of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University underscores the point. He says, "Teachers are not the sympathetic group they were 20 years ago. They used to be perceived as a profession and now they are perceived as just a union."

Sometimes the NEA and its officers drop the pretense of being a professional association and speak or act like real labor union leaders they are.

Back in 1993 when Keith Geiger, who later became president of the NEA, was still president of the NEA's Michigan Education Association affiliate, he astonished Oakland, Mich., Walsh College economics professor Harry C. Veryser by gesticulating obscenely at him during an in-studio radio debate.

"He flipped me the finger when school choice came up," remembers Veryser, who jokes — but not with much mirth — that the union's ruthless and insatiable drive for power and perquisites should earn it a new name: the National Extortion Association.

Lately, though, the NEA has been talking about its "new unionism." Realizing that its runs the risk of losing a new generation of teachers who don't relate to the "old unionism" (I recall NEA meetings at a well-heeled school where the president of the union addressed the members wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, a windbreaker, and an Irish cap. You'd think you at a meeting of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1915), the NEA wants to redebut itself as a new and improved professional association again.

Will the sleight-of-hand work? With enough Madison Avenue PR behind it, the teachers, cafeteria workers, maintenance workers, and bus drivers of the NEA just might think they belong to a professional association.

In the meantime, however, signs that the NEA is still a bare-knuckled labor union resurface from time to time.

Last month, for example, the federal government announced it will prosecute the NEA labor union for harassing teachers nationwide whose sincerely-held religious beliefs prevent them from supporting a union they believe to be immoral.

The national prosecution resulted from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charges filed by Dennis Robey, an Ohio teacher whose specific objections were to what he believes to be the labor union's pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality positions and the union's attempts to interfere with parental rights.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, union officials may not force any employee to financially support a union if doing so violates the employee's sincerely-held religious beliefs. The law allows employees instead to donate that money to charity.

Robey began exercising his rights in 1995. Early this year, union officials rebuffed his longstanding objection and demanded that every year he must describe, in detail, his deeply-held religious views, fill out a lengthy and invasive form, and file it with the union.

On the form, union officials asked probing personal questions about his relationship with God, his "religious affiliation," and required him to obtain a signature from a "religious official" attesting to the validity of his beliefs.

Now, tell me: does that sound like a professional association, or an old-style labor union turning the screws on a member who's not coughing up his dues?

I guess Keith Geiger would flip me the finger.