Education: The Union Game

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Nothing in recent memory has so shaken the 812,000-member National Education Association as the recent teachers' strike in New York City. The walkout was blunt warning of the new strength of N.E.A.'s rival, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. American Federation of Teachers, which today has 80,000 members and is growing fast in the big cities.

Last week the irksome competition of the teachers' union was the hottest item on the agenda at the annual N.E.A. convention in Denver. Charged Executive Secretary William G. Carr: "Forces of significant scope and power are considering measures which could destroy the association." Carr was alluding to Big Labor money, which now has entered the fray. A half-million dollars from the Auto Workers and other unions went into the organization campaign among the New York teachers, he claimed, arguing that labor is now trying to make up for declining blue-collar membership by taking in white-collar teachers, who otherwise might stick with the "professional" N.E.A. A.F.L.-C.I.O. Vice President James B. Carey was shouted down by the delegates in Denver before he could reach a key retort in his speech to the convention: "Teachers are welcoming unionism as a wave of the future. The N.E.A. should, too, or it will find that it has been left behind as history marches past."

This kind of prodding induced the delegates to approve two significant new tactics against unions. Resolved: N.E.A. groups should fight for the mandatory legal right to negotiate with school boards for pay and working conditions—in effect, for a closed shop. And though N.E.A. is against teachers' strikes, it will now attempt "sanctions" against recalcitrant school districts, meaning teacher boycotts. Thus the union is fast pushing N.E.A. into playing the union game itself.