Actionline NEA

NEA-AFT Partnership Approved

The 2001 NEA Representative Assembly endorses formal, joint activities by nation's largest educators' unions.

NEA and the American Federation of Teachers have reached agreement on a partnership that provides a framework for the nation's two largest unions of educators to work together on common interests. Together, the NEA and the AFT represent more than 3.5 million educators, including nearly 200,000 in higher education.

Some 9,000 delegates at NEA's annual Representative Assembly voted in favor of the agreement on July 6, and the executive committee of the AFT ratified the agreement at its meeting on July 11. Each union will appoint 15 representatives to a joint council that will decide on partnership activities.

Projects that the partnership could undertake include: holding joint conferences; coordinating legal and legislative efforts at the national, state, and local levels; and fostering joint activity among constituency groups, such as higher ed, in each organization.

You can read all about the Representative Assembly and the NEA-AFT partnership at: www.nea.org/ra.

Other actions of the Representative Assembly that concern higher ed members include a decision to refer to the new NEA Task Force on Distance Learning a proposal supported by the National Council for Higher Education, NEA's higher education caucus, that would enable courses provided on the newly developed NEA portal, OWL.org, to be taught by faculty working under NEA-negotiated collective bargaining agreements. NEA already announced that OWL.org courses leading to a degree will be provided by NEA higher education affiliates.

NEA and other faculty unions, higher ed associations, disciplinary organizations, and faculty activists across the United States and Canada have banded together to designate October 28 to November 3, 2001 as Campus Equity Week.

Campus Equity Week will promote campus activities designed to highlight the poor pay and working conditions of part-time and non-tenure track faculty, including graduate student assistants and full-time contingent faculty. Less than one-half of the nation's faculty now hold or are eligible for full-time tenured status.

The Campus Equity Week coalition marks the first time faculty from all of the major faculty unions, associations, and disciplinary organizations from the United States and Canada have joined forces for an international campaign to promote faculty activism. For more information, visit www.cewAction.org or E-mail
cewAction-subscribe@topica.com.