A Rival for N.E.A.

Despite its wealth and size, the 750,000-member National Education Association is impotent as a negotiator of salaries and working conditions. In N.E.A.'s "professional" world, a teacher is not supposed to air gripes in public; he goes to his boss, the school superintendent, who also belongs to N.E.A. The result, say N.E.A.'s critics, is a "company union."

The only organization that even remotely rivals N.E.A. is the 60,000-member American Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. It is small because many teachers dislike the blue-collar union label; unlike N.E.A., it does no educational research. But A.F.T. does advocate collective bargaining and the right to strike.

A.F.T. last week scored a notable vic tory over N.E.A. in New York City. Last fall an A.F.T. local staged a one-day strike that forced the city to poll its 43,500 teachers on collective bargaining. In the resulting election last week for the right to represent all teachers, the A.F.T. local beat a hastily formed N.E.A. group called Teachers Bargaining Organization by 2 to 1. (A third group, the left-wing Teachers Union, finished out of the money.) A.F.T. now reigns supreme in New York City, which employs more teachers than any of 43 states.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.