April 15, 1997
The NEA and Its Federal Charter
by
Charles W. Baird
The National Education Association (NEA) 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 that will go to any lengths to prevent the general public from receiving an effective education. It holds K-12 students hostage in its private playground - the failed public school monopoly. It promotes the big lie that government schools are the only legitimate means to educate the general public.
There is no express power in the Constitution that gives Congress the authority to issue federal charters. However, Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the authority "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" all the powers that are expressly granted to Congress. Federal charters are granted under this "necessary and proper" clause. Inasmuch as the contemporary NEA is principally engaged in securing for its members the most pay for the least possible educational performance, and for itself increasing institutional wealth and permanent political power, it is difficult to see how the NEA's charter is "necessary and proper" for Congress to execute any of its constitutional duties.
Prior to 1969, Congress granted federal charters on a case-by-case basis. There were no formal, standard criteria that had to be met. Congress still has not adopted any statutory criteria for federal incorporation, but in 1969 subcommittees of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees jointly agreed to a set of "Standards For the Granting of Federal Charters." This is a list of five minimum standards that any private organization seeking a federal charter must meet. It does not have the force of law, but it is generally accepted as standard policy. Quoting the joint subcommittee report, the five minimum standards are as follows.
Any private organization petitioning Congress for the purpose of obtaining the status of a Federal corporation shall be required to demonstrate to the satisfaction of Congress that it is an organization which is --
1. operating under a charter granted by a State or the District of Columbia and that it has so operated for a sufficient length of time to demonstrate its permanence and that its activities are clearly in the public interest;
2. of such unique character that chartering by the Congress as a Federal corporation is the only appropriate form of incorporation;
3. organized and operated solely for charitable, literary, educational, scientific, patriotic, or civic improvement purposes;
4. organized and operated as a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization; and
5. organized and operated for the primary purpose of conducting activities which are of national scope and responsive to a national need, which need cannot be met except upon the issuance of a Federal charter.
Notwithstanding that in 1906 the NEA probably met all five minimum standards, today it does not meet any of them. Given that it blocks any meaningful educational reform, it does not act in the public interest. If the only appropriate form of incorporation of the NEA is federal, why doesn't the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have a federal charter? The NEA is not organized and operated for educational, let alone charitable or civic improvement purposes. It is neither nonprofit nor nonpartisan, and it meets no national need except its own.
The strike is the sine qua non of a labor union. In a speech at the 1962 convention of the NEA, Executive Secretary William B. Carr opined:
I think I can say on your behalf to school boards, as well as to parents and other citizens: the members of the National Education Association, whatever others [i.e., the AFT] may do, will constantly strive to improve their qualifications and the quality of service they render; they will keep their pledged word; and they will never walk out on the students in their charge.
That must sound strange to all the parents, students, teachers, and school boards that have been victimized by NEA strikes since the 1970s. Compare Carr's words with the following statement of NEA policy from the 1983-84 annual edition of its journal, Today's Education:
The National Education Association denounces the practice of keeping schools open during a strike. It believes that when a picket line is established by the authorized bargaining unit, crossing it is strikebreaking. This unprofessional act jeopardizes the welfare of teachers and the educational process....
In the event of a strike by professional employees, extracurricular and cocurricular activities must cease. Appropriate teacher training institutions should be notified that a strike is being conducted and urged not to cooperate in emergency certification or placement practices that constitute strikebreaking.
According to today's NEA, striking is professional and teaching carried on during a strike is unprofessional. This is so even in those states where public employee strikes are illegal.
In 1963 the IRS began to question the NEA's status as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. In 1969 the IRS changed the NEA's designation to a 501(c)(6) organization, as a business league. Notwithstanding that by then it was clear to everyone that the NEA was a labor union except only in name, it was not until 1978 that the IRS declared the NEA to be a 501(c)(5) labor union. Soon thereafter the NEA itself dropped all pretenses to the contrary.
If any moment can be identified as the time at which the NEA made its first public proclamation that it was in solidarity with the union movement it was in an editorial by NEA president Willard McGuire in the November-December 1981 issue ofToday's Education.
NEA is proud to be a professional organization. We are also proud to be part of the labor movement and are proud to have joined together with the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and other national and regional organizations -- on September 19, Solidarity Day -- in protest against the Reagan Administration's economic policies.
Today, NEA is a leader in the American labor movement.... [W]hile we are no better than any other labor group, we are different, and we see our organization, clearly, as having the strength, expertise, and clout to get important jobs done.
We call on everyone within the labor movement to join us in a rededication to quality education. We in turn pledge to continue our efforts to ensure dignity and justice and equity for all workers, in all endeavors, throughout the workplace of our nation -- and of the world.
The NEA imposes extortion against people who take the wrong side in state ballot initiative campaigns. For example, consider the antics of the California Teachers Association (CTA), an NEA state affiliate, in the 1992-933 school voucher initiative campaign. The CTA sent hit squads to sites where signatures were being gathered to put the initiative on the ballot to harass and challenge would-be signers. They often physically blocked access to the tables where the signatures were being gathered, and they sabotaged petitions with fake names. But the CTA didn't stop there. According to the sworn statement of the president of a signature gathering firm, the CTA offered him $400,000 not to gather signatures for the initiative.
It is one thing to oppose a ballot initiative and therefore decline to sign a petition that would put it on the ballot. It is quite another to try to use force, fraud and bribery to prevent an initiative from getting on the ballot. In a word, it is extortionate. D. A. Weber, then president of the CTA, excused this extortion in these words:
[Y]ou and I, the California Teachers Association, decided to do something very dramatic, something nobody had ever tried in the nine decades that the initiative has existed in this state. We decided to create an organized campaign to block an initiative from getting enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
We realized that we would be accused of acting in an 'undemocratic' manner. What was wrong, after all, with letting the people vote on an issue?
Our answer was firm: There are some proposals that are so evil that they should never even be presented to the voters. We do not believe, for example, that we should hold an election on 'empowering' the Ku Klux Klan. And we would not think it's 'undemocratic' to oppose voting on legalizing child prostitution. Destroying public education, in our view, belongs in that category.
Far from being like the KKK and child prostitution, school vouchers for K-12 students are exactly like the post World War II GI bill grants to veterans to use at any college or university they chose. The only education reform that can possibly rescue American K-12 students from the dismal performance of the public school monopoly is competition. Vouchers are the means by which failed public schools will have to improve or perish.
To the charge of extortion can be added the charge of duplicity. What is really at stake in the voucher debate is the NEA's role as a monopoly provider of teacher services to a monopoly buyer of them. As long as parents and students do not have open access to private schools they are held hostage in the public schools. The NEA can extort high prices from school boards which, in turn, can pass the costs on to taxpayers. The purpose of public education is to educate the public. Far from destroying the education of the public, vouchers would destroy the hegemony of the NEA.
In the event, the initiative did qualify for the November 1993 ballot, and it was defeated. The reason for the defeat was more CTA-NEA duplicity spread far and wide by a
$12.3 million campaign financed, in part, by a $57 tax imposed by the CTA on most of the teachers it represents in California.
It is an outrage that Congress has not long since repealed the NEA's federal charter. Moreover, it is an insult to legitimate federal charter holders. The NEA resembles the Mafia much more than it resembles the Boy Scouts, the American Red Cross, or Little League Baseball.