Inside AFT

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Inside AFT--Week of Nov. 1, 2004

FINAL DAYS BEFORE ELECTION FOCUS ON VOTER TURNOUT
As AFT affiliates and thousands of union volunteers headed into the final weekend of the presidential campaign, it's evident that voter turnout will be the most important factor in Tuesday's presidential election. Polls continue to show George Bush and John Kerry in a virtual dead heat both in national samples and in key battleground states. With the presidential race so close, AFT continued its efforts to inform members and their families on election issues through phone banks, labor walks, work-site contact and literature distribution, with the final push focused on the union's get-out-the-vote campaign. AFT affiliates have placed more than 1,200 orders for AFT election-related fliers available through a special AFL-CIO Web site for activists, generating nearly 1 million pieces of literature for distribution to AFT members by Election Day. Meanwhile, AFT president Edward J. McElroy, secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour and executive vice president Antonia Cortese hit the road in the final week before the election to reinforce the message that the stakes for the AFT and labor in this election are extremely high. McElroy visited affiliates in Michigan, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, while LaCour has been in Florida and Cortese attended a rally in Toledo, Ohio.

STRIKE TALKS STALL AT CITY COLLEGES OF CHICAGO
Eight days into a strike over pay, healthcare and workload, talks abruptly ended when negotiators for the City Colleges of Chicago left the bargaining table on Oct. 27. On the same day, lawyers for the Cook County College Teachers Union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board. They charged that City Colleges chancellor Wayne Watson and other college presidents approached CCCTU members on the picket line, offering threats and promises that amounted to illegal attempts at direct negotiation with the workers. The 1,300 faculty and professional staff at the City Colleges went on strike Oct. 19 for the first time in 27 years. This action came after the CCCTU had spent the past 14 months negotiating four separate contracts for the 550 full-time faculty, 200 full-time and 150 part-time nonteaching professionals and 500 campus police officers. For details, go the CCCTU Web site at http://www.ccctu.com.

AFT CHARTER SCHOOL REPORT IS FOCUS OF D.C. FORUM
The AFT's recent analysis of federal data on the performance of students in charter schools--and more broadly, the poor state of useful information on charters--spurred a lively forum on Oct. 27 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the Century Foundation, the forum featured Bella Rosenberg, assistant to the AFT president and one of the authors of the union's study. The report--an analysis of charter school students' performance on NAEP, or the National Assessment of Educational Progress--showed that compared to students in regular public schools, charter school students had significantly lower achievement in math and reading at grade 4 and math at grade 8. Another panelist, Amy Stuart Wells of Teachers College at Columbia University, discussed some of her findings from almost eight years of studying charter schools. Wells, like all the panelists, pointed out the huge variety among the thousands of charter schools that have opened during the past decade. But she also said that the original idea behind charters--a notion championed by former AFT president Albert Shanker that charter schools should have more autonomy in return for accountability for student achievement--largely has been lost. Some schools have been closed for financial reasons, she noted, but there has been almost no accountability for schools whose students continue to perform poorly. The full AFT report is available online at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/teachers/NAEPCharterSchoolReport.pdf.

LAME-DUCK CONGRESS WILL REQUIRE UNION'S VIGILANCE
When Congress returns in mid-November after the elections, legislators will still have to deal with 10 spending bills, the AFT executive council learned last month. Tor Cowan, acting director of the AFT's legislation department, warned that "we need to be on guard" during this lame-duck session. "We have to be careful about what items make their way into omnibus spending bills, since they usually become the last train out of the station before adjournment." The practice of bundling controversial items into these huge bills makes it difficult for members of Congress to oppose an entire measure based on a single issue, he said. One bitter example of that tactic was the voucher bill for Washington, D.C., schools, which Congress folded into an omnibus spending package and passed nearly a year ago. This year, the danger may lie in what Congress decides to jettison. While both the House and Senate have voted to restore overtime pay rights for workers, getting this provision into the final spending bill remains in question. "Regardless of which party ultimately gains control of the White House and Congress, we can expect a continuation of the debate on the role and scope of the federal government," said Cowan, "particularly through the budget and appropriations process."

WORKERS' BUYING POWER FALLS
The Employment Cost Index for September, released Oct. 29, shows that workers continue to lose buying power as wages rise more slowly than at any point since 1999. Increases in wages and salaries for workers slowed significantly over the past September-to-September period, with the wage cost for employers down 17 percent over the prior year, from 2.9 percent to 2.4 percent. State and local government wage increases also dropped, but at a slower pace, from an annual rate gain of 2.3 percent to 2 percent. Overall, wage and benefit increases for state and local government workers remain below those of private sector workers due to state fiscal crises--created in large part by the loss of revenue from President Bush's tax cuts. The Employment Cost Index is published quarterly by the U.S. Department of Labor; the full report is posted online at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/eci.pdf.