AFL-CIO, largest teachers union plan partnership

CORONADO, Calif. — The AFL-CIO and the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, announced a partnership Monday that could help the labor federation regain some of the clout it lost when several unions defected last year.

The 2.8-million-member NEA agreed to allow its local affiliates to join the AFL-CIO. The hope is that the AFL-CIO will give teachers more muscle when they campaign for political candidates and push legislation.

“This is about two organizations coming together to meet the needs of working families,” NEA President Reg Weaver said at the winter meeting of the federation’s executive council in Coronado, outside San Diego.

Weaver said that allowing the NEA’s 13,200 affiliates to join the AFL-CIO is “absolutely not” a prelude to a merger of the NEA and AFL-CIO on the national level. Weaver declined to predict how many NEA affiliates would join the labor federation under the agreement, which expires in 2009.

The partnership comes as the AFL-CIO, a federation of more than 50 unions representing 9 million workers, prepares for its first election cycle since about a half-dozen unions split from the federation, complaining that it emphasized political campaigns over organizing unions. The AFL-CIO lost more than a fourth of its members in the rift that began last July.