ABSTRACT
The National Education Association (NEA) began life in 1857 as the National Teachers Association, a professional organization for teachers and school administrators. The NEA has a legitimate role to play in representing teachers as a collective bargaining unit and assisting individual teachers in conflicts they might have with the administration. An NEA-American Federation of Teachers (AFT) merger—or the NEA's absorption of the smaller AFT—seems inevitable. On social issues, the NEA takes positions that would surprise many of the conservative middle-class teachers who pay union dues. Unions representing needle workers lobby for import quotas on textiles, which drive up the cost of clothing for Americans of all income levels and have a disproportionate impact upon the very poorest. Unions of automobile workers support import quotas and domestic-content legislation mandating that a certain percentage of a vehicle be manufactured within the United States; these also boost the cost of a car for American consumers.
