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The American of Federation of Teachers (AFT) is by no means alone among labor unions in endorsing Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. Nor is the AFT’s endorsement, an action taken by its Executive Council, unique in its failure to adopt a system of one member, one vote, as did unions like the National Union of Health Workers, encouraging members to vote online, after extensive debate. Yet the AFT’s endorsement is arguably singular because its violation of members’ rights combines with self-destructive political miscalculation, a combination that will harm public education and teachers.

A Flawed Process It would be a mistake to confuse the union’s presidential endorsement for the membership’s desires, which have yet to be determined. The AFT’s Executive Council, not its 1.7 million members, made the endorsement — as was the case in 2016, when Hillary Clinton received the AFT Executive Committee’s approval fifteen months prior to the presidential election. This time the AFT Executive Council affirmed its choice of Biden based on a poll conducted by Hart Research Associates, whose president Geoffrey Garin was co-strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. The polling agency made the resolute claim that there is “Remarkably broad support for Biden within the union,” despite having polled only 1,207 members — or 0.07 percent of the entire AFT membership. The poll’s tiny sample size heightens concerns about how the survey was conducted and whose opinions it represents. It’s unclear how those polled were chosen to be interviewed, how they were identified as “Democratic Party voters” (which was the poll’s scope of interviewees), and the specific wording of questions interviewees were asked, always a key factor in surveys. Neither the union nor the polling firm released information about several variables that could influence results, such as the type of phone used (cell or landline), geographic location, or years in service. Were interviewees all working educators? What percentage were union staff or officials, whose livelihoods can depend on their agreeability with the politics of the union leadership? In short, the poll’s reliability to inform a decision of such importance is at best questionable, especially given the union’s history of making decisions about endorsements that claim to be representative but are unpersuasive to many activists. Close scrutiny of the poll’s findings should raise an alarm about the breadth of membership support for Biden. The majority of members polled think positively of both candidates Biden and Sanders, with Biden at an advantage by only 9 percentage points. Although Biden as the party nominee enjoys an edge in every demographic reported as polled, this edge is remarkable for its unevenness. Among retirees Biden’s advantage is largest, with 75 percent for Biden and 16 percent for Sanders. This contrasts significantly with results among health care (50 percent vs. 42 percent), Hispanic (48 percent vs 44 percent), and higher-ed (49 percent vs 46 percent) members. Among those who identified as independent the Biden advantage is +13, but among “Democrats” is +32. Considering that a plurality of American voters is independent, it’s not only possible but likely the margin of AFT members’ support for Biden over Sanders as the party nominee is smaller than the poll suggests. That said, Biden clearly enjoyed an edge among those interviewed. A plurality of interviewees reported that “their priority is nominating the most electable candidate (rather than the candidate with the ‘best positions’).” Rather than the candidate’s actual policies, then, almost half based their preference primarily on “electability.” The poll also shows that, among active members, the Biden edge jumped from +19 to +31 after the March 17 primaries, when Biden doubled his delegate lead. This suggests that undecided and uncommitted members may have been persuaded by arguments about electability pushed by Sanders’s opponents in the Democratic Party, and later reflected in electoral results. What if earlier in the year, the AFT had motivated more rank-and-file engagement — more debate and discussion, not merely orchestrated phone-in question-and-answer town halls ? No one can say what would have occurred had the union provided space for debate, but the reasons provided for supporting Biden at least suggest there was a window earlier in the electoral season when support of AFT members might have swung to a different candidate, as occurred in the Chicago and Los Angeles locals. What is certain is that the AFT chose to substitute faux-consultation for democratic decision-making, encouraged by informed debate among members. A strategy of suppressing internal discussion and a membership vote on whom to endorse was clear in the largest AFT local, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). In December 2019 the union’s Delegate Assembly voted down a resolution that would have created forums for members to debate the candidates, followed by a “one-member, one-vote” citywide endorsement decision. While the Chicago and LA locals made their endorsements, the UFT leadership insisted on postponing the UFT’s endorsement. Though not articulated as a reason, the UFT, the heart of the AFT national machine, holds dear its relationship to powerful figures in the Democratic Party. Current UFT president Michael Mulgrew argued a UFT endorsement would impact members of other locals, who would then feel disengaged for seeing that the UFT’s choice made the AFT’s endorsement a foregone conclusion. For his part, Mulgrew had no qualms about the effects of his own endorsement of Biden: the UFT president is currently Biden’s DNC delegate, while AFT president Randi Weingarten publicly endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren in what she called a personal capacity. In the end, postponement of the UFT vote to March translated to its cancellation. The AFT Executive Council’s endorsement of Biden will accomplish precisely what Mulgrew argued a democratic UFT endorsement process would do: foreclose authentic participation by members. Biden’s endorsement will now likely be rubber stamped by the AFT Convention, as many locals view debate and votes on whom to endorse irrelevant given the national union’s position. AFT’s endorsement followed the announcement by the National Education Association (NEA) that it had endorsed Biden. NEA’s contentious process is described by a neoliberal pundit whose reports on AFT and NEA internal matters are generally reliable; as the report shows, though the NEA operates differently from the AFT, it is no more democratic and no less committed to maintaining officers’ personal access to Democratic politicians and power. The Right knows this weakness of organized labor and intends to exploit it, as it did in pushing for the Janus decision, which ended public employee unions’ legal right to collect fees from members on whose behalf it negotiates and enforces contracts.