American Federation of Teachers - Membership

Membership

At first, many teachers rejected the AFT's assertion that teachers should join unions. The dispute led to a slow member growth rate that lasted for 50 years. The legal and political climate discouraged collective bargaining in education. School boards mounted a campaign against the AFT, pressuring and intimidating teachers to resign from the union. By the end of the 1920s, AFT membership had dropped to fewer than 5,000—about half the membership of 1920." In 1960, the AFT had an estimated 65,000 members. Almost overnight, the AFT's membership swelled by 30 percent due to UFT protests organized by Albert Shanker and Charles Cogen. In 1964, the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO pledged to match dollar-for-dollar the expenditure of AFT funds to organize teachers. But, by the end of the decade the union had swelled to more than 400,000 members. By 2000, the union had 1.1 million members.In July of 2010, the AFT was the second-largest education labor union in the United States. AFT represented an estimated 1.5 million members which included 250,000 retirees. The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest U.S. education trade union with an estimated 3.2 million-members. The NEA rejected a merger with the AFT at their annual meeting in 1998.