This one still has a long way to go, with a Wisconsin Education Association Council vote on the same resolution slated for December 1, but it is still part of a slowly accelerating trend in the face of membership losses. You can read the text of the resolution here.
NEA and AFT currently have four merged state affiliates – Minnesota, Florida, Montana and New York. North Dakota is well on the way and other small affiliates have at least toyed with the idea.
These mergers don’t mean a lot in the overall scheme of things except that some unknown tipping point will eventually be reached to ignite an organized move to merge NEA and AFT nationally. Unfortunately for them, the two unions have let the formal structures designed to lead them to this point decay over time, and there is the still the danger that any whiff of merger will divide NEA at a critical time in its existence.
I expect that NEA and AFT headquarters will avoid the question, but outside the teacher union Beltway we’re likely to hear the murmurs grow from pro-merger forces.