The CTA sponsored a halfway measure toward collective bargaining in 1965. The Winton Act, AB 1474, was in fact intended to stave off collective bargaining. The act established the right of school district negotiating councils to “meet and confer” with administration over employment issues. School boards placed representatives of teacher organizations on the councils in proportion to their membership. These negotiations could be used by school boards to inform their decisions, which nonetheless remained final. In his organizing conversations with teachers across the state, Raoul Teilhet provided a metaphor to describe the process: “Meet and confer is what you do with your children. Collective bargaining is what you do with your spouse.”

AFT activists like Ezquerro derisively called the practice “meet and defer” or “collective begging.” Although the Winton Act was intended to stack the deck in favor of the much larger CTA, CFT members utilized its flaws as an argument for full collective bargaining. In some districts the union boycotted the council and called for elections instead of appointment to the body.