In 1966, newly elected national president Vincent L. Connery and his supporters defeated a proposed merger into the larger American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). They launched organizing campaigns, adopted a new constitution, and began transformation from a social club into an active labor union. NAIRE received its charter as a federal employee union in 1967. In 1973, the union expanded again to include members throughout the Treasury Department and the organization's name was updated to the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU); and the new NTEU began its drive to gain representation of the 13,000 U.S. Customs Service employees who were represented by either the National Customs Service Association (NCSA) or AFGE (which was raiding NCSA units). In 1975, with a guarantee to NCSA of participation in governing NTEU, a merger took place, representing the first group of non-IRS employees to be brought into NTEU. In 1977, it began to organize employees in other federal agencies; in 1978, employees of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) became the first members outside the Treasury Department.