Posts tagged Americans for Fair Treatment
Pennsylvania Musician Opposed To Funding Lefty Causes Challenges Forced Unionization
March 13, 2023 // “Before Covid, my contact with the union had been peripheral at best,” Wilkofsky said in an interview. “My union membership was forced on me as a condition of my employment. But I have found that the union is very politically active and does not really represent my interests. In fact, I would say the union is really a left-leaning political action committee that masquerades as an advocate for musicians. They support one political party nearly 100 percent of the time, and it looks to me like they spend zero percent of their time representing musicians.” The PAC for the American Federation of Musicians donated 100 percent of its contributions to Democrats in the 2019-2020 election cycle, according to campaign finance data.
Teachers need to think twice before they let unions into their paychecks
March 13, 2023 // According to Americans for Fair Treatment, the VEA reported $12.6 million in revenue in 2019 (based on IRS filings), with 82 percent of this coming from membership dues. As of 2019, the union’s largest liability was federal income tax. While the organization is tax-exempt, it is holding $4.2 million in case of “uncertain” federal income tax obligations. The second largest liability is the pension for union employees. Currently, the union’s pension obligation sits at $2.3 million, down from more than $4.7 million in 2017. Union employee salaries and benefits were the largest expense category but according to the latest filing, VEA had only 66 employees. Executive Director Brenda Pike was the highest-paid employee at $194,136 in base compensation, plus nearly $32,000 in retirement and nontaxable benefits. At the national level, NEA has 510 employees who earned an average salary of $134,000. Let that sink in. The union wants to take part of a teacher’s salary, up to $1,000 a year, knowing full well that teachers do not earn enough (in fact, using this as a recruitment talking point), so that they can first and foremost, pay their own union employees much, much more than most teachers will ever earn.
As Membership Rate Falls, Unions Double Down on Politics
March 10, 2023 // Labor unions portray themselves as champions of the little guy – standing up for workers against powerful special interests. But declining union membership rates suggest that many workers are no longer convinced that unions speak for them. The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in 2022, the overall union membership rate fell to its lowest levels since the government began tracking it in 1983. Just 10.1% of wage and salary workers belonged to a union, down from 10.3% in 2021 – only about half the 20.1% rate of 1983. In other words, nearly 9 out of 10 American workers are not in a union, despite union efforts to organize them.
Outgoing New York Teachers Union Boss Leaves Behind an Organization Deep in the Red
February 20, 2023 // NYSUT and its allies pushed hard last year for a mandate that requires New York City’s public schools to phase in class-size limits over the course of five years. At least 20 percent of the city’s schools will need to reduce class sizes, requiring more classes and more classroom teachers. The union has also been fighting to stymie the growth of charters: Earlier this month, Governor Hochul in her most recent budget proposal moved toward increasing the number of charter schools in New York City. “If I was paying dues under the assumption that the union was using those dues to represent me with my employers, it would be a little concerning to me that so much of that is being used for other things,” the senior organizing director of Americans for Fair Treatment, Brigette Herbst, says. “Perhaps they should focus more on those representational activities.”
EXCLUSIVE: US Postal Service is accused of sharing private information from 68 million households that applied for free Covid-19 tests with labor unions that could potentially be used for their political campaigns
February 10, 2023 // AFFT CEO Elisabeth Messenger said she fears that if passed to unions by USPS, the data could be used for political campaigning. 'We're talking over 70 million households by now. That's more than half the households in the United States,' she told DailyMail.com.
David Osborne: Pennsylvania’s teachers unions care about lining their pockets — not about teachers or students
January 19, 2023 // According to AFFT’s analysis, the PSEA spent just “$1 out of every $5 of member dues representing teachers, support staff, and other members. The rest of the membership dues money goes towards running the union, politics, and lobbying.”
Perspective: National teachers’ unions aren’t on your side
January 17, 2023 //
DeSantis Proposal Will Make Educators Decide If Teachers’ Unions Are ‘Really Worth The Money,’ Experts Say
December 23, 2022 // “Automatic dues deduction uses government resources to make it easier for unions to recruit and retain members and creates confusion for workers who may think their workplace union is endorsed by their employer or that membership is required by their employer,” Messenger told the DCNF. “In signing this legislation, Governor DeSantis would be taking a huge step in protecting teachers’ private information and ensuring the Florida state government is not a middleman in funding partisan politics.”
Biden mends bridges with unions after rail dispute
December 12, 2022 // President Joe Biden has returned to the good graces of labor unions by announcing a $36 billion pension fund bailout that will prevent more than 350,000 truck drivers, warehouse workers, construction staff, and retirees from forfeiting their benefits. But Biden's intervention comes after he rankled the key Democratic constituency by urging Congress to enforce a tentative union dispute agreement between railroad companies and their employees in order to avoid a strike that would have crippled the economy before the holidays.
Op-ed: The Teachers’ Unions’ Blame Game
August 23, 2022 // AFT’s allocation of 30 percent of its 2020–21 expenditures to politics, totaling $48.4 million in political activities and another $5.9 million in contributions. And they’re only second to the National Education Association (NEA), which devotes nearly 50 percent of its expenses to political endeavors, according to research from Americans for Fair Treatment. Given that the NEA spends twice as much on politics (almost all of which is devoted to Democrats) as on representing its members, the union resembles a political, rather than membership, organization.