Posts tagged National Education Association
DeSantis stands up for teachers
February 10, 2023 // The governor’s proposal, dubbed a Teacher’s Bill of Rights, draws clear boundary lines between the interests of teachers and the interests of teachers unions. The proposal restores the rights of taxpayers and teachers, who don’t always support union politics. For example, DeSantis’s proposal would end the practice of union dues being deducted directly from teachers’ paychecks — a process undertaken at taxpayers’ expense. And the governor’s proposal would prohibit union officials from doing union work while on the clock for their taxpayer-funded job. Known as “release time,” the paid workday hours that public employees spend doing union work can add up. In Miami-Dade County alone, public employees spent 132,433 on-the-clock hours doing union work between fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2019, according to a James Madison Institute report. Those hours cost taxpayers more than $4 million. The governor has also taken aim at so-called “zombie unions,” which lack adequate documented support from the teachers they claim to represent.
Opinion: Union partisanship puts conservatives in a bind
February 1, 2023 // A bill under consideration in the legislature, HB 216, would address these problems by requiring government employers to annually notify employees that union membership is optional, allowing public employees to cancel dues deductions from their paychecks at will, and creating a process to challenge unconstitutional provisions in union collective bargaining agreements. Like any other business, unions function best when they’re accountable to their clients, but accountability only exists if customers have the option to leave.
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.”
Teachers are fleeing partisan unions that some say undermine public education
January 11, 2023 // Teachers are fleeing unions in droves, citing the political partisanship of the organizations that charge $750 to $900 a year in membership fees. The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers lost a combined total of 59,000 union members during the 2021-22 school year. And they lost 82,000 members the year before.
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.”
Michigan teachers unions continue to shed members
December 9, 2022 // The latest report from the state’s largest education union shows that the Michigan Education Association shed 1,000 members since the previous year, continuing a trend. The number comes from the LM-2, a financial report the MEA and other labor unions must file with the U.S. government. According to the report, MEA’s revenue decreased to $84.2 million, and its membership stands at its lowest in at least 22 years. Michigan has a right-to-work law, which prevents unions from getting a worker fired for not paying union dues or fees. When the law was enacted in 2012, the MEA had 117,265 members. The number has dropped consistently in the last ten years, reaching to 79,839, a 31.9% decline.
Union bosses rake it in, even as their ranks shrink
November 15, 2022 // The new report, provocatively titled “Labor’s Fortress of Finance” by the pro-labor Radish Research, looks at the balance sheets of big unions since 2010, based on financial statements they must file with the Department of Labor. It finds that, over that period, unions have lost some 710,000 members, yet union membership revenues increased by one-third, to $18 billion — 85% of that from fees on members, which grew by a similar rate. By contrast, union spending increased by just 18% over that time. The money that unions expended representing workers, for instance, improved by just 13%. As a result, the surplus (the equivalent of profits at a business) that unions generated grew almost sixfold, to nearly $2.5 billion in 2021, from just $426 million in 2010. Collectively, their cash on hand more than doubled in 11 years to $11.3 billion, their investments soared nearly 150% to $17.4 billion, and their net assets rose 120%, to $31.6 billion.
California teachers union spends over $2.8 million on school board elections
November 13, 2022 // This year, unions backed multiple ballot propositions on topics such as the “Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond” in New York or Colorado’s Proposition FF to raise taxes to fund a school meal program. The trend of union involvement in politics is nothing new. Unions bankrolled over $1.8 billion in political lobbying and political activities in the 2020 election cycle, $1.4 billion of which came from union dues. AFFT offers detailed breakdowns of union spending on our website.
Florida Teachers’ Union Bleeding Members
November 3, 2022 // The Florida Education Association (FEA) lost more than 4,500 members – a 3.3 percent drop – in just the 2020-21 school year. By comparison, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) lost 2.3 and 2.1 percent of their memberships, respectively, in the same single school year.
Teachers’ union head silent over latest US test scores showing troubling decline in math, reading
October 25, 2022 // The head of the most prominent teachers' union remained silent on Monday after new national test scores showed troubling declines in math and reading among U.S. students. The COVID-19 pandemic’s toll on the learning of kids was further evident in the latest national test scores, which saw the largest decreases ever in math, while reading scores dropped to levels not seen since 1992 for fourth and eighth graders across the country, according to the Nation’s Report Card.