Posts tagged NEA
Op-ed: The Case Against Public-Sector Unions
April 9, 2026 // The reforms are commonsense: make re-enrollment annual and affirmative — if a worker wants to belong, they sign up every year end automatic payroll deductions so dues are a visible, conscious transaction require unions to disclose political spending the same way corporations have to These are exactly the kinds of reforms Oregon, New York and Hawaii are working to prevent — not by defeating them in debate, but by making it illegal to tell workers such options exist.
Commentary: Nilesh Umapathy: SB 1296 is about accountability — not anti-unionism
April 9, 2026 // The PERC ruling shows what happens when someone pushes back — the union is forced to open its books and cover the member’s legal costs after it tried to silence them. Critics of SB 1296 will no doubt raise concerns, but most will miss the point. This is not an anti-union coalition. LaBedz herself is not anti-union. She is a member who was punished for exercising her rights. This is a coalition demanding accountability.
John Coyne: The teachers challenging their unions’ political agenda in court
April 8, 2026 // Wolf won that gubernatorial election and later appointed PSEA President Jerry Oleksiak as his labor secretary. Oleksiak himself embodied another way teachers’ unions advanced their agenda in schools — through “ghost teachers.” Typically in urban school districts, teachers’ unions arranged for certain teachers to leave the classroom and work full-time for the union. The problem? These ghost teachers stayed on district payroll, receiving a taxpayer-backed teachers’ salary, pension, and health benefits. Oleksiak, a former special education teacher, was a ghost teacher for ten years leading up to his appointment by Wolf.
America’s Largest Teachers’ Union Prizes Activism Over Education
April 2, 2026 // Members of America’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (NEA), were back in training in February, this time for a confidential webinar entitled “Advocacy and Free Speech Rights for K-12 Educators.” The leaked slide deck, posted by the watchdog group Defending Education, reveals that the NEA is less focused on American students’ stagnant test scores than on training its members to become activists, while using misinterpretations of the First Amendment as a shield.
Opinion Aaron Withe: Why unions love the ‘Billionaire Tax’
March 12, 2026 // It has attracted a coalition of supporters — chief among them government employee unions. That might seem like an odd pairing, but the logic becomes clear once you trace where the money is supposed to go. Sanders’ legislation would redirect the projected revenue — $4.4 trillion over a decade — into an array of new federal spending programs, including direct cash payments, a federal salary floor for public school teachers and expanded Medicare benefits. Not coincidentally, pouring money into such programs means more federal employees, more union-eligible positions and more dues flowing into union bank accounts.
St. HOPE Charter School Teachers Successfully OUST SCTA Labor Union
March 7, 2026 // By Thursday, rather than face a union decertification vote that a federal labor board had scheduled to take place on March 11, SCTA union bosses instead disclaimed interest in maintaining their exclusive representation powers over the St. HOPE educators. Now, over 50 teachers from PS7 Elementary School, PS7 Middle School, and Sacramento Charter High School are free of the unwanted union’s control.
Is AEA in compliance with state payroll deduction law? National non-profit Freedom Foundation has doubts
March 5, 2026 // Over the last several weeks, representatives from the group whose mission is to “liberate public employees from political exploitation” have been in Alabama to introduce themselves to lawmakers and like-minded groups. One of the problems they’re ready to address is what they describe as a loophole or problem with the way the AEA uses money collected through payroll deductions for political purposes. “The loophole is the fact that paycheck protection, payroll deduction ban, whatever you want to call it, relies on the Alabama Education Association certifying that they do not take any portion of that money, dues, and use it for political fights. That is absolutely false,” Freedom Foundation's Rusty Brown told 1819 News in a phone interview.
Op-ed: ‘The issue is the revolution’: Who is running your city’s teachers union?
March 4, 2026 // Under the banner of “social justice unionism,” teachers’ unions are increasingly treating classrooms, teachers, and even students as instruments in a wider ideological project — one organized, replicated, and funded across the nation. This shift helps explain why contemporary political controversies are now being filtered into elementary, middle and high schools. As one activist leader put it during the NEA Educators for Palestine webinar, the anti-ICE movement is “the spark that could ignite the fire under Labor.” As the saying goes, “The issue is never the issue — the issue is the revolution.”
Commentary: Florida Teachers Unions Have Lost Their Way
February 26, 2026 // If a union gets exclusive authority of a bargaining unit, it should be chosen by at least 50% of the employees. That's the principle behind House Bill 995 and Senate Bill 1296, now moving through the Florida Legislature.
Taxpayer-backed teacher unions receive $390M in dues
February 19, 2026 // Since 2022, the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers have together contributed $43.5 million to political organizations, including The Trevor Project, according to a report by the nonprofit Defending Education.