Posts tagged NEA
Government Unions Are Making a Comeback — and Taxpayers Will Pay the Price
September 15, 2026 // Taken together, those same four unions have added back more than 230,000 members since 2024, the Commonwealth Foundation reports. That’s a 3.5 percent jump, and it has wiped out most of what looked like a permanent decline. Two of the four unions, AFSCME and SEIU, now have more members than they did before Janus. Only one union, the NEA, is still losing members, but even that decline has slowed.
Op-Ed: Brigette Herbst: Congress should Investigate the National Education Association’s charter
September 15, 2026 // However, over the past several years, the NEA has supported divisive partisan politics and extremist ideologies. By way of example, the NEA Advocacy Fund, a super PAC, and the NEA Fund for Children and Public Education have directed much of their political spending toward Democratic candidates and aligned political organizations. According to filings, the NEA Fund for Children and Public Education has historically contributed more than 90 percent of its candidate-directed funds to Democrats, while independent expenditures by the NEA Advocacy Fund have similarly supported Democratic candidates and causes — a far cry from “promot[ing] the cause of education in the United States.”
Michigan earns ‘D’ in government union, worker freedom report
September 10, 2026 // The report called many of these actions taken by states and unions “anti-freedom” proposals which leave workers confused on their rights and obligations. “Union executives are spending tens of millions of dollars to rewrite the rules of the game and bolster their political machine in every state, at the expense of freedom for government employees,” Osborne said. “State lawmakers across the country must stand up against anti-freedom labor proposals to ensure that every American worker has the right to choose whether or not to associate with a union, without coercion or fear, and that their hard-earned dollars don’t fund a political agenda they don’t support.”
Opinion: National Teacher Union is Fighting Teachers … to Prevent Unionization
August 30, 2026 // In 2025, a group of teachers in Montpelier, Ohio, decided it was time to move on from our affiliation with the Ohio Education Association (OEA) and the National Education Association (NEA). A super-majority of the more than 70 teachers in our bargaining unit signed a petition requesting to hold a vote that could replace the OEA with a new, independent, local union: the Association of Montpelier Educators. We filed our petition for a representation election on April 8, 2026. That election should have happened by now. Instead, the OEA and NEA — national unions that bill themselves as champions of unions and defenders of teachers’ voices — are fighting our effort to form our own local union and give us back our voice.
Florida Teachers Are Walking Away From Their Union. New AFFT Report Shows Where the Money Goes
August 21, 2026 // AFFT’s latest “Where Do Your Dues Go?” project examines FY 2025 financial filings from five union organizations with Florida operations: the Florida Education Association, AFSCME Florida, SEIU Florida State Council, United Teachers of Dade and 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
Teacher unions dedicate money to political activism, lobbying
August 18, 2026 // In 2025, the NEA spent a total of $448,171,192, according to Union Facts, a nonprofit that focuses on transparency and accountability. AFT spent a total of $278,261,430. The NEA spent more than $51 million on political activities and lobbying in 2025, and the AFT spent more than $41 million, according to Union Facts. In comparison, the national average salary for a public school teacher is $74,000, according to the NEA.
After financial troubles and firings, MASTERS Program staff starts union
August 14, 2026 // Nugent is in her fourth year at the school, but the effort began in just her second semester there, when she started working to bring in the state’s other teachers’ union, the National Education Association of New Mexico — “because Northern New Mexico schools are supposed to use NEA,” she said. But after a few Santa Fe local leadership positions switched around within NEA and a “poor meeting of about two hours that wasted teachers’ time,” she said, the partnership fell through. She was ultimately told the union “did not want to bother with unionizing small charter schools because it wasn’t profitable.” NEA New Mexico President Bethany Jarrell disputed that characterization.
Editorial Board: Government unions spend millions to save Washington millionaire’s tax
August 12, 2026 // Government unions have the most to gain from raising taxes. The millionaire tax would lead to more social spending, new government workers and more union dues. As progressives across America champ at the bit to soak the rich, the people should know that this is what they’re really voting on. Higher taxes don’t necessarily translate into better services. All they guarantee is a more bloated government.
Op-ed: Dues & Don’ts: Unions are political — and union money is again driving opposition to initiatives
August 4, 2026 // Public unions do more than bargain over wages and working conditions. They endorse candidates and ballot measures, produce voter guides, use direct mail and other member communications to urge workers and their families who and what to support. They get into all sorts of campaign fights using treasuries built with members’ wages. The current election season displays this clearly. The Washington Education Association (WEA) opposes all three statewide measures slated for the November ballot: Initiative IL26-001, concerning parental rights in public schools, Initiative IL26-638, concerning participation in athletics at K-12 schools, and IP26-645, the initiative to repeal an income tax passed by Democratic state legislators earlier this year. (Unlike candidate contributions, which come from voluntary WEA-Political Action Committee donations, member dues may be used for ballot-initiative campaigns without separately obtaining each member’s approval for that particular campaign.)
Opinion: Sneaky new teachers’ union plan to indoctrinate our kids: classroom AI
August 3, 2026 // Their objective is to indoctrinate, not educate. That misguided mission is largely to blame for the past decade of drastic learning loss in K-12 schools: Too much indoctrination, too little emphasis on the basics of math and reading. It’s a bad omen for our country.