Posts tagged Washington Education Association
WATCH: Eight years later, quiet opt-out rules can’t stop millions saved in union dues
July 1, 2026 // But according to Washington Policy Center’s Director of the Center for Healthcare and Worker Rights Elizabeth New, many employees still don’t understand they have an “opt out” option. “A lot of workers still don't know about this right. It isn't included on required workplace posters about a worker's rights. It's not listed on a state website where other rights are listed," said New in a Thursday interview with The Center Square. "So, if your membership is truly voluntary, and we care about all workers' rights, employees should receive neutral information about membership before a union gives them paperwork to sign up.”
OPINION: Union Politics Is Poisoning Washington’s Business Climate
April 23, 2026 // Between 2021 and 2026, Washington fell from #16 to #45 in the Tax Foundation’s State Tax Competitiveness Index, a dramatic drop that signals a rapidly deteriorating business climate. Meanwhile, the cost of living has surged. The Washington Roundtable now ranks the state among the five most expensive in the country. This did not happen by accident. It is the direct outcome of a policy agenda backed by union money and enacted by elected officials who benefit from it: higher minimum wages, expansive paid-leave mandates, new healthcare requirements, and an increasingly complex regulatory environment.
Op-ed: Teachers’ unions have hijacked classrooms across the US to indoctrinate students with far-left propaganda
February 11, 2026 // The teachers’ unions fired the starting gun by blasting out anti-ICE propaganda to teachers, urging them to rally against immigration enforcement and turn schools into battlegrounds for their partisan fights. The National Education Association is also pushing teachers to print out immigration-related political propaganda posters and put them in their classrooms.
Op-Ed: Contentious union politics eroding Washington’s classrooms
January 29, 2026 // Right now, the WEA, through its support of the Washington Families for Freedom coalition, is actively campaigning against two citizen-initiated measures to the Legislature filed by Let’s Go Washington. The first (IL26-001) would restore broader parental rights in public schools by repealing recent legislative changes to the original Parents' Bill of Rights. The other (IL26-638) seeks to protect fairness in girls’ athletics by requiring biological sex verification and barring students defined as biologically male from female competitions. Supporters turned in far more than the number signatures required to qualify for a spot on the ballot, 416,201 for IL26-001 and 445,187 for IL26-638, on Jan. 2. Reports of harassment and threats against signature-gatherers surfaced repeatedly during the process, yet overwhelming public support prevailed.
WA political committees raise $66M, spend $52.8M ahead of 2025 general election
November 2, 2025 // The SEIU 775 labor union, which represents over 55,000 health care workers across three states, has a PAC called SEIU 775 Ballot Fund. That committee raised and spent the most out of any other PAC so far this year, with $7.1 million in contributions and $2.8 million in expenditures, according to the PDC. The labor union also registered several other PACs in Washington state this year, according to the PDC.
WASHINGTON EDUCATION ASSOCIATION GIVES BIG TO PROGRESSIVE CAUSES, TAX RETURN SHOWS
March 25, 2024 // WEA president Larry Delaney, elected to that position by the union’s members, received total compensation from the union of $312,281 for a reported average of 37.5 hours of work per week. The union’s elected vice president, Janie White, received $257,936 in total compensation. However, the union’s hired executive director, Aimee Iverson, far outpaced them both, receiving $415,545 in total compensation from the WEA that year. The Form 990 also disclosed a dozen other top staff, each earning well over $200,000 per year in total compensation. The total number of such employees on the payroll is unknown. Interestingly, unfunded pension obligations towards its current and former staff represent a significant liability for the WEA. In fact, the weight of the union’s reported $45 million in liabilities for employee retirement benefits pulled its net assets into negative territory that year by nearly $1.3 million.
OPT-OUT WINDOWS JUST ANOTHER WAY UNIONS FLOUT JANUS RULING
February 7, 2023 // Determining when and how to exercise their right to be free of a union is the prerogative of the workers, not the union, elected lawmakers or unelected bureaucrats. Nor is it within the purview of lower courts to limit rights only recently affirmed by the Supreme Court. Moreover, what the unions don’t realize is that, by denying workers their constitutional rights, they alienate the very people they so virtuously claim to represent.
Teachers union urges Washington Supreme Court to uphold capital gains tax
May 16, 2022 // The Washington Education Association has a filed a brief with the state Supreme Court that calls for opening the door to the imposition of a graduated income tax without a constitutional amendment or voter approval.