Imagine part of your paycheck is removed each month and sent to a rich, powerful nonprofit that advances culture-changing causes in conflict with your values, such as anti-gun legislation, promoting racism, and teaching children to how to alter their gender.
That is the reality for many teachers union members.
Some Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) members were troubled in 2021 when the union presented a 10-hour workshop, “Nice White Parents: A Look at How Parent Groups Have Systemically Impacted the Education System.”
A workshop flyer promised to discuss the “key driver blocking educational integration and equity: the actions of white families.”
NEA Union Dues at Work
Most of the NEA’s revenue is from member dues. The union’s 990 tax exempt form for 2019, the most recent available, shows it received $375 million in membership dues and $6.5 million from investment income. Including other listed income streams such as advertising and rental income, the NEA’s total 2019 revenue was $389 million.The NEA’s 2021 Form LM-2 Labor Organization Annual Report shows the union with $443 million in total assets.
The annual salary of the U.S. President, $400,000, is less than the salary of the NEA president.
In 2019, former NEA President Lilia Eskelsen Garcia earned $420,000 in salary and $214,000 in other compensation for the 37-hour a week job. Her term ended in 2020. As past president, she earned $144,000 in 2021.
Some union leadership got handsome raises through the pandemic, along with advanced job titles.
Current President Rebecca S. Pringle totaled $431,000 in 2021 income, compared to her 2019 salary of $361,000 when she was vice president.
In 2019, Secretary Treasurer Princess Moss earned $359,000, and by 2021 her salary increased to $372,000 as NEA vice president. That is more than Pringle earned in the same position.
Out of Teachers’ Pockets
School districts remove union dues from each member’s pay and send it to the local union, where it is split. A large percentage is sent to the regional and national arms of the union. Dues vary but are roughly $1,000 a year.“You have these educators and people who work in schools, who have been paying thousands and thousands of dollars for their entire career, to a union that says they protect them. But since COVID, these unions are taking significant stances on things that are alarming a lot of people,” Karin Majewski, an educator in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and former NEA member, told The Epoch Times. “What I find so crazy is the union is doing everything they can to hide it from the members or lie to the members about what’s actually happening.”
The Epoch Times reached out to the NEA for comment.
NEA Political Agenda
After its July Representative Assembly, the NEA published a list revealing the union’s agenda, including proposed amendments to its constitution, bylaws, and about 85 new rules awaiting debate by its membership. The Epoch Times asked the NEA which rules have been adopted since then. The NEA did not respond.“Only NEA delegates are allowed to see what was approved, so they are hiding it from the general public,” Majewski said, adding that the public pays taxes for teachers salaries and funds the money given to the union which influences what children are taught.
- NEA will inform states and local unions of what it calls “LGBTQIA+ inclusive language” that may appear in contracts, including “parental leave” instead of “maternity leave,” “parent” instead of “mother or father,” “birthing parent” instead of “mother,” and “non-birthing parent” instead of “father.”
- NEA will ensure recruitment of diverse school board candidates, including “queer and people of color,” in “the wake of right-wing attacks on diversity, inclusion, and equity reform.”
- “NEA shall acknowledge the existence in our country of institutional homophobia and transphobia.”
- NEA “will encourage members and others to wear orange every Tuesday during September and October to show support for common-sense gun safety laws.”
- NEA shall create fact sheets “about the largest 25 organizations that are actively working to diminish a student’s right to honesty in education, freedom of sexual and gender identity, and teacher autonomy.” Fact sheets should include funding sources, leaders, “and connections to known entities that are seeking to dismantle public education.” Fact sheets will be used by state affiliates “as they mobilize members to stand up against these attacks.”
- “NEA will publicly stand in defense of abortion and reproductive rights and encourage members to participate in activities including rallies and demonstrations, lobbying and political campaigns, educational events, and other actions to support the right to abortion, contraception, and a person’s decision about their health.”
- “The NEA will use all means at our disposal to defend reproductive freedom … where abortion clinics are under attack by the right wing,” the publication says. “The NEA will defend its members and students who need access to abortions and birth control.”
- NEA will issue a press release calling on the Biden administration to increase the number of Supreme Court justices.
- NEA will work toward a national policy of mandatory masking and COVID-19 vaccines in schools.
- “NEA will demonstrate its support for the right to asylum for migrants from Venezuela and Central America now arriving at the U.S. southern border.”
- “NEA will educate members and the public about the history, culture, and struggles of Palestinians, including the detention, abuse, and displacement of children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the publication said. Sources should include, but not be limited to, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem–Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.”
- To keep “the best and brightest in the workforce, NEA shall write a sample letter for local and state organizations encouraging school districts and state lawmakers to provide funding for educators to receive advanced degrees.”
Easy to Join, Tough to Leave
Union membership was mandatory for many public school employees until the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.“Many states required union-represented public employees to pay union dues as a condition of keeping their jobs. The general rule was, you had to financially support a union whether you wanted to or not, if you were in a union-represented public job,” Max Nelsen, director of labor policy at Freedom Foundation, told The Epoch Times. The foundation helps union-represented public employees resign from union membership.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that it was unconstitutional under the First Amendment to compel public employees to subsidize union advocacy and political speech that the employees disagreed with.
“Since that decision, every public employee in the country has had the ability to choose for themselves whether to join a union as a member and pay dues,” Nelsen said.
But there is pressure to stay in the union, and some employees believe they can’t leave.
“Unions like the NEA and others, like the American Federation of Teachers, the SEIU, Teamsters and so on, responded to that ruling by trying to undermine it wherever possible,” Nelsen said. “They may not be able to get people fired anymore for refusing to pay dues. But they have instituted policies and practices, and worked with their allies and state [and] local governments, to pass additional legislation to institute a series of coercive and deceptive dues collection practices that tried to backstop what they lost in the Janus decision.”
Most tactics, Nelsen says, revolve around the government collecting dues for the unions.
In most states where public sector unions and collective bargaining exist, the government—the school district, city, or state agency—has a legal obligation to withhold union dues from the paychecks of employees who have signed up.
“The fact that government performs that function, and unions, through government, have that direct access to public employees’ paychecks, enables the types of coercive practices that we’re seeing unions adopt since Janus,” Nelsen said. He pointed to a union-backed law in Washington. The state passed legislation saying unions can sign employees up for membership and dues deductions over the phone, in writing, or online, any time. But if employees want to cancel those payroll deductions, they may only cancel in writing during a two-week window.
“Similarly, state officials have allowed unions exceptional access to public employees. Unions often receive detailed personal contact information that they can use to solicit membership. Unions often get access to newly hired employees, as part of the orientation process,” Nelsen said.
COVID Policies Ended Union Loyalty
Carolyn Powers, an educator at a school district in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, said the NEA is overtly political.“I was getting very upset with how political it was. They were putting things in our mailbox telling us who to vote for and I just didn’t feel that politics and school should ever be meshed,” Powers told The Epoch Times. “I taught fifth grade for most of my career and the kids in my class never knew my political affiliation, because my job as a teacher is to teach them how to think, not what to think.”
Powers, who has a child in the school system, did not approve of the COVID-19 policies and felt they were keeping the schools closed much longer than needed.
“I wrote a letter to our union president saying that I do not want to be virtual, I want to go back to the classroom,” Powers said. “He basically said that all teachers wanted to stay home. … But there were a lot of teachers who wanted to go back.”
Teachers predicted the current problems of learning gaps and students being set back socially, Powers said.
She left the NEA and now belongs to the Keystone Teachers Association (KEYTA), which offers Pennsylvania educators professional liability insurance and legal assistance with a membership fee less than half the cost of the union, and no politics.
Allison Crognale, a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Spanish teacher and student council adviser, left the NEA and also joined KEYTA.
During the COVID-19 shutdown, Crognale became disenchanted with the NEA and PSEA when she saw the union pushing mandatory vaccine mandates for teachers. And there was also the politics.
“No matter how many times I spoke to my building representatives, they told me that they did not give any money to politics in any way shape or form,” Crognale told The Epoch Times. “Yet, constant, beautiful flyers were being sent to my house, endorsing candidates that go against everything in my being.”
She paid NEA dues for 24 years.
“It was all politics, politics, politics. And then it became all masking and vaccines, and I just thought, I’m paying these people a lot of money and they don’t represent me,” Crognale said.
She saw a Facebook post asking, “Are you tired of the union?” and ended up calling Majewski, who told her she could leave the union and keep her job.
“She told me I wasn’t going to lose my job, that there was still going to be security, because of course I was scared to death. I thought I would lose everything if I left the union,” Crognale said.
She noted that the NEA LGBTQ+ Caucus is encouraging teachers to wear rainbow badges so students know they are safe to talk to, but she says the badges are not needed because it is every teacher’s job to always be available for any student who needs to talk things out.
The badges declare, “I’m here. Safe person, safe space. Proudly supported by NEA Member Benefits.” The badges have a QR code with resources to offer children.
Some of the resources the caucus has provided teachers, for sharing with children, include detailed instructions on how to perform certain sexual acts.
“I know a lot of people in my district alone, let alone other districts, are leaving or considering leaving because of the political affiliation,” Powers said. “And it’s not because of Republicans or Democrats. It’s because they don’t think politics and education should be interwoven together.”
