Election season is here, and America’s teachers’ unions are on the road.
On October 15, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) launched a nationwide bus tour ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. The union plans to visit at least 10 states and 15 cities, campaigning for its preferred candidates and promoting its political priorities.
The tour bus is just the beginning.
The AFT’s political operation includes television ads, digital campaigns, door-to-door canvassing, and more than 800 endorsements from state and local affiliates. More than 500 AFT members are running for office themselves.
So is the job of a national teachers’ union to improve education, or to win elections?
Consider California. The California Teachers Association (CTA), an affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), has contributed more than $43.8 million through its Issues PAC to support Proposition 3. The measure would make an existing income tax increase on high earners permanent.
The national NEA has added another $7.5 million. The California Federation of Teachers and the AFT’s political committee have contributed a combined $2.2 million.
That’s more than $53 million from teachers’ union organizations behind a single ballot measure in a single state.
California isn’t alone. In Minnesota, where the AFT’s bus tour began, the political action committee of the statewide teachers’ union had spent nearly $2 million on candidates and causes by early August. In Washington, the statewide teachers’ union has spent more than $5 million on state politics this year.
Politics isn’t a side project for these unions. It’s a core part of the business.
Union leaders say political spending is how they secure school funding and protect teachers. But at this scale, teachers deserve straight answers about how much of their dues go to the classroom and how much goes to campaigns. Teachers and union leadership don’t always want the same things.
That raises a broader question: What if employees no longer want the union in their workplace?
That’s where the Center for Independent Employees (CIE) comes in.
For more than 20 years, CIE has helped employees in both the public and private sectors remove unwanted unions from their workplaces. Our attorneys and paralegals stay with employees from the first petition through the final vote or withdrawal of recognition.
As long as unions put politics ahead of the people they represent, employees will keep looking for a way out. We’ll keep helping them find it.
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The Center for Independent Employees (CIE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal representation and assistance to independent employees who are opposed to union oppression in their workplaces.