TEACHERS AND THEIR UNIONS
The nation's school teachers are far more varied politically than their
unions leaders, according to political observers. Substantial numbers of
them are Republicans. But their unions are entirely in the Democratic Party
camp.
- The 2.2 million-member National Education Association and the American
Federation of Teachers, with about 900,000 members, have sent huge contingents
of delegates to every Democratic Party convention since 1976.
- This year, about 11 percent of the regular Democratic delegates came
from teachers' unions.
- Of the $1.3 billion the two unions collect in dues and receive from
other sources each year, millions are spent on Democratic candidates and
political field organizers.
- Experts estimate that the NEA now spends $39 million a year on some
1,500 political field organizers throughout the country.
The NEA has endorsed more than 250 candidates for Congress this year --
not one of them a Republican. In the 1993 to 1994 election cycle, the NEA
alone contributed $2.2 million to Democratic candidates, but only $25,800
to Republicans.
- Yet almost 40 percent of NEA members describe themselves as Republicans,
according to the organization's own polls.
- In a poll taken last November, 40 percent of AFT members said they
planned to vote Democrat, 16 percent GOP, and 22 percent were unsure.
- At this year's GOP convention, 34 delegates were NEA members.
- About 25 percent to 30 percent of all public school teachers do not
belong to a union, and almost no private school teachers belong.
State collective bargaining laws can force teachers to join unions -- paying
dues ranging from $300 to $700 a year -- or pay union fees in order to get
jobs. The unions' hierarchy uses the funds to promote costly government
programs; said one expert, "They have yet to see a tax they don't like."
It has been estimated that if Congress were to pass NEA's legislative program,
federal spending would increase $702 billion a year.
This statist orientation, educational specialists explain, is why unions
want to defeat the school voucher movement and oppose contracting out public
school services to private firms.
Source: Carl F. Horowitz, "Do Unions Represent Teachers?" Investor's
Business Daily, September 17, 1996.