The NEA Is the Big Business Boss

A strike and a lockout stall the teachers union’s multimillion-dollar get-out-the-vote machine.

By Mene Ukueberuwa of The WSJ.  Excerpts:

"The National Education Association is involved in a labor dispute. But it isn’t teachers who are on strike; it’s the union’s own employees."

"The labor standoff is in its fifth week. The union is barring some 300 staffers from entering its offices and doing their usual jobs, like handling communications and developing online resources for teachers." 

"the NEA canceled the flights and hotel payments of locked-out employees, leaving them stranded in the City of Brotherly Love." (for the NEA’s national convention)

"Then it suspended their pay indefinitely. It threatened to go even further, saying it would cancel employees’ health insurance by the end of the month if they didn’t take up management’s latest contract offer. But the NEA quickly backtracked on that plan after it leaked to the press."

"“What they’re doing is legitimizing antiunion tactics,” says one member of the NEA Staff Organization, or Neaso, the employees’ union."

"Neaso also says the NEA withheld overtime pay and hired contractors without employee input."

"it’s odd that the nation’s largest labor union, with some $520 million in annual spending, would stiff-arm its fairly small staff in the first place. Employees say they want raises that keep up with inflation, and they recall that the NEA previously froze staff pay for nine years, from 2012 to 2021. The union has offered raises and bonuses this year but not enough to satisfy its employees."