Speaking of “How much does NEA spend on politics?”, read the following release on the union’s habit of spending large sums of teacher dues on that annoying negative political advertising (click on “Fullscreen” for the easiest read):
Of course, the answer to the question is: Depends what you mean. Some issues to consider:
No one understands how this all works better than Mike Antonucci from the Education Intelligence Agency, and he explains it well in his latest Communique. Bookmark for future reference.
Right now, it’s the heart of political season. That means some teacher organizations — the Colorado Education Association (CEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — are actively involved in contributing member funds to various campaigns. (Other teacher organizations do not collect or distribute member money for political contributions.) As Ed News Colorado reports today with a dog bites man headline: “Union contributions mount up.”
Through September 1, here’s an updated overview of how the two unions have spent on political action for the current 2010 election cycle (all information provided by reports on the Colorado Secretary of State’s campaign finance database). First, CEA and its local affiliates have given:
And now the AFT:
Added together, Colorado teachers unions have contributed 99.8 percent of their combined political spending for 2010 to one party: the Democrats. Somehow, I’m guessing that CEA and AFT members won’t vote this year in quite the same proportion. Where’s the balance?
Check out our political contributions page for some context, to see how imbalanced teachers union political giving is even by recent historical standards.
September has arrived. For teachers and other employees in many Colorado schools, the busy season continues. But today also marks the beginning of the short time frame in which union members in several school districts can choose to opt out of a year’s worth of union dues (and in a few cases — as our recent video about Colorado teachers unions pointed out — for non-union members to opt out of paying hundreds of dollars in union fees).
Some districts allow teachers and other employees to opt in or out of unions and other membership organizations at any time. In other districts, though, opt-out periods are limited to as little as 7 days or as much as 3 months. Here are the school districts where opt-out periods begin today, with procedures for those who choose to follow them, as well as the official deadline:
Check out this new Independent Teachers video about what happens when a non-union school employee who is forced to opt out of paying union fees every year misses the deadline because of family medical emergencies:
Due to family medical hardships, non-union Pueblo school employee Becky Robertson missed an annual deadline to opt out of union fee paycheck deductions. The union rejected her appeal. Though she had chosen not to be a union member, Becky ended up paying the union hundreds of dollars that could have been used for medical bills and other expenses. Why do Colorado laws allow this type of abuse to continue?
Which Colorado school district employees are affected by union fee opt-out policies for non-union members?