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NEA Membership Continues To Plummet
The National Education Association teachers union has seen a steady fall in membership in recent years — and now the number reaches lows not seen since 2005.
As President Obama urged the members of the National Governors Association to spend more on education and called for an increase in the number of teachers in the classroom, recent analysis shows that the number of teachers signed up with the National Education Association continues to plummet.
The latest figures show total membership below 3,079,000. This means that the membership levels are at their lowest since the 2005-06 school year – the year before the NEA affiliate in New York merged with the AFT-affiliated New York State United Teachers, writes Mike Antonucci at Hot Air.
The NEA budget back then was $300 million. However, the NEA budget is now $375 million, and as recent unprecedented staff reductions show, the NEA is struggling.
“The union is down more than 76,000 active working members compared with this time last year. Some losses in active membership are mitigated by increases in retired members,” writes Antonucci.
“Retired members certainly add to NEA’s strength, but they pay only $25 annually in dues, as opposed to $178 by active working teachers. Trading active teachers for retirees keeps total membership numbers up, but greatly reduces the union’s bottom line.”
This comes as Nick Gillespie at Reason.com writes that the K-12 education monopoly is crumbling — and he cites the country’s largest, and most powerful, teachers union leaking membership as a contributing factor.
“Clearly, the NEA is still the 800-lb. gorilla when it comes to calling shots regarding teachers and education policy in most local, state, and federal legislatures around the country. But smaller numbers is a good sign in this case. Maybe rank-and-file teachers are starting to recognize that unions have largely failed to capture much of the huge increase in money streaming into schools; since 1991, per-pupil, inflation-adjusted dollars have increased by 25 percent while teacher salaries have basically kept pace with inflation. What are union dues for if not wage increases?”
With Michigan’s data that shows a loss of about 13,500 working employees since 2009, Antonucci estimates that the NEA has lost 157,000 members after hitting its high-water mark in that year.
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Comments
Union membership is falling all across the United States because the powers that be have convinced workers that unions are evil and they can do better negotiating on their own. This is nonsense of course. Workers need to united together because they are, singly, not negotiating terms with a single person but with a monolith corporation or government. But you can’t maintain lies forever. Workers were better off during the time of strong unions. I predict we’ll see their reemergence sooner rather than later.
Valuable employees don’t need unions to protect their rights. Their value sells them to employers. Unions create layers and layers of ossified beurocracy that keeps good workers on the same level as bad ones. I think that the workers are finally waking up to the truth.
Joe, you never did tell us what group has you posting here?
Disgruntled taxpayers being fleeced, United States Local. Ever heard of it? No? You will.
fleeced? your getting a bargain for all we do at the small amount it costs you particularly considering how often you get in the way
Don’t attack me, I am a teacher, but unions are not helping. We need some of their protections but until we police our own ranks with honesty we will continue to be bashed. We need to clean it up. 15 years and not a member.
Mike, do you find it difficult to negotiate your contract?
Mike, show me one study that says that the problems in education are caused by so many bad teachers, that the whole lot of us have to loose our rights to negotiate better working conditions.
I never said it had any thing to do with so many bad teachers. Don’t know how you stretched that one. Read what I wrote. We do have bad teachers, they are not the majority not even close. But the are sheltered. Linda I would love to negotiate my own contract I’m a hard to fill position in line to get bonuses in some states simply for teaching what I teach. Plus I do a good job if I do say so myself, but I have to settle for what the union gets me. Plus check it out union numbers are dropping. Must be a reason.
you will find union membership dropping because of two main factors.
1. a reduction in the number of educators due to budget cuts.
2. an increase in states hostile to union membership (right to work states, and situations like Wisconsin)
good luck negotiating your contract by yourself, because when you stand their by your lonesome with no one else to back you the school districts will pay you as little as possible, start making ridiculous demands of you both in and out of the classroom and you will have no recourse but to do what they say, or stop working for them.
you wear your “not a member” concept proudly, but you still work under the conditions the group negotiates, you don’t have a real concept of what it would be like without the union of teachers supporting you.
“… you will have no recourse but to do what they say, or stop working for them.”
Welcome to the world of non-union workers. What exactly makes union workers so special that they deserve more than the rest of us?
Mike, if you think you’d do better negotiating your contract without the union, I think you’re mistaken. You’re benefiting from the union even if you don’t pay the dues. You wouldn’t be able to negotiate anything close to what the union gets for you by yourself, no matter your value. You just wouldn’t have the leverage.
Maybe yes, maybe no. My original post if you read it, did say we do need some of the protections of the union. I don’t deny that, but rightly or wrongly so the union gets the wrap for not being able to remove bad teachers. There are bad teachers and they should be removed. All I’m saying is that if the union would recognize this fact and either be more proactive in helping those teachers better themselves or not hinder their removal their preception would be better, the profession would be better, and students would do better. That last part is what it is all about!
I think the union doesn’t really have that option: to help only those deserving of help. There are quite a few unquestionably bad teachers, but there are way way more average teachers who run afoul of administrators, or have the wrong skin color, or maybe the wrong family makeup, or aren’t as deferential to the parents as the parents may like, and those need all the protection the union can provide. Furthermore, you’re mistaken if you think it is the unions that are keeping bad teachers in classrooms. Just a few days ago, on this site there was a writeup of a study that showed that even when given increased power to fire underperforming teachers, the administrators declined to use it. Probably because even bad teachers are difficult to replace.
i have just recently become a union rep, and i think what you misunderstand is that the union has no problem with removing bad teachers.
but, ALL teachers pay their dues, and consequently all teachers deserve the union defined process for removal. the union does not necessarily “fight” firing. they simply make sure the process for change is followed for every person, so the administration can’t start cheating people on their own agenda instead of in the case of what is best for the students.
Don’t argue with anything you just posted. But it is like any other group, if we don’t police ourselves someone else will and this is what we are getting.
Teachers are dropping out of the NEA because they don’t do anything. Are they in Baton Rouge right now?
Nashville, Richmond? Teachers are getting a number done on them and the NEA is nowhere to be seen. If teachers haft to fight their own battles, fine, they can save a whole bunch of money by not paying for NEA bureaucracy.