I took the long way around to get to this work. I was an animated film-maker …

… and a sheet metal worker and member of of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. I then spent almost eight years in the Air Force as a C-130 navigator.

To illustrate just how much technology has advanced since then, that box in the upper right corner of the photo contains a sextant, which was my primary means of navigating over water.

After leaving the service, I got my master’s in international affairs and began a freelance career as a .

I took work as a newsletter editor, back when the internet was a rumor, personal computers only did one thing at a time, and “cut and paste” meant scissors and glue.

My first article about a teachers union was published almost 30 years ago. For me, it was just another story, along with others I had written about California’s recycling program, or weird news I compiled and labeled “the outpost of the odd.”

But readers responded to the union story, so I wrote more, culminating in a 1994 long-form analysis of the California Teachers Association for the Golden State Center for Policy Studies. I called it “The Shadow Legislature.”

Three decades later, that’s still an accurate title.

Obviously, many things have changed in public education. When I started writing, charter schools were just a fledgling experiment and school choice an impossibility.

Unfortunately, many other things are almost exactly the same. I recently came across . It was about outcome-based education, and if you change some of the acronyms around and update the references, it could have been written last week.

Schrag described issues of textbook censorship, social engineering, performance-based assessments, phonics versus whole language and more. Then there is this paragraph:

“It’s striking how quickly our struggles about curriculum ideas escalate into quasi-religious controversies over social or moral absolutes. The right sees a conspiracy by the federal government and its secular humanist legions to strip parents of control over their children and inculcate them with relativistic values, witchcraft and satanism. The left looks at every parent who walks into a principal’s office complaining about a book or a school assignment as a tool of religious fanatics.”

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Schools are a political battleground, because everywhere is a political battleground. We can wish for things to be different, but we have to deal with the realities. My only goal for the past 30 years was to tell you the stories the teachers unions won’t. That’s all.

I couldn’t possibly list and thank all the folks who helped and supported me along the way. Some of them, on both sides of the divide, probably wouldn’t want to be mentioned by name anyway. But I do want to single out the good people, past and present, at this publication, The 74. For the past seven years, they have been patient, kind and invaluable in making this column much better than it otherwise would have been. So thank you, Romy, Steve, Bev and the entire crew. I wish you much future success in your continuing mission to challenge the status quo.

Finally, thanks to you, my readers. All of you have made my long career, and now, happy retirement, possible.

God bless you all.

But at least in a relative sense, the past five years have not been to CTA’s liking. It spent $20 million in 2020 in a failed attempt to raise property taxes, and the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling in June 2018, which banned the collection of agency fees from non-members, has had a damaging effect, but not quite in the way most observers expected.

By the union’s own calculation, only about 2,700 teachers dropped their membership in the five years since Janus. That’s hardly debilitating to a union of almost 300,000 members. The hopes of Janus supporters and the fears of union supporters that Janus would lead to wholesale resignations did not come to pass in California.

However, it appears the ruling has been harmful to union recruiting of new members. According to internal union documents, in 2019 there were only 18,000 local public education employees who were eligible for CTA membership but did not join. As of the end of September 2023, the number of non-members had ballooned to almost 36,000.

Overall, the union ended the 2022-23 school year with 38,000 fewer members than it had when it began the first post-Janus school year in 2018-19. This chart, from internal CTA documents, shows the membership trends over the past 12 years.

CTA’s dues aren’t tied to membership levels, but to average teacher salary. Federal COVID relief money boosted that significantly, to the point where the union’s draft budget for 2024-25, obtained exclusively by Union Report, calls for a $30 dues increase. That would bring state level dues to $816. Coupled with national dues, every teacher belonging to CTA will pay at least $1,020 next year. Local dues will add to that figure.

The union estimates the increase will net it an additional $8 million, of which $3.3 million is earmarked for staff pay increases. Another $3.5 million is designated as “excess income over expenses,” which in another context would be called “profit.”

Overall, CTA is budgeting for $228 million, which is almost $40 million more than the national American Federation of Teachers received in dues this year.

The California union has several pots in which to place its income, many having to do with politics. CTA currently has $3.2 million in its candidate political action committee, $4.7 million in its independent expenditure committee, $8.4 million in its media fund, $15.3 million in its advocacy fund, and a whopping $38.9 million in its ballot initiative fund.

It is too early to list everywhere the union’s ballot measure spending might go, but it is already planning opposition to the . Scheduled for the November 2024 ballot, the measure would require majority voter approval for any tax increase passed by the legislature.

CTA’s financial involvement in local school board races is underreported. The state union recently pledged $100,000 to help elect Telly Tse and Neda Farid Faroumand to school board seats in the Glendale Unified School District, where CTA has roughly 1,300 members. Tse, coincidentally, .

The union also contributed $55,000 to in the Orange Unified School District.

There is no prospect for significantly diminishing the union’s role in state politics, though it appears CTA will maintain its position through ever-increasing funds collected from ever-decreasing membership levels. America’s industrial unions have survived decades with such a model. CTA may be on the wrong side of the slope, but the slope is shallow enough to ensure its continued influence for many years to come.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

This is known as a time loop, and the states, “When memories of past circuits of a time loop are permitted, there is the possibility of transforming the imprisoning circularity into an upward spiral, a learning curve.”

But what is a possibility in science fiction is a futile dream in the world of U.S. public education. Those in charge of properly staffing schools, districts and state agencies seem incapable of escaping the same patterns of hiring and layoffs over a period of many years.

The cycle begins with alarms about teacher shortages. These claims go back decades and almost always focus on unfilled positions rather than the actual number of teachers employed and the actual number of students enrolled.

Legislatures then appropriate additional funding as an enticement. Much of this money goes to raises for educators already in the profession, but it also allows school districts to create openings for classroom teachers, specialists and support employees.

As an aside, when wealthy suburban school districts create openings, they attract not only new teachers, but experienced educators from poor urban districts. This leaves the poor districts with less experienced veterans and new recruits.

Eventually, something puts a stop to the accelerated hiring. The effects of the recession hit public education in 2009. Local school districts had added 84,000 employees between September 2007 and September 2008. By September 2009, 68,000 were gone.

Unions didn’t take these layoffs lying down. The National Education Association claimed without immediate action. This led to what was commonly referred to as the edujobs bill in Congress. Ultimately, the reduction in the public education workforce was held to .

There was no acknowledgement that many of the laid-off employees were the very same people who had been recruited into the profession just a year or two earlier. “Last in, first out” seniority rules sealed their fate.

The edujobs bill simply postponed the effects of the recession for a while. Staffing levels continued to fall through September 2012. But they picked up again every year thereafter, surpassing pre-recession levels by September 2019.

The cycle continued with the unexpected COVID pandemic in March 2020. With virtually all public schools closed, by September 2020 local districts were employing 550,000 fewer people.

This was quickly followed by an unprecedented $122 billion federal aid package. Hiring bounced back almost immediately. show local school districts now have more employees than in any other September in history.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed. While teacher shortage stories still dominate press coverage, analysts like , Marguerite Roza and tie the record number of school employees to the record drops in student enrollment and warn of the next crisis in the cycle: the so-called fiscal cliff.

The 2023-24 school year will be the last one for the federal COVID relief money, which means states and school districts will have to fund all those raises and new hires from their own budgets. Some will raise taxes to do so, while others will start to prune employees.

Considering that time loops are a fictional/theoretical condition, it is remarkable how much space on the internet is devoted to escaping one. Most solutions adhere to the “learning curve” method, in which the time loop captive escapes through trial and error, ultimately finding the way out. But it seems that those running the nation’s school systems agree with : “To escape the time loop, we must realize that we are all stuck in a time loop and there is no escape.” In other words, this is the circumstance that exists, and the time loop captive must make peace with it.

Which probably means that when the alien invasion of 3023 leads to layoffs in the public school system, an AI-integrated humanoid robot will be writing a version of this very same column.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

This would be a triumph for AFT if it didn’t come with a string of asterisks.

The first is the issue of retired members. AFT members are members for life. When they retire, they are not removed from the rolls, nor are they required to apply for retired membership or pay any dues. A growth in retired members actually constitutes a loss in income for AFT.

In 2023, the union added more than 11,500 retired members, accounting for almost two-fifths of the reported gain in total membership. It now has 471,582 retired members — 27.5% of its total.

The other major event for AFT in the fiscal year was the . The AAUP has 44,000 members. Previously, about 20,000 AAUP members also belonged to AFT. Now, they all do, accounting for a further increase of 24,000 members to AFT’s total this year.

Mergers and new affiliations with existing unions are a fun way to pump up raw membership totals, but they do nothing to increase the share of the overall workforce that is unionized.

The new members from AAUP aren’t really a boon to AFT’s bottom line. A substantial number work part time, which is true of many AFT members as well. AFT reported 1,716,448 total members for 2023, but only 43% of them work full-time.

The effect of all this is illustrated by AFT’s finances. Last year, the union collected close to $212 million in dues. This year, that number fell to $189 million — a strange phenomenon if it had actually recruited tens of thousands of new members.

But there’s no need to fear for the union’s finances. AFT is putting its money to fruitful use. It greatly increased investments in stocks, corporate bonds, mutual funds and U.S. Treasury notes, leading to a net growth of $28.2 million in its portfolio.

AFT spread its wealth around to its allies as well. The largest amounts went to:

— $1.5 million

— $816,000

— $600,000

— $520,000

— $500,000

— $500,000

— $500,000

AFT also donated $250,000 to the Amazon Labor Union, but since it spent more than $292,000 worth of purchases on Amazon, that looks like a wash.

Mostly, AFT spent its money on itself. Its payroll for 342 employees totaled almost $43.1 million, or an average of $126,000 each. The union spent an additional $18.7 million on benefits.

AFT President Randi Weingarten led the way, with a 2023 salary of $443,551, which was a 2% increase over 2022.

The National Education Association’s fiscal year runs from September through August, so its disclosure report won’t be available until the end of November. However, Union Report has already obtained internal union documents that indicate NEA lost 9,800 members during fiscal year 2022-23. Preliminary numbers for September 2023 show a continued decline of about 2,800 members, mostly from the ranks of school support employees.

It would be a strange circumstance if AFT were recruiting so many new members from non-union ranks while NEA was steadily losing unionized members. Both organizations are still powerful and influential, whatever their numbers, but the extent of their power depends upon which direction those numbers are trending. Politicians might be less likely to bind their futures to a sinking ship. This would open up a host of new possibilities for education reform.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

“An investigative team from FBI Jacksonville executed a court-authorized search warrant today in furtherance of a federal investigation,” an agency spokesperson told the Florida Times-Union. “Because the investigation is ongoing, details about the search are not being released at this time.”

Local news reported that the investigation involves the . The presence of IRS agents at the raid supports this.

Union officers would not comment but released a statement that read, “We continue to be focused on upholding our mission of supporting our members and the students we serve. We are fully cooperating with authorities and anticipate a full and thorough assessment of the facts. To respect the integrity of the process, we will not discuss any further details.”

News crews spotted prominent Florida criminal defense attorney at the scene, but he would not reveal the nature of the investigation or whom he was representing.

With everyone involved mum, media outlets have followed suit. There hasn’t been a single update since the raid occurred.

Now, a raid is not itself evidence that a crime has been committed. It only shows that the FBI and IRS received enough information to convince a judge that further investigation was warranted. The presence of federal agents means the situation was beyond the scope of local law enforcement.

But the union’s finances aren’t a complete cipher. All unions and other tax-exempt organizations are required to file an annual disclosure report with the IRS. The covers the 2021-22 school year. It contains nothing that indicates criminal activity, though there is at least one curiosity.

I don’t have a definitive number for how many members the union has, though suggest it is in the vicinity of 7,500. The Duval union reported collecting more than $5 million in revenue in 2021-22, though that number is a little deceiving, since almost $2.8 million of it was forwarded to state and national union affiliates.

That left about $2.2 million for the local to run its operations. Its staff is small. The allows no more than seven people to be released to work for the union. It appears that is the number .

The union has two elected officers. The president, Terrie Brady, has held that position since 1999, and her executive vice president, Ruby George, since at least 2004-05.

That year, the union paid them $114,000 and $101,000, respectively.

Since then, their pay has fluctuated wildly. Brady’s salary ranged from $160,000 in 2006-07 to more than $326,000 in 2019-20. She received $251,868 in 2021-22.

George’s salary had a similar trajectory, though not always parallel to Brady’s. She received $134,000 in 2018-19 but almost $327,000 the following year.

It’s unusual for union officers’ pay to rise and fall that dramatically, unless they are constantly deferring compensation for tax purposes and then collecting it in later years. That may be the case here. But the amounts involved are also unusual.

For example, Brady’s taxable compensation for 2021-22 greatly exceeded the amounts paid to the presidents of United Teachers Los Angeles ($140,000), the Chicago Teachers Union ($155,000) and even that of the largest teachers union in Florida, the United Teachers of Dade ($217,000).

Duval Teachers United is similar in size to two other Florida teachers union locals, the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association and the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association. Their presidents made $127,000 and $152,000, respectively, last year.

The largest local affiliates of the Florida Education Association have a of problems with the law and their own parent unions. The state and national unions have not commented on the Duval raid, but neither have they initiated a trusteeship over the local, as far as I can tell.

“There’s more to come, I’m sure.”

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

And then there are the polls.

Since 1936, Gallup has asked Americans if they approve of labor unions. Every year but one (2009), a majority approved. This year, , down slightly from 2022.

Further results from the poll are entirely positive for the labor movement. Large majorities support unions over management in disputes. Most respondents say unions are good for everybody and think they will become stronger in the future.

, showing similar results, with support strongest among those under the age of 30.

The AFL-CIO had to to get these outcomes, but it makes sense that since most Americans are employees, they would more closely identify with the status of workers than with employers.

Let’s not begrudge unions their day in the sun, because it inevitably leads to their winter of discontent.

That’s because every January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its . And unfortunately for unions, the graph of the percentage of American wage earners who belong to a union looks like this:

It’s a pretty steady decline throughout the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden years, which suggests that changing politicians doesn’t change union fortunes.

How to reconcile the support for unions with the falling membership levels?

Last year, Gallup took this question head-on, asking non-union workers to express their level of interest in joining a union. This is how they responded:

This seems to be human nature at work. Saying you support something is a lot easier than doing something about it. But as discouraging as this result is, it actually understates the problem for unions.

Joining a union is not a difficult process for most workers. Sign a card and pay dues. The hard part is forming a union in your workplace for the specific purpose of collective bargaining with your employer. Doing so is akin to starting a nonprofit charity or small business. It’s a big job, and most people aren’t interested in pursuing it unless they are very, very unhappy at work.

Claiming, as the AFL-CIO does in its survey, that we would all be better off if we just fell in with union wishes is also a hard sell, considering the disputes major national unions are having with their own employees.

is a union of professional staffers who work for the National Education Association. They have been without a contract since June 1 and .

Staffers of the Service Employees International Union headquarters have authorized a strike against the union, as they have been .

Even workers at AFL-CIO headquarters are working under an expired contract. The AFL-CIO managers want to reduce employee retirement benefits.

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement for unions when the people who work for them can’t get a contract.

So enjoy the latest spate of , and calmly await the spate of excuses when reality doesn’t conform with dreams. It’s the circle of union life.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

Parents and the public are represented by superintendents and school boards, but at school sites they rely on principals and other supervisors. However, in many of the largest districts, these school managers are also union members.

Having seen the gains teachers unions made for their members both in salary and working conditions, administrators unions would like to copy that success.

There are 92,000 principals working in the public schools, and another 100,000 assistant principals. The vast majority have long backgrounds in teaching. The average principal had 12 years in the classroom before moving to an administrative role.

In many states, public school teachers are banned or restricted from bargaining collectively, and the hurdles are even higher for administrators, who can be viewed as both labor and management.

Principals unions were originally formed along with teachers unions in the 1960s and 1970s, but it wasn’t just superintendents and other district managers who found the event problematic. The passed a resolution in 1977 demanding the ouster of school administrators from the AFL-CIO, with which both are affiliated, citing their managerial responsibilities. AFT also claimed the administrators would “subvert collective bargaining achievements of organized teachers” and “cast teachers in an anti-union role.”

Despite these differences, principals unions mirrored AFT in policies, structure and composition. is the national umbrella union for five state chapters and 85 local affiliates. It’s small, with a budget of just $1.5 million, and acts primarily as a federal lobbying arm. The union’s priorities are very similar to those of the teachers unions.

Last month, union President Leonard Pugliese , calling on him to “develop and implement a Marshall Plan for public education.” This is something both and have advocated.

supported legislation to mandate an assistant principal in every public school and to integrate social-emotional learning concepts into pre-K-12 education.

Naturally, it wants to expand its membership as well. “In districts without school leader unions, the workload has increased, but the compensation hasn’t moved accordingly. We need to help organize the unorganized school leaders, so they can protect themselves, too,” said Pugliese.

As with the AFT, by far the largest portion of federation membership works in the New York City Public Schools, represented by the . The New York City administrators account for more than 63% of the national union’s 22,000 members.

The council has an additional quirk that may be unique among all labor unions: More than 53% of its total membership are retirees. While the national union operates on a shoestring, the New York City branch collects $18.4 million in dues, and its president was paid more than $287,000 in 2022.

Principals unions tend to form in large cities. AFSA has locals in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, San Diego, Denver, Seattle, Portland and Washington, D.C. Los Angeles also has an administrators union, but it is independent.

While some of these unions have existed for many years, they can’t all bargain collectively. The Chicago Principals and Administrators Association

Acting alone, administrators unions have no more power or influence than any other small advocacy group. But when they act in concert with teachers unions, they can leave school sites with all labor and no management. Without it, parents and the public lose much of their influence over their schools.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

But you can’t put 5,400 people in a convention hall for four days and expect them all to maintain a vow of silence. Union Report has obtained a full list of business items introduced during the assembly. Some items lack information on their final disposition, but whether they were approved, rejected or referred to a committee, they offer a complete picture of what occupied the delegates during their stay in Orlando earlier this month.

New Business Item 1 was approved by the delegates and did receive media attention. Among other things, it directed NEA to ensure that its political strategy included “promotion and defense of the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ people.” The union will devote more than $580,000 to this effort.

Once a new business item is approved, all subsequent proposals on the topic are ruled out of order, so a handful of items related to LGBTQ+ and transgender issues never made it to the floor for debate, including Item 4, which would have required NEA to recommend sample contract language with the terms “birthing parent” and “non-birthing parent” instead of “mother” or “father.”

The delegates also approved items that directed NEA to explore options for “member-led direct action” at the sites of future assemblies, and for the national union to stop referring to “right-to-work” states and laws, instead using the phrases “anti-worker” or “anti-union.”

The delegates referred a large number of items without recommendation to NEA’s standing committees. One of these called upon the union to address the use of artificial intelligence in public education.

Without access to the debate itself, it’s hard to say why the following items were rejected, but the costs of implementation weighed heavily on most proposals:

• Item 24 directed NEA to divest and dissociate from businesses and organizations that discourage joining a labor union. The delegate who introduced the measure specifically named Amazon and Bank of America. Perhaps this was defeated because under a strict reading, it might have required the union .
  
• Item 36 would have required NEA to develop a framework to evaluate and resolve conflicts with state affiliate union employees. For many years, the union has discouraged delegates from getting too involved in the internal workings of management and staff.
  
• Item 41 would have required NEA to “collect information on the potential dangers of artificial turf fields.” Each year, delegates introduce items on fringe issues, but they are usually shot down.
  
• Item 48 would have required NEA to produce a forum on “potential legal pathways to overturning the Janus decision,” which barred public employee unions from collecting agency fees from non-members. This was probably defeated because there are no legal pathways to overturning a U.S. Supreme Court decision, short of something like …
  
• … Item 74, which would have directed NEA to call on President Joe Biden to expand the Supreme Court.

A number of business items were debated and voted upon late on the final day of the convention, so I don’t have information on their ultimate fate, but here are a few:

• Item 56 directs NEA to encourage state affiliates not to use Amazon gift cards as giveaways.
  
• Item 57 calls on NEA to create a fund to issue grants to private-sector union organizing efforts.
  
• Item 65 requires NEA to publish a report on each state’s policies on charter school participation in the pension system. The rationale states: “At a time when state plans are under attack, requiring charter schools to participate in state plans could reinforce plan stability for educators and state and local plan sponsors.”

• Item 72 is about immigration and directs NEA to defend “asylum for all.”
  
• Item 81 states that NEA will hold events only in states whose laws are reviewed by the union’s general counsel, which would include laws related to “women’s health care, including abortion; health care for LGBTQ+ and transgender individuals, including any civil rights provisions and anti-union animus that seeks to penalize educators at the state or local level.”
  
• Item 94 directs NEA to communicate to members about the calming effect of green noise.

In addition to new business items, delegates debated additions to the union’s federal lobbying program. A series of amendments introduced by a single California delegate were rejected for being out of compliance with NEA policies. They included withdrawing from the World Health Organization, requiring schools to have hard-wired internet instead of wifi, prohibiting skywriting above schools and creating a vegan food pyramid.

NEA budgeted for a loss of 31,000 working members during the 2023-24 school year. The union has 410,000 fewer today than it had at its high-water mark in 2008-09. Nothing that happened in Orlando seems destined to reverse that decline.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

NEA made that opposition the focal point of the gathering, joining a protest organized by Florida for All on July 1 and then outside the convention center July 5. Its themes were “Freedom to Learn” and “Teach Truth.”

“As this nation’s largest, most powerful union … we will protect our democracy [and] preserve public education,” said Pringle.

But the union’s commitment to these principles did not extend to its own operations during the convention. It stage-managed every aspect of the proceedings and saw to it that no shadows were cast across its self-image as the progressive defender of democracy.

NEA bills its representative assembly as “the world’s largest democratic, deliberative body.” But just how democratic and deliberative is it?

The delegates spent most of their time at the four-day convention introducing, debating and voting on “new business items.” These are proposals for the national union to take a specific and finite action. They are paid for through NEA’s contingency fund, which totals $3 million.

The NEA annual budget approaches $375 million, which means the delegates are devoting almost all of their attention to less than 1% of the union’s operations.

The delegates do vote on the total budget at the end of the convention, but they cannot add, amend or delete anything from it — only approve it or reject it as is.

Which new business items were approved and which were rejected? Neither the public nor the non-attending members of NEA have any idea. The union put the proposals and actions behind a firewall, and very few individual delegates saw fit to pass along the information.

Education Week — the only media outlet to cover the convention — reported that the delegates , at a cost of more than $580,000. New Business Item 69, which had , passed by 20 votes out of more than 4,500 cast.

New Business Item 53 proposed that NEA instruct local affiliates on how to become “strike-ready.” The delegates voted to refer it to committee, which upset the sponsor of the item, Deb Gesualdo, a delegate from Massachusetts, because she felt it left the decision to act or not in the hands of a few higher-ups, instead of the large representative body.

, she claimed the “NEA board steering committee began to organize against it” and that her item “upset a handful of state presidents who are interested in hoarding information and hoarding power.”

Another delegate also sounded a bit disillusioned. “I sat with some teachers from different states at one point. What did we talk about? Our working conditions, our pay, our workload, student behavior … things that were not talked about during the [representative assembly]. Our [new business items] had little to do with teaching,” .

While the public, the press and most NEA members were in the dark about the proceedings, at least the delegates in attendance could witness them. But even delegates present at the assembly were mostly unaware of what actions NEA officials took just outside the hall.

NEA staffers represented by the Association of Field Service Employees have been working without a contract since June 1. In an attempt to move negotiations along, a group of them showed up at the convention center to hand out leaflets and hold signs.

This didn’t sit well with NEA executives, who, , sent convention center security and a sheriff’s deputy to have them removed from the premises.

The staff union also claims it was prevented from joining the Freedom to Learn rally, and that NEA urged delegates not to interact with the staff union.

“On a day when NEA professed the ‘freedom to learn,’ AFSE members and NEA members were denied their freedom of speech,” .

Its demands include the usual pay increases and benefit improvements, but the association also of increasing members’ workload while shrinking staff and relying on temporary employees, which it calls “an anti-union, exploitative practice.”

The association received strong support from its sister unions of NEA employees, the and the , which has its own gripes with NEA management.

The staff union placed that accuses some NEA leaders of prejudice and racism. “At NEA Headquarters there is a persisting culture of mistreatment and disrespect of our Black staff that has continued to go unchallenged,” the post reads.

There are legitimate concerns about whitewashing history, covering up errors and misdeeds, and promoting only a positive, glowing image. NEA’s own actions during its representative assembly demonstrate the union is not immune from such urges.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

So you give notice and move on, right?

If you’re fortunate, yes. If not, you could be faced with a suspended teaching license and a fine in the thousands of dollars for breach of contract.

Three cases heard recently by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education ended with recommendations to suspend the licenses of two teachers — one who resigned because of unspecified “family matters” and the other who quit because of low pay.

The third teacher, who testified she felt unsafe at her school, did not have her license suspended.

In Missouri, breach-of-contract fines are set at the district level and range from $500 to as high as $10,000.

“There is no teacher in the state of Missouri who would cost $10,000 to replace. That is ludicrous,” , senior staff attorney for the Missouri State Teachers Association. “It is absolutely being used as a punishment.”

While it may be used as a punishment, its primary purpose seems to be as a deterrent. An educator with a suspended license is prevented from taking a teaching job elsewhere until the contract expires. The fine is designed to reimburse school districts for the cost of finding a replacement.

Breach-of-contract cases are rare, and most times school districts will accommodate a teacher who wants to leave. Forcing educators to stay at a job they no longer want can be counterproductive for schools and students.

Nevertheless, Missouri is far from the only state with breach-of-contract penalties written into state law.

A one-year license suspension appears to be the standard practice in many states, including Arizona, California, Mississippi, South Carolina and Vermont. Other places, like Florida, Georgia and Minnesota, allow for sanctions but don’t specify.

Some states provide for even harsher penalties. Idaho, Nevada and North Dakota can completely revoke a teacher’s license for breach of contract.

In all cases, lesser penalties may be applied due to mitigating factors. California’s teacher credential commission might instead issue a “.” 

Tennessee and Texas each offer a list of circumstances under which teachers can avoid serious penalties.

Tennessee will release from contracts those teachers who that they are incapable of fulfilling their duties.

Texas acknowledges ill health of the teacher or a close family member, job relocation of a family member or a “.” Mitigating factors also include helping the district find a replacement and supplying lesson plans for said replacement after resignation.

How districts handle breach-of-contract cases varies widely according to their staffing concerns. When circumstances are good, districts and teachers tend to resolve midyear resignations amicably. But sometimes, districts will use the big stick to discourage departures.

As described by Education Week way back in 2000, license suspension ”appears to be a bit like a : The threat posed is ominous, but there are many compelling reasons not to trigger it.”

District officials don’t want to be constantly searching for teachers midyear and on short notice, but they also want to avoid getting a reputation for forcing teachers to remain, which can make it tougher to recruit new ones.

As with most labor issues, reasonable attitudes on the part of both management and workers can smooth over midyear resignation problems. But when the situation can’t be resolved, teachers can end up without jobs, and students without teachers.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

Union President Michael Mulgrew, Mayor Eric Adams and other city officials took turns thanking and congratulating each other on the “historic” deal . 

“As I indicated over and over again and never let you forget, I’m probably one of the few modern-day mayors that was a member of a union,” said Adams.

The union’s bargaining committee, executive board and delegate assembly each voted in turn to send the contract to the full membership for approval. This process didn’t go smoothly, as the final agreement wasn’t ready for union representatives to read before their vote. Union leaders wanted a vote before summer vacation.

“You don’t buy a house based on a PowerPoint the realtor showed you, or a used car based on the PowerPoint your used car salesman showed you,” . “We need to know what’s in this contract before we vote on it.”

The New York City teachers contract is , and the memorandum of agreement just negotiated is another by itself. Familiarity with all of its provisions — never mind understanding of them — falls to the union’s staff and its most committed activists. Most rank-and-file members will skip to the bottom line to decide whether to approve the contract. The amount of the raises would not surprise them, for better or worse, because the city and its unions practice pattern bargaining.

That is a process by which a contract reached with one union becomes the model for all others. When District Council 37, which represents 150,000 municipal workers, agreed to a five-year deal in February with annual raises of 3%, the pattern meant the UFT would not get much more than that.

There had been griping among some teachers because the initial raise doesn’t match the 2023 inflation rate. So the city added a couple of sweeteners in the form of bonuses.

The first has received a lot of press attention. At the end of the 2023-24 school year, every teacher will receive a $400 retention bonus for staying on the job. This will go up each year until reaching $1,035 by the end of 2027, and increase thereafter by the percentage of salary-schedule raises negotiated into subsequent contracts.

While all additional money is welcome, many teachers will already be making six-figure salaries during the term of the contract, so a few hundred dollars isn’t going to send them into paroxysms of delight. But the second, less publicized, bonus will have a significant effect.

Every UFT member will receive $3,000 immediately upon ratifying the contract.

Why pay union members a $3,000 bonus to accept a 20% raise?

This defies any sort of fiscal logic. The city is spending $350 million to induce union members to ratify a $6.4 billion contract they are in no position to reject. And New York’s is one the strictest anti-strike laws in the nation.

Adams did include a $3,000 ratification bonus for members of District Council 37, which represents 150,000 municipal workers, but that made a little more sense as an inducement because the contract was setting the pattern. When DC 37 members ratified it, it ensured that 3% raises would be the ceiling for all other municipal unions.

Perhaps the teachers union insisted on a ratification bonus because DC 37 got one and it could get no more in salary schedule raises. But it also made political sense for Adams, who will have largely achieved labor peace extending beyond the end of his first term, which runs through 2026.

The reason for the union’s haste to vote is harder to determine. Balloting will take place at school sites June 27, but the new contract doesn’t go into effect until September, so it could have conceivably waited until then.

The UFT internal opposition caucus , along with activists and , are urging “no” votes on their blogs. The city’s tabloid press isn’t too enamored of the agreement either. The editorial board called it “costly,” while the cited an estimate by the Citizens Budget Commission that the city will have an $11 billion budget gap by the end of the contract. But resistance is futile. With no guarantee that sending negotiators back to the table would result in an appreciably improved deal, teachers will happily take their $3,000 and enjoy their summer.

Still, the contract does not address one highly contentious issue: retiree health care. No changes were made to current policy, but the move to place many union members into Medicare Advantage plans is still the subject of litigation. UFT headquarters may be the target of more labor unrest than the mayor’s office will in the coming years.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

There have been GOP efforts in some states to curtail union influence. The most prominent of these is to prohibit school districts from deducting union dues from teachers’ paychecks. This forces unions to collect dues individually through electronic funds transfers or some other means. Payroll deduction bans of union dues were enacted this year in Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee.

But anti-union legislation makes up only a small portion of the overall picture. that of the 236 bills introduced in 2023 relating to public employee unions, 58 were sponsored by Republicans, while 158 came from Democrats.

So while four states made it harder to collect union dues, Maryland enacted a law allowing union members to deduct dues on their state tax returns.

Here’s a cross-section of union-related bills and activity from around the nation:

California

The state Senate approved a bill that would allow . It had overwhelming bipartisan support and the endorsement of the school administrators association and the U.S. Department of Defense, as military spouses must often seek new teaching credentials each time they relocate.

The California Teachers Association, however, opposes the bill, stating that there is no need for it and that reciprocity agreements with individual states were sufficient.

The bill is awaiting assignment to an Assembly committee.

Colorado

Gov. Jared Polis signed into law a measure that , banning job discrimination or discipline against them for engaging in such activities. The law also allows public workers “to pursue an employee organization with their co-workers without interference.”

Illinois

Both houses of the legislature approved a bill that allows up to who are elected to “represent the association in federal advocacy work.” The state union will reimburse the school district for the cost of a substitute.

Indiana

Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law a bill that removed from the previous statute . These included: curriculum development, teaching methods, hiring and retention, student discipline, expulsions, class size and budget appropriations. All these issues may still be discussed with unions but are no longer required to be.

The law also added “repeated ineffective performance” to the list of reasons for which a teacher may be immediately terminated.

Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Teachers Association is sponsoring a bill dubbed the , which would eliminate the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System standardized tests required for graduation.

The measure would create a commission composed of members appointed by various interest groups to recommend a new assessment system that could include work samples, projects and portfolios.

The bill has languished in the legislature’s Joint Committee on Education since February, probably because Democratic Gov. Maura Healey has been about it. The state teachers union recently held in an attempt to spur legislative action.

Nebraska

Gov. Jim Pillen signed a into law that allows a tax credit of up to $100,000 to organizations that fund private school scholarships to K-12 students, with low-income families receiving priority.

In response, the Nebraska State Education Association immediately launched a drive to place an initiative on the ballot to repeal the law. In order to do so, the union will need to gather the signatures of at least 61,000 registered voters by Aug. 30, and double that number to suspend the law until the referendum can be held.

The National Education Association just released its for lobbying Congress. The document contains 36 pages of proposals that NEA will be backing or opposing. Items repeated from past years include stances on a wide range of issues, such as allowing parents to opt out of standardized testing, eliminating broadcast advertising of alcoholic beverages, repealing all right-to-work laws, building a national monument to educators to be located in Washington, D.C., instituting a moratorium on capital punishment and creating “a tax system that provides for education and other social needs while achieving reduction of the national debt.”

Three new items call for supporting legislation to protect children and youth from addiction to social media, increase funding for stillbirth prevention and add a minimum of 12 weeks of paid family leave to federal law.

Delegates to the NEA Representative Assembly will either approve or amend the legislative program when they meet in Orlando next month.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

But those membership losses didn’t have a commensurate effect on the unions’ bottom line. On the contrary, the National Education Association and its state affiliates experienced significant boosts to revenue during the shutdown year.

The combined income of NEA and its state unions reached almost $1.75 billion in 2020-21, an increase of $49 million (2.9%) from the previous year. Almost all union revenue is exempt from income and capital gains taxes.

This financial information is derived from the unions’ annual disclosure reports for the Internal Revenue Service, detailing their income and expenditures. These are public records, but delays in reporting and availability mean a long wait before it is possible to gather comprehensive data from unions in all 50 states.

NEA national headquarters collected almost $397 million in revenue. Its richest affiliates were California ($222 million), New York ($167 million) and New Jersey ($153 million).

These large-membership states are self-sufficient, but many affiliates require national subsidies to pay the costs of union offices’ professional staff. Nine state affiliates received more than 20% of their total revenue directly from NEA. The Mississippi Association of Educators and NEA New Mexico were the most reliant on national funds.

Union employees are the primary beneficiaries of the bigger bankroll. NEA employed 513 staffers in Washington, D.C., of whom 396 earned six-figure salaries. Across the country, more than 2,300 NEA affiliate employees made more than $100,000 in salary.

Member dues supply most income, although periodically some unions receive a cash windfall through other means.

Both the North Carolina Association of Educators and the South Carolina Education Association saw dramatic growth in revenue due to the sale of properties. to a real estate developer for an estimated $20 million, while to the state for a highway widening project.

That union also benefited from $112,624 due to the from the federal government’s Small Business Administration.

Higher interest rates are a burden, but they did increase the value of the unions’ cash investments and greatly aided their financial ledgers in another way: by reducing pension and retiree health care liabilities.

Just like school districts and state governments, unions must be able to cover the future costs of their retired employees. These liabilities can grow to such a significant degree that in 2020, eight NEA state affiliates had a negative net worth. They were a combined $606.5 million in the red.

But the increase in interest rates allowed pension systems everywhere to recompute the discount rate, which is a method of expressing future liabilities in today’s dollars. Put simply, a higher discount rate means lower pension liabilities.

The change in the discount rate was large enough to push NEA affiliates in Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada and West Virginia into the black. Georgia, Illinois, New York and Washington reduced their liabilities by large amounts but remained in the red.

Any union that can add $49 million to its coffers while losing 70,000 members amid the near-total shutdown of work sites is not one that needs to fear diminished power and influence. NEA is too big to fail.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

In the report’s foreword, NEA’s research department warns that “it is unwise to draw conclusions based solely on individual statistics in this report.”

That sentence borders on the comical, since the primary purpose of Rankings & Estimates is to enable NEA to draw conclusions based solely on those statistics.

The union to publicize the report, concluding that “educators across the board are underpaid” and “teachers earn 25% more in states with collective bargaining.”

“Equipped with our educator pay data, we are able to negotiate and advocate for the better wages and benefits that our educators deserve,” NEA stated.

The key point the union sought to drive home was that teachers “make thousands less than they did a decade ago,” when adjusted for inflation.

That makes a powerful sound bite but lacks context. For the first eight years of that decade, teacher salary hikes exceeded inflation by almost 2%. The entire decline in real wages occurred over the last two years.

The loss was hardly unique to teachers. The U.S. economy went from a 1% inflation rate to 8% in the last two years, as the federal government increased the money supply during the COVID pandemic. Tens of billions of those dollars went to public schools and are currently being added to teachers’ wages all over the country, bringing current education spending to $785 billion.

Despite the decline in real wages, overall per-pupil spending was still 13% above inflation over the last 10 years.

How is that possible? Two factors explain it: student enrollment and educator hiring.

The number of children enrolled in public schools declined 1.8% over the past 10 years, but the number of instructional staff — teachers, principals, counselors and other certified professionals — increased 5.2%.

In raw numbers, U.S. public schools had nearly 877,000 fewer students this year than in 2014 but 187,000 more instructional staff, of whom 62,000 were classroom teachers.

Just between 2020 and 2021, schools had 8,000 fewer students and 14,000 more teachers.

Put simply, the same amount of money spread over fewer students leads to higher per-pupil spending, but that money spread over more employees means lower average wages.

It may be desirable to hire more and more teachers, and pay them more and more money, to teach fewer and fewer students. But it’s just not sustainable in a nation already awash in historic debt.

NEA and the public schools are making hay while the sun shines, but the storm clouds are gathering. Teachers can’t enjoy double-digit raises when they’re out of a job.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

provides all teachers with a 10% salary increase retroactive to Nov. 1, 2022, plus a one-time payment of $5,000.

This was a strike with unusual features, but they will become increasingly common as teachers unions continue to win generous compensation packages and greater influence over district operations. School systems will be forced to deal with these tactics, not just in California but wherever state law allows them to be employed.

Unfair labor practice strikes

A standard teacher strike over wages and working conditions — otherwise known as an economic strike — requires a long administrative process. In California, this means formally declaring an impasse in negotiations, which is followed by analysis and a report by an independent fact-finder.

But there’s a loophole. If the employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as bargaining in bad faith, the union can legally walk out at any time.

The problem for school districts, and parents who want their kids in school, is that determining whether the union’s complaint has any merit cannot be made instantaneously. It may take months, or even years, before the state labor board can hear the case and render a ruling.

If there is no unfair labor practice, then the strike is illegal and penalties can be levied. But by then, it’s too late to matter, and the union has probably already won a settlement that ensures it will come out ahead financially.

So while the strike is ostensibly called to bring an end to specific alleged unfair labor practices by the district, its real purpose is to jump-start contract negotiations and bring about an advantageous settlement.

Union-friendly publications have articles on how to precipitate an unfair labor practice by an employer and so legitimize a strike. Among the suggested methods are to “” or to cite employers for “.”

Since 2019, school employees unions have conducted two unfair labor practice strikes in Sacramento, two in Los Angeles and now, two in Oakland.

Bargaining for the common good

This term is used to describe union demands for contract provisions that are geared to benefit a wider community than just teachers and school employees. These include restorative justice, ventilation, affordable housing and even climate change. The Oakland union sought contract language regarding housing vouchers and use of vacant district properties for housing students’ families, as well as union input on facilities upkeep. 

Asking for such things allows the union to position itself as altruistic, seeking more than just better compensation for its members. It also increases the scope of its influence over district operations. Many of these items may, in fact, be beneficial.

But the union is the legal representative for teachers, not for anyone else. The public at large did not elect the Oakland Education Association to decide what was “good” to bargain for. Nor is the union accountable for the consequences that might arise from its demands. The school board is supposed to represent the public and choose between competing desires and needs within an available budget — which brings us to the most disturbing aspect of the Oakland strike and its settlement.

School board leverage

There has been over the past couple of years about the politicization of school boards. Special-interest groups’ clout in politics is a problem as old as the Republic, but the situation in Oakland went well beyond the usual arguments over who funded whose campaign.

“The school board, which currently has six members, has been split on the issue of OEA’s common-good demands,” . “Three members, Jennifer Brouhard, VanCedric Williams and Valarie Bachelor, have joined the union in urging the district’s bargaining team to discuss the common good demands with OEA, while other directors have said the demands should be left to the school board to discuss and implement, or left to OUSD to partner with other organizations on.”

It’s true that all three of the named board members received union campaign contributions, but that’s just a standard public policy issue. These three have unique relationships with teachers unions.

Bachelor is employed as a .

Brouhard is the and sat on its executive board at least through the 2021 school year.

Williams was in October, after serving as treasurer of United Educators San Francisco and a member of the National Education Association board of directors.

The union went on an unfair labor practice strike despite having three teacher union activists on the school board. It claimed to be bargaining for the common good even though the common people were woefully underrepresented in negotiations. Lakisha Young, founder of the parent advocacy group The Oakland REACH, that her organization “has organized and mobilized hundreds of district parents and none of us have been a part of the process.”

She added, “OEA is replaying tactics Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) parents and students just experienced: say on repeat that the district is bargaining in ‘bad faith,’ avoid fact-finding, mediation, impasse and then strike!”

There is no limit to the range of matters that come up for debate and inclusion into NEA’s policies. Last year’s most contentious items were related to Palestinian issues. The internal running of the organization is often given short shrift, but here are two subjects that will occupy the assembly: 

Membership: After numbers dropped to levels not seen since 2005, NEA has seen a small bounce so far this school year. In January 2023, the union had 15,000 more members working in public schools than it had in the previous September.

While this was welcome good news, there were a few caveats. During that four-month period, local school districts added more than 195,000 employees, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That means NEA netted less than 8 percent of those new employees.

Additionally, some membership categories were weak. The union’s gains in working members were partially offset by the loss of almost 6,000 student members. And the “community ally” category — created in 2019 to allow people who don’t work in education to join NEA — holds a grand total of only 132 members.

The politics of convention sites: After being forced to conduct virtual assemblies for two years, NEA held a hybrid event in Chicago last July. Unfortunately for the union, attendance hit historic lows. Fewer than 5,100 delegates participated, with only three-quarters of that number physically present in the hall. This year’s convention will be entirely in-person.

Convention venues have become a sticking point for many delegates. NEA New Hampshire’s representatives boycotted the 2019 assembly because of what it saw as Texas’s discriminatory policies against undocumented immigrants and the LGBTQ community. Similar concerns weighed heavily in the union’s decision to move the 2022 convention from Dallas to Chicago.

Despite ongoing feuds with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state legislature, NEA will hold its event in Orlando this year. The union even asked delegates planning to demonstrate during their stay not to “,” but to clear their organized protests with NEA leadership first.

Further evidence that this is a hot-button issue comes in the form of a . NEA’s current rules forbid holding a national meeting “in any location where any delegates are likely to experience discriminatory treatment.” New language would specifically add “which shall include the denial of medical services due to a delegate’s ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, and/or reproductive status.”

In analyzing the possible repercussions of the amendment, the union’s rules committee stated that “because there are now several states in which routine medical services for women and transgender individuals are no longer provided or are more difficult to obtain, implementation of the proposed amendment will require consideration of additional legal information in making decisions about where the RA may be located. In addition, if the amendment passes, additional review of already contracted sites will be completed to determine if the RA can still be held in those locations.”

While politics may limit the choice of locales, the shrinking number of delegates widens the field to smaller convention centers. Future assemblies will be held in Portland, Indianapolis and Kansas City.

Two other contentious issues will be side-stepped by NEA procedures. They are:

Presidential endorsements: Some delegates have complained about NEA’s presidential endorsement process dating back at least to the 2008 battle for the Democratic nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Those echoes reverberated last month when the day after he announced he was running.

Many members are unaware that one person, the NEA president, chooses the candidate. The rest of NEA’s representative bodies can either concur or not. Since the union started endorsing U.S. presidents in 1976, no candidate brought forward has been rejected.

The approval for the Democratic Party nomination stops with the union’s political action committee council and the board of directors. Convention delegates get no say until the general election endorsement. But by then, of course, the choice is between a Republican and a Democrat, which for the liberal-leaning convention delegates is no choice at all.

Previous efforts to reform the process have been shot down, and the fear of a DeSantis or Trump victory will probably mute any attempts to make a change now.

Abortion: For most of its history, NEA avoided the abortion debate with its stance that it “believes in family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom.” This allowed NEA affiliates in red states to assert that the union had no position on abortion.

In 2019 that changed. Delegates approved a new business item that read, “The NEA vigorously opposes all attacks on the right to choose and stands on the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.” Last year, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, delegates passed a measure calling on the union to “publicly stand in defense of abortion” and encourage members to lobby and participate in demonstrations.

NEA’s actual actions in response to this item, according to an internal NEA implementation report, were to write a letter to Congress, and put an alert on its “action center” web page.

Now that the union is on record as favoring abortion rights, it sees no reason to spend any more time on it than it does with the hundreds of other issues it currently supports or opposes.

Delegates are always free to bring any issue to the floor for debate and vote, but execution is left up to the union bureaucracy. It’s important to keep an eye not only on what NEA does, but what it doesn’t do.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

On April 13, the district made what it called a “historic offer” of 19% in pay hikes over three years. The union promptly but five days later accepted what it called a “” agreement with increases of 21%.

By January 2025, it will bring the average Los Angeles teacher salary to an estimated .

The post-deal reactions from the district and the union were a contrast in styles.

“Proud of what we can do with our labor partners when we negotiate in good faith and come to an agreement that serves our hardworking employees as well as our students and families,” Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

“While Carvalho and the district spent the past year ignoring and undermining educators, students and parents, UTLA members fought for a fair contract that meets the urgent needs of today and builds a strong foundation for public schools,” .

Carvalho is sanguine about the district’s ability to bankroll these deals. “The state has provided two back-to-back, very solid budget years with a cost-of-living adjustment that allowed us to compose these offers,” . Nevertheless, he made a trip to Sacramento earlier this month to lobby for more school funding.

It has been widely reported that the district has $5 billion in reserves, which, for a total budget of $14.2 billion, is excessive. Less widely reported is that half of the reserve . The district has yet to release data on the total cost of the new contracts.

Los Angeles also has 35,000 fewer students than it did two years ago, and the district forecasts . Since state funding is based on enrollment, that is going to make it difficult to sustain the district’s spending levels.

Carvalho may think he bought himself at least a year of labor peace, as the support employees’ contract expires in June 2024 and the teachers’ contract in June 2025. But the unions don’t seem eager to beat their swords into plowshares.

“We still have a long way to go,” . “This is the foundation.”

“We have maximum power right now, and it’s going to keep evolving from this point on even further,” said teachers union Secretary Arlene Inouye.

So did Carvalho get “schooled” by the unions, , or — to further the metaphor — is he planning to “graduate”?

Carvalho is flashy and at ease in front of the camera. He has often been , and if he has any aspirations in California, he must at least hold the public employees unions at bay. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Carvalho is somewhere else when the district’s bills come due.

The implications for Los Angeles are only part of the picture, since other teachers unions may now see the last few months as a model to follow.

is currently holding a strike vote, which would be an “unfair labor practices” walkout similar to the one that shuttered Los Angeles schools for three days last month. The state labor board has still yet to determine whether that strike was legal, and a faction with the Oakland union is planning a wildcat strike if the authorization vote fails.

Intentionally or not, Carvalho and the Los Angeles school board have reset the market for public school employees. But if the enrollment figures are any indication, parents will continue to take their business elsewhere.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

The district originally offered a two-year contract with raises of 3% each year, but the agreement is for four years, with across-the-board raises of 2%, 3%, 0% and 3.5%. There are additional bonuses and salary schedule restructuring that, according to the union, brings the total raises to 14.5% over the four-year life of the contract.

This is quite a bit less than other areas of the country are seeing. United Teachers Los Angeles, for example, is demanding 20% over two years, and L.A. teachers already make more than those in Hawaii.

This has led to some grumbling from the rank-and-file on the Hawaii union’s Facebook page. “Teacher’s Unions across the nation were able to get their members 10%+ raises and yearly raises after, and HSTA comes to us with a 3.625% raise?! It’s laughable at best,” .

Teachers unions and school districts often have different interpretations of how much money is available for salary increases and other spending. In this case, the union appears to accept the state’s forecast of reduced future revenues.

“We had asked for significantly larger raises but understand that the state has less money to pay for numerous key priorities in addition to addressing teacher compensation, such as creating affordable housing, bringing down the state’s high cost of living and preserving our natural resources,” .

Even more unusual was the union’s willingness to not only before the ratification vote, but also provide its for each provision the new deal contains.

This is commendable. Sharing full information before any ratification votes might not affect the content of collective bargaining agreements, but the public deserves to know as soon as possible what is being agreed to in its name.

The overall tone of the union’s communications with members about the contract is defensive, and we can expect some significant pushback from teachers about the size of the raises. Whether this sporadic muttering coalesces into a rejection of the contract when the ratification vote is held April 26 remains to be seen.

Members tend to give their unions the benefit of the doubt when it comes to tentative agreements and accept raises already in hand over the uncertainty of returning to the bargaining table. But Hawaii teachers have gone on strike twice in the past and come close on other occasions. When they do walk out, they don’t kid around: The 1973 strike lasted for 18 days, and the 2001 strike ended after 21 days.

Upsurges in teachers union militancy grab headlines and lead to speculation about it spreading elsewhere. Perhaps Hawaii can stand as an example of cordial negotiations leading to a reasonable and transparent settlement that everyone, including the public, can live with. We’ll know for sure after next week’s vote.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

In raw numbers, public-sector unions reaped a benefit from this hiring surge, adding some 83,000 members to their ranks. Though the percentage of government employees who belong to a union fell to a low of 33% in 2022, the new members were certainly a welcome addition.

Unfortunately for the unions, the good news was not widespread. In fact, the growth in membership was entirely due — and then some — to one state: California.

The Golden State added more than 250,000 government jobs in 2022, enabling its public employees unions to add more than 111,000 members. Twenty-eight other states added a combined 256,496 public-sector union members. But 21 states and the District of Columbia lost 284,517 members, for a net decline of 28,021 outside of California. New York and Minnesota were the biggest losers.

Each year, Barry Hirsch of Georgia State University and David Macpherson of Trinity University produce this data for their Union Membership and Coverage Database, posting it on their website . Thanks to their work combing through Current Population Survey figures, I was able to create this table, which shows the total number of government employees and public-sector union members for each state in 2022, along with the change from 2021.

Public sector union membership by state, 2022:

Click here if you’re having trouble viewing the chart.

Examining data for all 50 states and D.C., there is a clear divide between states where unions are growing along with hiring and states where membership losses continue to mount.

This trend should not be surprising. Before the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that public-sector unions could no longer charge non-members an agency fee, growth in the government workforce led almost automatically to growth in union membership. Now, unions must actively recruit each new hire. It stands to reason that unions in some states will do this better than others, and that those efforts will be affected by local conditions.

We can’t use this data to draw any firm conclusions about teachers unions. When categorized by occupation, the numbers include both public and private schools, plus teachers unions include significant numbers of other types of workers as members. What the data does show is a drop in the number of unionized teachers.

The percentage of elementary and middle school teachers who belonged to a union fell slightly from 46.6% in 2021 to 46.3% in 2022. The percentage for secondary school teachers showed a steeper decline, from 49.6% to 47.1%. The percentage for special education teachers similarly tumbled, from 55.8% to 51.4%.

All this suggests that public employees unions will need even greater levels of hiring just to tread water. When this runs headlong into the loss of COVID relief money and/or a recession, there will be an unprecedented display of labor unrest in government. Brace yourselves.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

Of course, things didn’t work out as planned. United Teachers Los Angeles voted to boycott the extra days. Then, after negotiations, the district rescheduled them for winter and spring breaks, irking SEIU Local 99, the union representing school support workers. And whatever benefit the extra days might have brought was undone by the three-day walkout organized by both unions March 21 to 23.

One would think that, going forward, the district might try a different approach to adding instructional days, and that the teachers union might consider a different response.

But who are we kidding?

Last week, the L.A. school board . “The new instructional calendars address the need to mitigate learning loss by shortening the winter recess and extending options for summer programming,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. The plan is to shorten the three-week winter break to two weeks.

The seven-member school board unanimously approved the changes, and the press release includes positive comments from five of them. It also states that the district “undertook an extensive process of gathering input through surveys, focus groups and presentations from families, staff and labor partners.”

Unfortunately for Carvalho and the board, those surveys, focus groups and input from labor partners all indicated .

The district justified the change on the grounds that three weeks off “creates challenges for our neediest families that must be considered in decision-making.” Also, most large districts in other states have a two-week break, as do most districts in southern California.

Not one to overlook an opportunity for activism, the teachers union immediately filed an unfair labor practice charge, and ramped up an organizing drive against the change.

“School calendar changes are mandatory subjects of bargaining and UTLA leadership immediately sent a demand to bargain to the district,” . “This calendar move exemplifies Carvalho’s refusal to bargain in good faith and his willful disdain of worker rights. By openly disregarding labor law and ignoring the voices of parents and staff, Carvalho continues to prove that he is not a leader. The school board’s approval demonstrates a failure to hold Carvalho accountable.”

that calendar dates are “at the sole discretion of the superintendent and the Board of Education,” and that the district held two meetings to discuss the calendar with its unions — but UTLA sent a representative to only one.

Carvalho and the board seem to have learned nothing from their previous encounter on this issue and are blithely waving the red cape in front of the charging bull. The union will gore them again, but one wonders how often it can continue to place itself on the side of less school versus more.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

So it went last week with Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

Carvalho was forced to shutter schools while the district’s 30,000 support employees, led by SEIU Local 99, went on a three-day strike. Members of United Teachers Los Angeles walked out in solidarity.

The day after the strike ended, Carvalho and the union announced a tentative agreement. The three-year deal raised salaries by a reported 30%. Carvalho called it a “.”

It’s historic, in the sense that most of it takes place in the past.

The agreement contains a 6% pay hike retroactive to July 2021, another 7% retroactive to July 2022 and yet another 7% to take effect this July. In January 2024, the district will raise all support employee wages by $2 an hour. The district and the union both say this constitutes another 10% increase for the average employee.

Nevertheless, it’s not the amount that’s going to cause headaches for Carvalho, the school board, parents and students in the near future. The district and the union weren’t oceans apart on the money before the strike occurred. Where Carvalho went wrong was in the timeline of the settlement.

Lost in all the happiness and relief about the contract is that the strike supposedly wasn’t about wages and benefits. Such a walkout would have been illegal, since the union hadn’t completed all the procedural steps before calling a strike. SEIU did so to . 

SEIU accused the district of interrogating workers about union meetings and threatening to fire them if they walked out. The union even claimed that food service workers were locked in a cafeteria to prevent them from voting on a strike. Taking these accusations at face value, the district could not have prevented the strike, short of admitting it had committed these violations.

. An unfair labor practices strike is legal if unfair labor practices have occurred. These haven’t been adjudicated, and if they’re found to be baseless, the union will be penalized.

But it won’t matter. The reality is that the walkouts prompted Carvalho and the board to settle on the union’s terms. So what happens to the district’s future?

There isn’t going to be much of a lull. “Carvalho has been put on notice that he better move on our demands,” . “If that movement is not enough to settle the contract that UTLA members deserve, we will move to the next round of this fight.”

The union wants a 20% raise over a two-year contract. But the contract expired in June 2022, so the two years are this school year and next. It’s clear the teachers aren’t reluctant to strike, and SEIU Local 99 will be sure to back them up. So we might see a repeat of last week’s actions, only this time it will be the teachers union organizing an unfair labor practices strike, with SEIU striking in solidarity.

Carvalho might be able to head it off by caving early, but the reprieve would be only temporary. The new contracts would both expire in June 2024, right about the time all federal COVID subsidies will have run out. How much labor peace will Carvalho be able to buy then?

He seems unaware of his impending fate. “This agreement’s going to make a lot of superintendents very nervous,” . “And that’s a good thing.”

We’ll see who is the most nervous superintendent a year from now.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

The terminology is important, because a strike for economic reasons during contract negotiations has certain procedural requirements and time-consuming steps, including mediation and fact-finding. The two unions’ contracts also have no-strike provisions, which is why both notified the district they were terminating their expired contracts.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho pledged to negotiate around the clock to avert the strike, then requested an injunction from the state labor relations board — all to no avail. The two unions had no inclination to call it off.

I believe the timing and length of the walkout is a calculated effort on the part of the unions not only to apply bargaining pressure to the district, but to undo Carvalho’s signature effort to address the effects of lengthy pandemic school closures: .

In April 2022, Carvalho and the school board proposed adding four instructional days to the school calendar that would be optional for both students and teachers. Teachers who participated would receive additional pay, and students would receive additional instruction.

The teachers union filed an unfair labor practice complaint and called for a boycott of the first acceleration day, asserting that changes to the school calendar were a mandatory subject of collective bargaining.

After negotiations, the union agreed to the four days, to be held for two days each during winter and spring breaks. , which preferred the original plan of four Wednesdays spread throughout the school year.

The final two acceleration days are scheduled to be held April 3 and 4, but they are hardly acceleration days anymore, due to the unions’ decision to hold deceleration days this week.

Holding a strike on a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday almost certainly guarantees that a large number of students (and school employees) won’t show up Friday, either. There go your four days of additional instruction.

The district could add make-up days to the calendar, but as UTLA reminded its members, “.”

The unions seem unperturbed by school closures of any sort. The teacher strike in 2019 closed schools for a week. Unions were largely responsible for in-person instruction being delayed until late August 2021. Both SEIU Local 99 and UTLA are ready for traditional, open-ended strikes unless significant raises and other demands are met.

As showing up at school has taken a backseat to other concerns among district employees, many students have followed suit. , and continues to be a problem.

Teachers union President Cecily Myart-Cruz notoriously claimed, “.” She’s wrong. The only thing kids learn from closed schools is that neither they, nor the schools, are important.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

The leadership of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City engineered a major shift in retiree health insurance by voting to move its members from traditional Medicare into Medicare Advantage, a parallel system in which private insurers provide coverage.

The Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group representing the city’s 102 public-sector unions, approved the change for all retirees in a weighted vote, with UFT’s concurrence crucial to the result. . Opponents have vowed to go to court to block the move.

The city’s unions were bound by a 2018 agreement to find health insurance savings, and so drastic action was required. Some retirees oppose the change because they believe Medicare Advantage is a form of privatization. Others simply feel traditional Medicare provides superior coverage. However, it seems unlikely that the teachers union will effectively go to war with its own retired members without hope of some substantive gain from the city.

This gain will probably not come in the form of large salary increases. The teachers’ contract expired in September, but wage expectations are limited by New York City’s system of pattern bargaining, meaning that one union’s contract establishes a pattern the rest must follow. This year, District Council 37 approved a five-year contract with a total of 15.25% in raises. This means UFT will be hard-pressed to achieve much more than 3% per year.

So in what way will the teachers union improve its lot? UFT President Michael Mulgrew is playing things close to the vest but that increased funding for teacher recruiting and retention will be a major focus of negotiations. This would make sense under the circumstances. If you can’t get much higher pay for your members, you might as well try to get more members.

Whether this will mollify angry retirees is an open question, but despite organized internal opposition, Mulgrew’s slate has a stranglehold on power within the union, and that’s unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

On the other coast, United Teachers Los Angeles emerged from a period of relative inactivity to help organize . Both UTLA and SEIU Local 99, the union representing school support employees, are in the midst of contract negotiations.

SEIU is demanding a 30% raise across the board, while UTLA is calling for 20% over two years. the two unions are planning a joint three-day strike later this month.

The teachers union has , which includes class size reduction across all grades and school types, more staff of all types and a freeze on school closures (despite collapsing student enrollment), elimination or dramatic reduction of standardized tests not required by the state or federal governments, systematic inclusion of social-emotional learning in all curricula and stronger limits on and regulations of charter schools.

The union’s demands come in the context of the district holding more than $3 billion in unrestricted surplus funds. However, that money is short-lived, as federal support will end in 2024. The union has a solution for that: It wants the district to “publicly call for and take action to support federal COVID relief monies becoming permanent as of 2024.”

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho dealt with a union in his previous position in Miami, but he has never faced anything like this. Will he take a hard line or assuage the union with imaginary money from the federal government?

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a proxy war over the mayor’s office is underway between the city teachers union and progressives on the one hand, and business interests and mainstream Democrats on the other.

Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and teachers union organizer Brandon Johnson took to the debate stage last week in their mayoral runoff. , Johnson accused Vallas of “wanting to raise property taxes, enacting policies in the 1990s that caused lasting harm to the city and school district’s financial position, and working with Republicans to damage the pension system. Johnson also said Vallas doesn’t want to teach Black history and claimed he does not support women’s abortion rights.”

Vallas, who is ahead in the polls, opted not to respond in kind, saying he left a surplus during his time leading the district and supported reproductive choice, though he was personally opposed to abortion.

Johnson also downplayed his ties to the teachers union. “I have a fiduciary responsibility to the people of the city of Chicago, and once I’m mayor of the city of Chicago, I will no longer be a member of the Chicago Teachers Union,” he said.

Johnson relies highly on union support, having secured the endorsements of SEIU Healthcare and AFSCME Council 31. But Vallas has labor allies as well, with the backing of the Fraternal Order of Police and the plumbers union.

Putting one of its own in the mayor’s chair would be a coup for the Chicago Teachers Union, and perhaps a turning point for its fortunes. A Vallas victory would extend the reign of teachers union adversaries that began with Mayor Richard Daley in 1989.

These three teachers unions are using three different methods to achieve their aims: inside influence in New York City; strikes and rallies in Los Angeles; and electoral politics in Chicago. Which, if any, will succeed remains to be seen, but the results will determine the direction of public education in those cities for the immediate future.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

, NEA President Becky Pringle urged President Joe Biden to nominate Julie Su, currently deputy secretary, to replace Marty Walsh, who is leaving to become executive director of the National Hockey League’s players union.

It is common for interest groups to support their favorites for cabinet offices and other high-ranking federal positions. But I can find no previous occurrence of NEA publicly endorsing a candidate prior to his or her nomination — not even when one of its own, former NEA President Lily Eskelsen García, in December 2020.

NEA’s change in tactics may have its roots in that time period, when newly elected President Biden was forming his first cabinet. Su was on the short list for labor secretary, but Democrats were divided over several candidates. Walsh was selected because of his union background, his close relationship with Biden and endorsements from the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers.

Though it is the nation’s largest union, NEA did not back a candidate.

When Su was passed over, it disappointed her supporters, most notably Asian-American advocacy groups. Biden’s cabinet does not contain anyone of Asian-American descent. Being the deputy secretary, Su is an obvious choice this time, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus is among those .

There are other contenders for the job, . Rep. Nancy Pelosi reportedly wants former New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. Sen. Bernie Sanders likes Sara Nelson, president of the flight attendants union, or former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

NEA’s decision to publicly support Su this time may have to do with cabinet diversity, or the desire to show itself as a driving force in organized labor. But what appeals to the teachers union about Su herself isn’t entirely clear.

In her letter to Biden, Pringle lists among Su’s accomplishments as deputy secretary being a “skilled messenger,” overseeing the workforce “tactfully and with kindness” and traveling across the country “promoting the work of the Department and Administration.”

And while NEA considers teaching experience a prerequisite for being education secretary, it doesn’t hold the same standard for labor secretary. Su is a former civil rights attorney with no union experience.

Almost two-thirds of Pringle’s letter is , letter from Marc Egan, NEA’s director of government relations, to the Senate, urging a yes vote for Su’s confirmation as deputy secretary.

Not that it will matter, but California Republicans are squarely against Su, due to her tenure as the state’s labor secretary. During her watch, California paid out in fraudulent unemployment insurance claims.

NEA may get its wish and see Su installed as labor secretary, but it will take more than any efforts on her part to reverse decades of union decline. Membership losses have continued unabated through both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations. Biden’s will be no exception.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

To put this in its proper perspective, one in every five union members belongs to NEA — two of every five public-sector union members.

Private-sector unions often run major organizing drives, as we have seen recently with campaigns at Amazon and Starbucks locations. But has NEA been adding to the universe of union members over the years?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. Back in 1998-99, NEA had 2,436,157 members, and at the end of the 2021-22 school year it had 2,871,908. That’s almost 436,000 more members and 18% growth.

But those numbers are very deceiving because of mergers.

After NEA delegates rejected a national merger with the American Federation of Teachers back in 1998, a handful of NEA state affiliates merged with their AFT counterparts. When that happens, both national unions count the other’s as new members.

The first instance will illustrate. The Minnesota Education Association merged with the Minnesota Federation of Teachers in 1998. As a result, NEA added almost 25,000 AFT members to its total. But AFT added almost 55,000 NEA members to its total. That appears to be a combined gain of 80,000 members, but since everyone involved was already a union member, it was a net gain of zero for unions as a whole.

In 2000, NEA and AFT affiliates in Florida and Montana merged, and NEA picked up more than 55,000 new members.

Then, in 2006, New York State United Teachers merged with — or, more accurately, absorbed — 41,000-member NEA New York. NEA added 350,000 NYSUT members to its ranks.

North Dakota affiliates merged in 2013, and the merged Montana union merged again with an independent public employees union, bringing in 6,300 more members.

Add together all these members acquired through mergers over the years, and you get 437,290, which accounts for all of NEA’s growth over the past 23 years.

During a period when the United States added 346,000 teachers, along with hundreds of thousands of support employees eligible for union membership, NEA netted zero non-members and added nothing to the ranks of America’s labor unions.

With mergers removed from the equation, NEA’s state-level numbers paint a picture of a union split almost evenly between haves and have-nots. Of the 45 non-merged NEA state affiliates, 24 have fewer members today than they did in 1998-99.

This raises a couple of questions. NEA may be the largest union, but is its strength among education employees overrated? And can this tenuous equilibrium it has achieved between its growing and shrinking state affiliates hold?

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.