Hey, Teachers, Leave Those Bucks Alone

UPDATE: the Florida Supreme Court's stuck on stupid.

Dismissing the protracted and angry opposition of labor groups AFL-CIO v. Chao, No. 04-5057 (D.C. Cir. May 31, 2005), upheld the Labor Department's revised rule and "LM-2" submission form for the first time forcing most unions to file detailed and disaggregated accounts of their annual receipts and disbursements. Cf. 29 U.S.C. § 431 (requiring "such detail as may be necessary accurately to disclose [a union's] financial condition and operations for its preceding fiscal year"). Such submissions become available for public inspection and copying.

The first filings under the new LM-2 forms are now available--and they explain Big Labor's full-throated hostility to the rule change and to the Administration itself. For example, America's largest teachers union, the NEA, filed its LM-2 on December 6th (available here; in the "file number" box, enter 000-342), and says member dues accounted for $295 million (box 36) or 87 percent of its $341 million (box 41) total receipts for the fiscal year ending August 31, 2005. That funds two tasks: (1) "representing" union members; and (2) lobbying. According to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, "the union admits to spending 46 percent of its dues on activities not related to collective bargaining." Indeed, Mike Antonucci's ed. union watchdog group Educational Intelligence Agency (EIA) says, "Roughly one-third of that money is spent on the salaries and benefits of NEA's employees, executives and retirees," who are not full-time teachers.

An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal examines how NEA spent its members' money (where available, I've added web links and references to the form in square brackets):

• Reg Weaver, the union's president, makes $439,000 a year [schedule 11]. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees [schedule 12; EIA is more precise: $ 57.6 million] more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you're better off working as a union rep than in the classroom.



• The NEA gave [schedule 17] $15,000 to the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights." The National Women's Law Center, whose Web site currently features a "pocket guide" to opposing Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito, received $5,000. And something called the Fund to Protect Social Security got $400,000, presumably to defeat personal investment accounts.



• last year the NEA gave [schedule 16, 18] $45,000 to the Economic Policy Institute, which regularly issues reports that claim education is underfunded and teachers are underpaid. The partisans at People for the American Way got a $51,000 NEA contribution; PFAW happens to be vehemently anti-voucher.



• The extent to which the NEA sends money to states for political agitation is also revealing. For example, Protect Our Public Schools, an anti-charter-school group backed [schedule 16] by the NEA's Washington state affiliate, received $500,000 toward its efforts to block school choice for underprivileged children. (Never mind that charter schools are public schools.) And the Floridians for All Committee, which focuses on "the construction of a permanent progressive infrastructure that will help redirect Florida politics in a more progressive, Democratic direction," received a $249,000 donation from NEA headquarters.

The Education Intelligence Agency spotlights further NEA expenses, including:

• Lobbyists:
  
  The Mellman Group, [Democrat campaign consultants], $106,400.
  
  Brazile and Associates, [led by Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager], $40,148.



• Media buyers: Media Strategies and Research, $2,966,123.



• Agitators: Amnesty International got $5,000.



• Entertainment: The most intriguing NEA expense payout went to a company called Morris Costumes, which received (in two installments) just under $ 60,000. Sounds like a great party!

According to the WSJ, of its $ 341 million budget:

the union spent $25 million of that on "political activities and lobbying" and another $65.5 million on "contributions, gifts and grants" that seemed designed to further . . .hyper-liberal political goals. . . It's well understood that the NEA is an arm of the Democratic National Committee. (Or is it the other way around?) But we wonder if the union's rank-and-file stand in unity behind this laundry list of left-to-liberal recipients of money that comes out of their pockets.

Kobayashi Maru spots the irony (emphasis in original):

None of which is to say that teachers - individual teachers - don't have every right to support those causes to the hilt. Though I could argue it, this post is not about the merits of any particular recipient. It's about bias (in aggregate), freedom (of financial political support) and accountability (to members, but more importantly to the consumers of the teaching services they produce... i.e., parents and kids.) The . . . NEA beneficiary list [is about] politics. A PAC. No different (though in many respects much more powerful than) the corporate PACs liberals routinely rail against.

Robert Holland decried union practices before the new disclosure rules, in the April 7, 2003 American Conservative:

The NEA and its affiliates extract from the average teacher some $500 a year in unified dues that school administrations helpfully subtract from their paychecks. Using this loot exceeding $1.25 billion a year, the leaders of the Teacher Trust are extremely generous—to themselves. Some state affiliates have dozens of officers drawing more than $100,000 a year (Michigan had 75 in a recent year; Indiana, 40). The big dogs of the NEA live even fatter: in 2002, the NEA’s top three officers pulled down a combined $616,000 in salary, plus $544,000 in cash allowances and travel. The staff perks at state and national levels fairly scream Fat City. Cadillac health care coverage is widespread: 100 percent prescription drug, 100 percent hospital room and board, unlimited dental benefits—the kind of security an average working stiff could only dream of having. NEA executive officers receive paid travel for a “companion” to the annual convention, as well as one international event per year. On and on the perks roll: credit cards, phone cards, interest-free car loans, child care, gym memberships, and even incarceration pay if the staffer is jailed in the course of conducting union business.

Some expenses are doubtlessly legitimate--but which ones? Before disaggregated Department of Labor disclosure, fraud detection was essentially impossible. Most notoriously is the case of Barbara Bullock, until 2002, president of the Washington Teachers' Union Local 6, part of the NEA (sort-of) rival American Federation of Teachers ("AFT"). In October 2003, Bullock plead guilty to mail fraud, conspiracy to commit embezzlement and conspiracy to file false tax returns. Along with other senior WTU officials, about $ 5 million in union funds were used "to pay for their personal expenditures for clothing, meals, travel, entertainment, art, vehicle repairs and maintenance, jewelry, professional sports season tickets, electronic equipment, silver, custom wigs, dental implants, and other luxury items, which they charged to union credit cards." The word "other" covers a multitude of sins:

Along with tens of thousands of dollars in artwork, electronic equipment and wigs, the union officials spent more than $500,000 on custom-made clothing, $57,000 for a sterling silver flatware set, $100,000 for Washington Redskins and Washington Wizards season tickets, $4,690 for limousine service to and from FedEx Field in Landover, $50,000 in personal catering charges, and $40,000 in personal dental expenses.

As part of the plea, Bullock relinquished 129 items seized when Federal officials raided her home, including: three fur coats, dozens of luxury brand hand-bags,¹ scores of brand-name shoes,² and a double barrel shotgun. And you thought unions favored gun control!

The D.C. looting lasted five years. The theft was discovered only when teacher complaints about an extra dues assessment -- "taking from each teacher's paycheck $144 more than the lawful dues deduction during one pay period" -- prompted a union audit. Because Bullock et al. bankrupted their employers (WTU's landlord sued three times for rent non-payment), the national AFT had to take over and bail out the local union.

Of course, not all union officials are corrupt. However, says Holland, the honest ones are worse:

Union officials sternly resist merit pay for effective teachers, pay supplements for those in hard-to-fill subjects such as math, science, and special education, and bonuses to attract bright newcomers to teaching. Their opposition is not based on what is best for education but what will feather their own nests.

Kobayashi Maru sees teachers unions as troglodytes:

Unions are about protecting jobs no matter how mediocre the holders of those jobs may be or how badly the institutions of which they are a part may be performing. They are anti-meritocratic by design. That's simply what unions do. They had a purpose back when ten year olds were working 12+ hours a day in abhorrently dangerous conditions. Now, for the most part, they do not. . .

Just as Reagan called PATCO's bluff, someone needs to call the NEA's. The stakes (our global competitiveness as a nation) are considerably larger. The new disclosure rules will help. They won't be enough. If air traffic control turned out more easily trainable than had previously been imagined (and eager labor supply much larger), it beggars belief that teaching would be any more difficult to open up. Someone needs to put the focus back in the classroom.

Conclusion: Were I a teacher, I'd try to decertify my union. As a taxpayer, I sympathize with Kobayashi Maru's call for NEA-ostracization. Indeed, I support vouchers: if education is so important -- and it is -- why are schools still struggling under a socialist, nationalized model? Besides, vouchers have the virtue of forcing teachers unions to organize again from square one. Though I'm sure NEA already prepared a five-year-plan. . .

Still, less radical options exist, such as enforcing and publicizing the Supreme Court's 1988 Beck decision, which allows dues-paying nonmember employees to-opt out of financing union political activities, paycheck protection, requiring the affirmative approval of members to fund union lobbying, and right-to-work laws, forbidding "closed shops." Paycheck protection panics liberals--conspiracy-addled Mother Jones magazine once called it "a plan developed by the Christian right to cripple labor." California voters rejected a paycheck protection referendum last November, after unions spent millions pushing doomsday scenarios. Right-to-work is potentially more threatening due to its success: 22 states (none of them "blue" in the North-East or Pacific coast) adopted it in some form.

At bottom, government can't slay teachers unions. Sure, government can help; the new Labor Department disclosure rules are an excellent start. (Suggestion: share the NEA funding list with voters.) But the primary movers most be the parents. Because they normally cover only a single community, local school boards often are the most representative governmental body. So attend the next meeting. Bring the NEA list. Correct anyone blaming Bush for phony funding cuts. Remind them decreasing class size (expanding teacher employment) has no discernable effect on educational performance. If board members won't listen, campaign against them next November. Better yet, run against them.

The NEA thrives through cloak (non-transparency) and compulsion (membership and dues). Though teachers unions are decidedly "Democratic" (ratio of NEA campaign contributions in 2004 election cycle: 91 percent Ds, 9 percent Rs), their methods and goals are anything but. If the diagnosis is democracy deficit (as it is in unrepresentative Europe), more democracy is the cure. Especially in our schools.

More:

Expect poor public schools to persist: on January 5th, Jeb Bush's "Opportunity Scholarship Program," allowing students in failing schools to move to better public or private schools, met the Florida Supreme Court (they're back!), and vouchers lost. The basis?: "free public schools . . . is the exclusive means set out in the [state] Constitution for the Legislature to make adequate provision for the education of children." Bush v. Holmes, No. 04-2323 at 25-26 (Fla. 2006). Unsurprisingly, as the dissent demonstrates (Slip op. at 40-44), the Florida Constitution says no such thing.

Mike Antonucci says, "the ruling effectively handcuffs the school choice movement in Florida." RightPundit predicts a campaign to amend the Florida Constitution. Writing on RedState.Org, Baseball Crank abhors the judicial activism , "What really rankles about this decision is its usurpation of the role of the legislature in deciding factual questions about the impact of public policy, and without even bothering to consider evidence." I've seen that movie before.
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¹ Fendi, Judith Lieber, Kielstein, Cord, Gucci, Dolce Gabena, Ferragamo, Chanel, Vuitton, Escala, Kate Spade, Bally and Kleinberg & Sherrill.

² St. John, Nordstrom, Amalfi, Via Spiga, Bruno Magli, Salvatore Ferragamo, Donald Pilner, Stuart Weitzman and Sperry.