Rare News Desk
Life isn’t all that sweet these days for American Federation of Teachers President Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten.
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After all, the nation’s second-largest teachers union (along with the National Education Association) faces an Election Day full of losses – likely including California’s powerful school superintendent – to school reformers her union has long opposed.
There’s also the loss of public regard for the unions, which was evident last week when Time published a cover story on Vergara v. California, the court ruling ending near-lifetime employment for teachers in the Golden State that has spawned two other suits (and more legal action in the next year).
The piece itself is typical straight-news reporting. But the piece’s headline, Broken Apples, along with its cover image of an apple about to be smashed by a judge’s gave, sent Weingarten into conniptions.
The union rounded up signatures from some 80,000 teachers and other supporters demanding the magazine to “Apologize to teachers.”
(Time’s managing editor, Nancy Gibbs, defended the piece earlier today during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.)
But Weingarten can take comfort in knowing that the AFT is still collecting and spending plenty of money from teachers – usually by force of law – in order to stay in business. Whether or not that it will help its cause in the long run is another story.
The AFT reported in its disclosure to the U.S. Department of Labor that it generated $345 million in revenue in 2013-2014. This is a 7.5 percent increase over the previous fiscal year, and the first revenue increase the union has had in a few years.
This revenue growth – along with $112 million borrowed last year to fund operations – has allowed the AFT to continue doling out six-figure salaries to 219 staffers (or 21 more than in 2012-2013).
It also allowed Weingarten to collect a three-percent pay raise. Her a salary of $557,875 easily puts her among the nation’s top five percent of income earners.
But all those salaries mean nothing if the AFT doesn’t continue to exist. So the union, along with its affiliates and locals, spends heavily to keep the array of state laws and contracts from which it derives its influence over education policy. This includes $29 million that the union’s national office spends annually on explicit political activities.
There is the $500,000 the AFT gave to two nonprofits controlled by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, who is likely running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
As Dropout Nation reported earlier this month, the AFT, along with the NEA, hopes giving money to the Clintons (who have backed such reforms as charter schools and teacher quality) will lead them to end the sway reformers currently have over the party.
There are the contributions to like minded progressive and old-school civil rights groups. This includes $25,000 to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and $45,000 to the NAACP. Both Jackson and the NAACP have disregarded the concerns of young black families by teaming up with AFT locals in Chicago and New York City to oppose reform efforts in both cities.
Then there is the spending in key battlegrounds for school reform. In Philadelphia, for instance, the AFT spent $2 million last year to fight the nearly-insolvent school district’s efforts to address its fiscal woes. This includes ending the fully-subsidized healthcare the AFT had won for rank-and-file members, a benefit unavailable to nearly everyone in the private sector.
So far it hasn’t worked out well: The Philadelphia district moved earlier this month to cancel its long-expired contract with the union’s local, and has required teachers to start paying a share of their costs. While the AFT and the district are fighting it out in court, state law essentially gives the school system a free hand on this matter.
Another battleground is the Midwest where the AFT has spent more than $2.3 million to battle against governors such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Rick Snyder in Michigan who have successfully passed right-to-work laws weakening public sector unions. But with Walker and Snyder likely squeaking into victories next week, that is money badly spent.
The AFT has even looked to the most-unlikely of states, Texas, to stand its ground. This is because its affiliate there has increased membership by 14 percent between 2010 and 2013.
So far, the AFT has spent more than $4 million to prop up the loss-ridden affiliate, as well as support its efforts to back Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wendy Davis. Davis’ all-but-certain defeat is proving to be costly to the union and its allies.
The AFT is spending like there may be no money left. It must. With the eventual likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court finding compulsory dues laws unconstitutional, younger teachers dissatisfied with how teachers unions do their business, and lack of public support for the unions’ defense of the practices that have made America’s public schools so dismal, Weingarten and her union may find themselves out of options as well as money.
