Brendan Clarey | July 24, 2024
(Chalkboard News) — Thousands of teachers have left their unions in recent years, and alternative organizations are offering services as alternatives to those provided by the largest teachers unions: the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
The Freedom Foundation announced this week that it will be launching the Teacher Freedom Network in January 2025 for teachers who want to leave the teachers union. The organization will offer options that unions typically offer like liability insurance coverage options, professional development and grievance support.
According to data available on federal websites reported by the NEA and the AFT, hundreds of thousands of teachers have left their unions since the 2018 Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME. In that case, the court ruled that public employees must consent to pay union dues and agency fees.
Filings with the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards show that since the Janus decision, teachers unions have lost thousands of members and agency fee payers.
In a 2017 filing, the NEA reported 3,074,841 members and fee payers. Of those, 87,674 were agency fee payers and not members. In 2023, the union reported 2,857,703 members and no agency fee payers. Total membership saw a 7% decrease in that time.
In 2018, the AFT reported 1,763,563 members and fee payers. Of those, 85,788 were agency fee payers and not members of the union, according to its filing. In 2023, the AFT reported 1,719,060 total members including members and fee payers, of which there were 2,612. Overall, the AFT saw a 2.5% decrease in total membership
Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe told Chalkboard that the Janus decision and recent clashes teachers have had with the AFT and NEA as motivation for teachers leaving, including how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and ideological differences related to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and other cultural issues.
Withe said teachers have been shocked by what he described as antisemitic rhetoric from teachers unions.
“[Teachers] didn’t want school shutdowns. They didn’t want their kids wearing masks,” Withe told Chalkboard News in an interview. “They couldn’t do their jobs effectively from home. Their kids were failing. They saw the kids in dangerous situations at home that they didn’t have access to literally for years in some places. Some of them never returned to school, we still have no idea where they are.
“Most teachers got into teaching because they want to teach kids. They wanted to better their lives. They wanted to be a change in the world that they saw when they were kids,” Withe said. “They didn’t do it to teach critical race theory. They didn’t do it to watch 8-year-olds transition from boys to girls. They don’t want that, but the unions are out there using their dollars to advocate for that.
“Basically, the unions provided us this opportunity to be more effective in our outreach to teachers and get them to leave them,” Withe said. “In the past three years, more teachers have left their unions than at any time in U.S. history.”
Withe said that teachers were opting out of their union, but doing it more quietly than other public sector employees. He said the Freedom Foundation heard that teachers leaving their union felt alone, so his organization put together an annual summit for teachers. And it is now building the Teacher Freedom Network to provide support year-round.
“It’s for teachers and by teachers,” Withe said. “We exist to provide them the resources they need to fight their unions at the local level and get back to traditional education values. We’re here to provide them all the resources they need to do that.”
Withe said his organization is trying to become a one-stop shop for those leaving their union and that it will offer professional liability coverage through the Association of American Educators in lieu of liability insurance typically offered by teachers unions.
Additionally, the network will provide legal assistance to teachers who want to leave their union and professional development alternatives to those offered by teachers unions which may focus on controversial topics.
Withe said the network should be ready to launch in January 2025 and will provide a menu of benefits to potential members.
“The cool feature is that the teachers unions have had this monopoly on being able to provide ‘benefits’ or resources to teachers, so whenever they’ve needed resources, they’re turning to the unions,” Withe said. “And oftentimes the teachers unions are working in their radical, liberal agenda.”
The Freedom Foundation has long been staunchly opposed to public-sector unions, with a shift toward worker outreach in the last decade.
“The Freedom Foundation is more than a think tank,” the organization says on its website. “We’re more than an action tank. We’re a battle tank that’s battering the entrenched power of left-wing government union bosses who represent a permanent lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, and radical social agendas.”
This article was made available to EdNews Virginia via Chalkboard News, a project of the Franklin News Foundation.