SUNLIGHT POLICY CENTER OF NEW JERSEY RELEASES LATEST REPORT ON HOW THE NJEA FLEECES NEW JERSEY’S LOCAL TEACHERS UNIONS

Only 12% of NJEA’s Highest-In-The-Nation Dues Are Reinvested at the Local Level

[New Jersey – June 3, 2024] The Sunlight Policy Center of New Jersey released their latest report today, entitled The NJEA vs. Local Unions: The Local Unions Make and the NJEA Takes.  The report examines the relationship between the statewide New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) and the hundreds of affiliated local unions around the Garden State and finds that only 12 percent of New Jersey teachers’ dues return home.

In previous reports, Sunlight Policy Center showed how New Jersey teachers pay the highest annual dues in the nation by far; how the NJEA created a funding system to ensure that teachers’ dues flow directly up to its headquarters in Trenton; and how these dues have supported lavish compensation for NJEA executives, as well as massive political spending.  Just last week, it was reported that, without teachers’ knowledge or consent, the NJEA executives used $2 million of teachers’ dues to support Protecting Our Democracy, NJEA President Sean Spiller’s personal Super PAC, which is currently running a massive advertising campaign promoting Spiller.

Among the key points in the report, The NJEA vs. Local Unions: The Local Unions Make and the NJEA Takes:

• New Jersey teachers have only voted once to elect the union to represent them in collective bargaining, and that was over 50 years ago. For current teachers, the NJEA’s role as their representative was inherited rather than elected because the NJEA has never had to stand for another election.

• All of the teachers’ dues are sent directly to the state-level NJEA. The NJEA then redistributes a meager 12% of the dues back to the locals. 85% of the dues go to the NJEA and the National Education Association (NEA — NJEA’s national parent), where it is used for political spending on issues that may or may not pertain to local members and on excessive executive compensation.

• By contrast, New Jersey’s other teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), allows its locals to keep most of the dues money. The state-level NJEA currently extracts $136 million in teachers’ dues every year, which allows for excessive compensation and political spending, compared to $1.1 million for the state-level AFT, which does not.

Today’s report was released in conjunction with Sunlight’s ongoing teacher engagement campaign, which has shined a light on how the NJEA executive leadership is using their highest-in-the-nation dues. During this campaign, Sunlight has exposed how New Jersey teachers’ dues have funded $9.3 million paid to former Executive Director Ed Richardson; the political spending by the NJEA’s Super PAC, Garden State Forward; and the NJEA’s funding of NJEA President Spiller’s personal political career.  The NJEA wants to keep these facts hidden from teachers and filed a complaint with the NJ Public Employment Relations Commission to block Sunlight’s campaign because it “caused declines in membership.”

“Sunlight Policy Center launched our campaign to provide our teachers with the facts – facts that NJEA leadership has hidden from them – so they can make the best decisions for themselves and their families,” stated Sunlight Policy Center of New Jersey President Mike Lilley. “We all know the NJEA is a political juggernaut with hundreds of millions of dollars of teachers’ dues at its disposal. What we did not know was how little the NJEA supports the local unions.  Instead of supporting local efforts and leaders, NJEA execs in Trenton have prioritized making themselves millionaires and spending hundreds of millions on politics, and then hidden these facts from the very teachers who pay for it.”  As with all of Sunlight’s reports, all our facts are sourced and footnoted.

“I left the union because it was clear NJEA leadership had completely lost its way. I was proud to be a teacher.  I loved my kids. I cared deeply about our local community, but I resented watching helplessly as my hard-earned dollars got automatically siphoned off to Trenton and used for things I disapproved of,” stated Sue Fischer, a Monmouth County teacher.  “If teachers had a choice, we would prefer to have a say on how our dues are used.”

To read Sunlight’s latest report or learn more about Sunlight’s statewide teacher engagement campaign, please go to https://sunlightpolicynj.org/member-resource-center/.