Two glaring (and easily correctible) flaws in how NC collects teachers union dues

The crossroads where organized labor and American public education intersect isn’t quite as famous as the fabled spot where legendary bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil for musical greatness. But the intersection does exist, and the moral tradeoff is just as jarring.

In some places the balancing of union, student, and taxpayer interests is, like Johnson’s influential style, worthy of imitation, while elsewhere, state laws on the subject look more like they were designed by Johnson’s legendary interlocutor.

In others, like North Carolina, the devil is in the details.

Both education policy and public employee labor relations are dealt with primarily at the state level. In North Carolina, education spending takes up more than half of the state budget.

Meanwhile, North Carolina is one of the few states that does not require government employers to engage in collective bargaining with unions representing public employees, meaning teachers unions have no outsized say over school district budgets or operations.

That doesn’t, however, prevent unions from leveraging public resources for their own advantage.

For instance, even in the Tar Heel State, certain unions benefit from the controversial practice of having the government collect membership dues and fees on their behalf by deducting dues from employees’ paychecks, like federal or state withholding taxes, and forwarding the funds to the union.

Because taxpayer-subsidized payroll deduction of union dues is such an extraordinary legal and political privilege, North Carolina law requires that unions meet certain minimum membership thresholds in order to qualify for it.

For teachers unions like the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE), the law clearly intends to set the standard at 40,000 members.

Yet while the law’s intent is clear, the devilish details — or lack thereof — fall short.

For starters, the law includes no enforcement mechanisms to ensure Gov. Roy Cooper’s appointed officials enforce the rules as the legislature intended. So when the North Carolina state auditor, whose office is charged with annually reviewing the process, reports that NCAE membership sits at a little over 25,600 and appears to have dropped by 63% over the past decade, the truth is that NCAE could probably never legitimately claim that many members to begin with.

And it’s never had to.

When asked, NCAE simply refused to disclose its membership levels under the law until at least 2021. Until that time, the state auditor relied on information from NCAE’s website claiming the union had approximately 70,000 members.

But there’s simply no evidence NCAE ever enjoyed that much support, let alone exceeded the state’s 40,000-member requirement for accessing taxpayer-funded dues collection.

Outside of the auditor’s report, unions like NCAE have no other obligation to disclose their membership numbers. And since North Carolina teachers have enjoyed right-to-work protections since 1947, there’s been no event in recent years that could possibly explain such a sudden drop in membership.

Yet despite NCAE’s apparent failure to speak for more than a quarter of the state’s teachers, North Carolina taxpayers have been forced to continue collecting its dues for free.

And by extension, they’ve been forced to continue subsidizing teachers unions’ politics.

NCAE is an affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA) — the largest teachers union in the country — which means $213 of the dues paid by each NCAE member this school year will go to the union’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The NEA routinely uses members’ dues to engage in state and federal political campaigns, and even uses the dues collected from affiliates like NCAE to fund a federal political action committee, known as the “NEA Advocacy Fund,” which has contributed at least $4.1 million back to progressive political committees and other organizations involved in North Carolina elections.

This money-laundering exercise brazenly circumvents existing North Carolina election laws, which generally prohibit both taxpayer resources and union members’ dues from being used to support political campaigns.

It’s time to fix these loopholes. Taxpayers shouldn’t be roped into subsidizing teachers unions’ politics, and teachers unions like the NEA and NCAE should have to play by the same rules as everybody else.

Along with clarifying the existing requirements surrounding union dues deductions, North Carolina lawmakers should pass legislation in 2025 making it clear, once and for all, that public school resources, including payroll systems, are not for sale and may not be used to subsidize teachers union politics.