In Missouri, state affiliates of some of the country’s most politically divisive labor unions — including the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — have effectively roped taxpayers into subsidizing their private operations and political advocacy.

That’s the subject of a new report by the Freedom Foundation analyzing more than 100 union contracts negotiated with Missouri’s school districts and public colleges.

The report, “Ending the Free Ride: How School Tax Dollars Subsidize Union Activity and Politics in Missouri,” extensively documents how unions representing teachers and other school employees in the Show Me State commonly secure special legal privileges at the taxpayers’ expense, benefitting from Missouri’s public education funding, facilities, resources and personnel.

By way of background, most teachers unions in Missouri are affiliated with the Missouri National Education Association (MNEA) or AFT Missouri, which are affiliated with the national NEA and AFT, respectively. As a condition of their affiliation, much of the union dues paid by Missouri educators go to support the operations and political advocacy of the NEA and AFT rather than local unions’ representational services.

The NEA and AFT are among the nation’s biggest political players, and their influence is not limited to education policy. Nationally, the NEA and AFT support everything from Critical Race Theory to abortion to gun control to efforts to defund the police, while opposing election integrity and policies seeking to preserve and protect women’s sports.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board aptly put it this way: “The NEA and AFT have become the ideological and institutional vanguard of progressive politics. They are a powerful wing of the Democratic Party…”

And though NEA and AFT affiliates in places like Missouri may strive to appear more balanced at the state level, the record shows they are every bit as politically one-sided as their progressive parent unions. For instance, an analysis of the MNEA’s campaign spending shows it almost exclusively seeks to advance Democrat politics in the state despite attempting to appear bipartisan and curry favor with Missouri’s Republican legislative majority by funding a small number of GOP primary elections in safe districts.

Of course, unions like the MNEA and AFT Missouri are private organizations and are free to advocate for any causes or political candidates they like — so long as they do it with their own funds derived from voluntary memberships freely purchased by the union’s members.

They also have a valid role to play in in workplace matters when formally designated to represent a bargaining unit of teachers or other school employees.

The problem is that the NEA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., specifically encourages its affiliates to prioritize certain “essentials to a strong union contract” that involve leveraging taxpayer-funded resources for their own private and political benefit. In many states, the NEA, AFT and others have implemented this playbook to maximize their ability to recruit new members and offload as many operational costs to taxpayers as possible.

Unfortunately, Missouri is no exception.

The Freedom Foundation’s analysis of current and recent collective bargaining agreements with Missouri public school employers has identified at least five ways in which these unions benefit from taxpayer support:

• Government collection of union dues and political contributions;
• Paid time off for union activity;
• Union participation, and membership solicitation, during new employee orientations;
• Enhanced access to school employees’ personal information; and,
• Privileged access to and use of school facilities and resources.

Not only do all of these practices inflate union influence by effectively requiring Missouri taxpayers to subsidize unions’ operations, membership solicitations and politicking — which is precisely why unions like the NEA prioritize them — but they also open the door for coercive union membership solicitations and similar abuses that would not be possible if unions had to sell their services to educators without leveraging assistance from their public school employer.

Thankfully, Missouri policymakers have all the tools and authority at their disposal to end taxpayer support for union activity and political advocacy in public schools. And ironically, teachers unions have already shown their support for the principle that this kind of activity shouldn’t take place at taxpayers’ expense.

In 2018 and 2020, the NEA and MNEA together spent more than $3.2 million bankrolling high-profile Missouri ballot campaigns over legislative redistricting and government ethics. A component of their effort — which remains on the books to this day — was an amendment to the state constitution that strictly prohibits Missouri state lawmakers and candidates from engaging in political fundraising on state property.

Despite seeking to enforce this principle on others, however, teachers unions like the MNEA are one of the few — if not the only — special interest groups that regularly abuse it by routinely taking advantage of taxpayer-funded school resources to support their own political agenda.

To level the playing field and protect the First Amendment rights of both educators and taxpayers alike, Missouri policymakers should prohibit school districts and other public educational bodies from using taxpayer funds and resources to promote unions.

The full report, “Ending the Free Ride: How School Tax Dollars Subsidize Union Activity and Politics in Missouri,” is available below: