Great Start to the NEA Representative Assembly

Each year around the 4th of July holiday, the National Education Association holds its annual Supreme Soviet. This year, the party is in Orlando, and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Washington State sends out this notice:

Dear Friends:

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation had a little surprise for the National Education Association (NEA) this morning! You are getting these pictures only hours after delegates to this year’s NEA convention saw them on a billboard truck right outside the main entrance of their convention center in Orlando, Florida!

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s Labor Policy Center is at the Orange County Convention Center right now with a professionally prepared billboard truck. The truck has three key themes: (Click on the links for hi-resolution images of the signs.)

• “It pays to be a union boss.” When it comes to salaries, benefits and perks, union officials are better off than teachers. The average NEA employee’s salary is nearly twice as much as the average teacher’s. Further, the union spends more than $68 million on payroll, benefits and expense accounts.

• “Fair Representation?” Teachers are a politically diverse group, but the union’s political spending typically benefits only one political party.

• “No means No!” A stern-faced teacher reminds union bosses that “No means No” when it comes to keeping their hands off her paycheck.

Why are we doing this?

Our state Supreme Court recently said it is O.K. for union officials to raid employees’ paychecks, without permission, to collect money for their politics. The court said it would be too burdensome for an association, such as the Washington Education Association (WEA), to ask its non-members (much less members) for permission before taking money from their paychecks to pay for politics. The justices used the U.S. Constitution to back up their opinion that an organization’s free speech rights supersede the free speech rights of an individual.

We are appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and raising the profile of the case begins today! So, this truck, and a spokesman from our Labor Policy Center, will be ready to greet the delegates and the media. We’ll let you know what happens, or maybe you’ll hear about it on the news.

For more information and updates about the appeal and our presence at the NEA convention, call the Evergreen Freedom Foundation at (360) 956-3482, or visit the new website dedicated to the case, www.teachers-vs-union.org.

Persistence matters, because freedom matters.

Gotta love it!