Ever wonder where your dues go? Here’s a look at the contract for the NEA National Headquarters employees, in Washington, DC. As Mike Antonucci reminds us, teacher unions are also businesses, and employers. Apparently NEA officials have no problem forcing their own employees into paying forced dues or be fired. Here’s the story:
About 500 people work at NEA national headquarters in Washington, DC. A handful of unions represent them, the largest being the National Education Association Staff Organization (NEASO). NEA and NEASO negotiated a 136-page collective bargaining agreement in June 2012, and it runs through the end of May 2015. I have posted the full document on EIA’s Declassified page, but to save you the energy of mining it yourself, here are a few provisions I thought were worthy of highlighting:
* NEA must assume financial liability for an employee who is prosecuted or sued “because of any act taken by him/her in the course of his/her employment.” Under these circumstances, unless the employee is guilty of “gross negligence or gross irresponsibility,” he or she “shall be paid at his/her regular hourly rate for all time spent in jail.”
* Outside of the usual crimes and misdemeanors, the only thing that will get you immediately fired is failure to pay NEASO dues. * If NEA is forced to cancel an employee’s previously approved vacation time, it must “reimburse the employee for any deposits or other similar out-of-pocket losses necessarily sustained by him/her as a result thereof.”
* Employees can be reimbursed up to $700 for “technical equipment with a business purpose,” including broadband and Internet.
* NEA is required to provide “an appropriately furnished lounge” for employees at union headquarters. The contract specifically requires NEA to “make an ice machine available to employees in the building.”
* “An appropriately equipped and staffed health services unit shall be open during normal business hours at NEA Center. A registered or licensed practical nurse shall be on duty during those hours.”