Education Minnesota is Fully Engaged in the Mid-Term; Raised Dues and PAC Contribution to Fund GOTV Campaign at K-12 Schools

The Star Tribune’s Erin Golden, who covers the education and teachers’ union beat, wrote an article about how the union is aggressively asking teachers to vote and encourage their students to vote. “Education Minnesota’s election strategy: Get more teachers to vote: In high-stakes election, Education Minnesota is focusing on its own members,” October 27, 2018.

The article also talked about how hard it is for union members to get PAC and Foundation money back.

Here are some excerpts, in case you cannot access the article here:

Outside the door to Linda Hagen’s third-grade classroom at Turtle Lake Elementary in Shoreview, there’s a sign that reads: “I will vote.”

She sees the same sign posted by many other teachers outside their classrooms. Each has a photo of a teacher’s face, the promise to cast a ballot, and the name of the organization leading the charge to the polls: Education Minnesota, the state teachers union.

Long an influential force in state politics, raising and spending millions on campaigns and funding lobbyists at the State Capitol, Education Minnesota is taking a new tack as it faces a high-stakes election. As usual, the union is looking to sway voters with its high-profile endorsements and big campaign rallies. But this year, it’s also aiming at a particular subset of would-be voters: its own members.

“There’s more of a buzz than I’ve ever heard before around election time,” Hagen said.

For the union, there are plenty of reasons this election matters. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbids unions from requiring nonmembers to help cover the cost of collective bargaining — threatening the union’s financial position and prompting a flurry of activity from outside groups who say they’ve heard from many teachers who are unhappy with Education Minnesota.

Between Janus case and the 2016 results, the union is doubling down:

The union began re-evaluating its political strategy after the 2016 election. For a group that almost exclusively supports DFL candidates and policies, things had not gone well: Republicans held on to their majority in Congress and won the White House, and the Minnesota Senate flipped from DFL to Republican control, ensuring an uphill battle for many of Education Minnesota’s priorities.

Union officials lined up their roster alongside state voting records and found something startling: More than a third of their members — some 33,000 voters — had sat out the last election.

“That’s enough to swing a statewide race,” Specht said. “That’s a lot of people.”

Here is the fallout from the Janus case and how the union increased PAC deductions to pay for it all (we note that union dues have gone up last year—and again this year):

Meanwhile, the union was anticipating the Supreme Court’s ruling and subsequently, a possible drop in membership. To maintain its numbers, Education Minnesota would need to fortify its membership and bank accounts. Last year, the union increased the amount deducted from each member’s annual union dues for its political action committee from $15 to $25. (If members want to opt out of that donation, they have to jump through a few hoops: Fill out a form included in an issue of the union’s magazine — and not a photocopied version — and submit it by the end of October, or within 30 days of signing on as a union member.)

Leaders also realized they’d need to do more to refine their membership sales pitch, especially to the approximately 5,000 nonmembers who no longer had to contribute to the union’s collective bargaining efforts. At the same time, conservative groups like the Center of the American Experiment began appealing to those teachers and full-fledged members to leave the union — and reported some success.

Editor’s Note: following the Janus case, there are around 6,500 or more “fair-share fee” payers who do not have to pay any fee, though some are contributing to their local union. (Some locals have refused the checks.)

By the time the school year rolled around, the union had refined its strategy. Sorting through the voting lists, leaders picked out the schools where at least 10 of its members hadn’t voted in 2016. In each of those buildings, they enlisted another teacher to serve as a “worksite action leader.” Across the state, those leaders have organized after-school socials at breweries and restaurants where they make a pitch for voting, held raffles and political-themed trivia nights and urged their co-workers to make a plan for voting before or on Election Day.

In case there was any doubt about where union dollars are spent, here it is in black and white:

Though the union has members who belong to both political parties, Education Minnesota has historically been one of the DFL’s most powerful allies. This year, its slate of candidates for major state offices is exclusively DFL, and its sizable campaign contributions have gone almost entirely to candidates and committees on the political left. (Through September, the union’s political action committee gave roughly $1.2 million to DFL campaigns and committees, $62,653 to local Education Minnesota political organizations and $300 to the House Republican Campaign Committee.)

Editor’s Note: If the GOP had any self-respect, they would return the $300.

The higher political fees for members have helped the union raise more campaign cash this year than in previous midterm election cycles; by September, the Education Minnesota PAC had raised more than $2.7 million. That’s more than double what it raised in the entire year in both 2010 and 2014.

Education Minnesota has not released updated membership numbers this fall, so it’s still unclear if the union is heading into the election and next year’s legislative session with a smaller or larger roster.

The union is not subject to rigorous disclosure requirements with regard to revenues, expenditures and membership. So we are left guessing unless the union tells the Star Tribune. Why doesn’t it have to at least tell members?  Bloomberg Law, reported today that the Department of Labor was going to ramp up reporting requirements ushered in under George W. Bush and abandoned by Obama.

As I read through the pro-labor slanted article, I did not come away very encouraged that public-sector unions were going to be required to be much more transparent. The reason? Here is Bloomberg Law:

The government can regulate private-sector unions because they’re involved in interstate commerce, but public-sector unions aren’t. The commerce clause in the Constitution gives the federal government power to regulate commerce with states and other government entities.

That strikes me as an incomplete analysis fed to a reporter who was happy to report the union narrative; I will follow up and let you know what I find.