Analysis: The 鈥極ne Percent鈥� Leaders of America鈥檚 Top Teachers Unions, All Making More Than $300,000 a Year
;)
Education news and commentary, delivered right to your inbox.
Sign up for 社区黑料 newsletter.
Mike Antonucci鈥檚 Union Report appears Wednesdays; see the full archive
鈥泪t鈥檚 not fair that we have to live paycheck to paycheck.鈥澛�– , American Federation of Teachers president, annual salary $472,197
Income inequality is a contentious policy issue, and labor unions are at the forefront of the debate, professing themselves champions of the working class against the predations of the one-percenters.
But doing good also helps the top officers of those unions to do very well 鈥� so much so that they themselves have entered into the realm of the ultra-wealthy.
The financial analysts at DQYDJ.com specialize in examining personal income and net worth. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, they determined that for an individual to reside in the top 1% of pre-tax income, in 2016.
I reviewed 2016 salary information in U.S. Department of Labor financial disclosure reports for both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, taking care to include only gross wages and taxable allowances in my computations.
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garc铆a ($317,826) and Executive Director John Stocks ($355,721) easily cleared the threshold, as did AFT President Randi Weingarten ($472,197), Secretary-Treasurer Lorretta Johnson ($359,584), and Executive Vice President Mary Cathryn Ricker ($325,314).
I was also able to comprehensively examine the wages of NEA鈥檚 workforce as a whole, because the union noted which of its employees were temps, and not full-time workers.
Along with Eskelsen Garc铆a and Stocks, another 18 NEA employees belong to the top 2 percent of U.S. wage earners. An additional 104 fall into the top 5 percent.
All told, NEA鈥檚 payroll for 2016 was just over $68.6 million for 555 employees 鈥� an average of $123,613 per worker. That average worker fits into the top 8 percent of U.S. wage earners. By comparison, the average 2016 teacher salary of $58,353 placed that individual in the top 30 percent.
While NEA鈥檚 cash compensation is generous, its pension and benefit package is even more so.
Of course there are people whose annual incomes dwarf those of teachers union officers, and some of them advocate education policies contrary to those of NEA and AFT. But the unions have fallen prey to the as 鈥渁nyone who makes more money than I do.鈥�
Email tips to [email protected]
Did you use this article in your work?
We鈥檇 love to hear how 社区黑料鈥檚 reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers.