The Freedom Foundation, a national non-profit organization that has defended and represented public union employees nationwide, has come to Alabama ready to take on the Alabama Education Association (AEA).
Over the last several weeks, representatives from the group whose mission is to “liberate public employees from political exploitation” have been in Alabama to introduce themselves to lawmakers and like-minded groups. One of the problems they’re ready to address is what they describe as a loophole or problem with the way the AEA uses money collected through payroll deductions for political purposes.
“The loophole is the fact that paycheck protection, payroll deduction ban, whatever you want to call it, relies on the Alabama Education Association certifying that they do not take any portion of that money, dues, and use it for political fights. That is absolutely false,” Freedom Foundation's Rusty Brown told 1819 News in a phone interview.
Brown takes issue with the fact that the AEA has publicly attempted to distance itself from the National Education Association (NEA), while also forcing its members to support it through member dues.
“It is as unequivocally false as [the claim] Alabama Education Association is not the National Education Association. It is absolutely true that the money gets used for politics,” Brown said.
Brown says this happens in two ways. One is the money flows from Alabama to the NEA and is then filtered across the country, where it's used for liberal causes. And there's the more direct way: AEA spends the money it collects directly.
1819 News reached out and talked to Allison King from the AEA, who stressed that the AEA’s relationship with the NEA is primarily for the benefits that the NEA can offer to its members.
“AEA payroll deductions do include NEA dues that fund their liability protection, and then dues are returned to Alabama to fund their local district directors hired by AEA,” King later wrote in a statement to 1819 News.
According to Brown and information from the NEA’s own reports, the NEA’s spending is more political than beneficial to teachers.
Americans for Fair Treatment released a report, “Where do your union dues go?” that broke down union spending. It showed that with dues collected in 2022-2023, “the union spent $10 million more on politics and lobbying than it did representing its members.”
An image provided by the Nebraska State Education Association showed a breakdown of this year’s dues money. AEA did not respond to a request for comment on how Alabama’s breakdown may differ.
State law specifically bans the use of payroll deductions for “political communications.”
This includes “Making contributions to or contracting with any entity which engages in any form of political communication, including communications which mention the name of a political candidate.”
There is little room for debate about whether NEA engages in political communication on its social media, weighing in against nearly every action the Trump administration takes.
A review of more than three years of the AEA magazine “The School Journal” shows many references to the NEA, and that it is commonplace for district reps to show that many rely heavily on NEA participation in their published biographies.
In addition to the NEA dues that are collected via payroll deductions. Brown cited Secretary of State PAC reports that the AEA PAC, Alabama Voice of Teachers for Education (A-VOTE), receives money from the AEA.
Though those donations are separate from the money it collects from teachers. Following the 2010 legislation, the organization started collecting that money separately.
“AVOTE PAC donations are separate, optional, opt-in contributions from members’ bank accounts that are completely separate from payroll-deducted dues, as required by law,” King emphasized.
Brown says the solution to end the politicization of payroll deductions is clear.
“The fix is just to get the government out of this business. Now, if you take politics aside and all the propaganda one way or another, it's also just good governance to occasionally look at the functions that government is performing that is no longer necessary due to technological advancement or whatever. And this is definitely one of those. And if we did that across the government, we'd probably save the taxpayers a lot of money,” Brown explained.
"Alabama stands firmly rooted in conservative principles, in sharp contrast to the leftist agendas advanced by public-sector unions," Brown expanded. "Voters in the state elected a conservative supermajority in the legislature that lawmakers should view as a mandate to pursue meaningful reforms."
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