Teachers’ Unions Spent Billions of Dollars in Membership Dues on Exorbitant Employee Salaries
A new watchdog report finds hundreds of teachers’ union employees have collected six-figure salaries at the expense of dues-paying teachers, who often make far less. National teachers’ unions, like the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), have spent almost a combined $1.5 billion on salaries, compensation, and employee benefits from 2016 to 2023, according to Internal Revenue Service documents obtained by Defending Education and shared exclusively with National Review . Hundreds of employees at both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers took home six-figure salaries: 475 employees and officers at NEA and 273 employees and officers at AFT. But according to NEA’s Educator Pay Data from 2026, the average national starting salary for a teacher is $48,112. Further, only 10 percent of school districts surveyed offer a top salary of $119,000. Comparatively, of the 708 employees at NEA, 505 receive a ...