NC Union Membership Math Madness
The North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) is under scrutiny for whether or not it has the membership required by law to be able to deduct dues from teachers’ paychecks. State law requires NCAE to have 40,000 members in order to be able to do payroll deductions.
According to the News & Observer:
An auditor’s report on employee group memberships released Friday said NCAE would not tell how many members it has and that the association, which represents teachers and other school employees, denied repeated requests for the information.
“We do not have the authority to compel NCAE to turn over this information because, as a private entity, NCAE does not fall under the authority of the State Auditor,” said the report, signed by Auditor Beth Wood. “However, NCAE reported a total membership count of approximately 70,000 on their website as of October 27, 2015. We were not able to confirm this membership count.”
Additionally, the audit report said the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Federation of Teachers did not respond to requests for membership information.
NCAE would not say why it would not reveal the size of its membership.
This one’s a no-brainer. Having the ability to automatically deduct dues versus relying on individuals to send in payments inevitably increases an organization’s money-making potential. (How many times have you been reminded to send in your payments to an organization you belong to, or even been on the other side where you’re the one reminding people to please pay!)
Well, the brilliant Mike Antonucci has done some detective work to help out the State Auditor.
This handout from the NJ Education Association from February 2015 shows the NCAE at 37,770…
And if that’s not convincing, then there’s always the IRS, which indicates NCAE’s dues income for 2012-13 was $6,853,344, and for the following year (2013-14), $5,899,139.
That’s nearly a 14 percent loss of dues revenue in a single year, and equates to the full dues of 4,000 teachers.
The math here isn’t complicated.
Click here for the full piece from Mike Antonucci, “Helping Out the North Carolina State Auditor”
