MEA President Steve Cool
The Michigan Education Association confronts serious political and financial threats, Rick Haglund writes at Bridge Magazine.
Michigan’s largest teachers union is struggling to keep a toehold as change-minded foes with growing momentum seek to topple the MEA — one of the state’s traditional political giants.
The 152,000-member union’s finances are deteriorating. Its growth strategy is uncertain. And it faces an unrelenting political offensive by opponents who see the MEA’s position and worldview as hindrances to Michigan’s future. . . .
The MEA’s largely Republican foes point to lagging student achievement, decades of unchecked decline in urban schools and the union’s hearty support of Democratic Party fortunes as reasons to reconsider the MEA’s role – and to deliver unapologetic thumpings to teacher unions at every turn. . . .
"The MEA has had no real competition and has allowed themselves to be less responsive to their members,” said Ari Adler, spokesman for the House Republican Caucus.
Haglund, a veteran Michigan journalist, lists these "serious challenges in the most hostile political climate toward the union in memory::
- The union is rapidly burning through cash to pay rising expenses and exploding staff retiree costs, which total more than $200 million — three times the union’s total assets.
- Membership has fallen nearly 7.5 percent over the past seven years . . . as school districts have laid off staffers in response to declining enrollment and tightening budgets.
- Michigan has fewer students to teach. . . . And, with changes in state policy, more of those remaining students are expected to attend largely non-unionized charter schools.
- The MEA is in the midst of an epic political losing streak. Its preferred gubernatorial candidate got waxed in 2010. Its favored political party has no power in the Legislature. And it spent millions of dollars supporting a failed ballot proposal in 2012 that would have enshrined collective bargaining rights in the constitution.
- Even its fabled lobbying power . . . failed to prevent passage of Right to Work last December.
