While this article doesn't mention it, the National Education
Association is the largest lobbying group in the US. I'll find the
details and forward. Corporate lobbying pales in comparison.
Here are some statics about the Union....
Mike
+ NEA Dominates Labor Movement in Many States. The U.S. Department of
+ Labor
released its annual survey of union membership last Thursday. Union
members make up 13.5 percent of the national workforce, unchanged from
last year.
Over the next few weeks, economists, columnists, academics and pundits
will comb through the numbers and come to various conclusions. But EIA,
naturally enough, is more interested in the teacher union component of
the labor movement. First, a few background statistics. Despite the fact
that the private sector is three times larger than the public sector,
government workers make up 44 percent of union membership. When the NEA
and AFT memberships are combined, and overlap from merged affiliates
accounted for, their total is approximately 47.5 percent of the
unionized government workforce.
I draw attention to it simply so you can see that the
teachers'
unions are the largest plurality in the largest unionized segment of our
economy. NEA members alone make up 16 percent of all union members in
the United States. What is even more fascinating is how that percentage
breaks down by state. The following is a list of the states, ranked by
the percentage of all union members in that state who belong to the NEA,
based on the best numbers from 2001 (an asterisk denotes a merged
NEA/AFT state
affiliate):
1) North Carolina 49.6%
2) Alabama 46.6%
3) Nebraska 43.3%
4) North Dakota 42.9%
5) South Dakota 42.1%
6) Virginia 35.6%
7) Maine 34.7%
8) Vermont 33.3%
9) Utah 31.3%
10) Tennessee 30.2%
11) Wyoming 30.0%
12) Florida* 28.9%
13) Idaho 28.6%
14) Arkansas 26.6%
15) Kansas 26.4%
16) Arizona 25.6%
17) Montana* 25.0%
18) Oklahoma 23.9%
19) New Jersey 23.3%
20) Iowa 22.5%
21) Delaware 22.2%
22) Wisconsin 22.1%
23) New Hampshire 21.7%
24) Massachusetts 21.4%
25) Colorado 20.8%
26) Minnesota* 20.0%
27) Kentucky 19.3%
28) South Carolina 18.7%
29) Alaska 18.6%
30) Oregon 18.0%
31) Pennsylvania 17.2%
32) Washington 16.5%
33) Connecticut 15.6%
34) Michigan 15.4%
35) Maryland 15.3%
36) Nevada 15.3%
37) West Virginia 15.1%
38) New Mexico 14.3%
39) Louisiana 14.1%
40) Georgia 13.9%
41) Ohio 13.5%
42) Mississippi 12.9%
43) Rhode Island 12.8%
44) Indiana 12.7%
45) California 12.5%
46) Hawaii 12.2%
47) Illinois 11.1%
48) Texas 10.9%
49) Missouri 8.3%
50) New York 2.1%
These numbers are not an indication of the individual union's
political power, or its influence on education issues, or even its
organizing abilities. They are better used to measure the relative
strength of that NEA affiliate within the labor movement in that state.