POST-JANUS, THE NJEA HAS LOST OVER 9% OF ITS MEMBERS
When teachers learn the facts about how their dues are being spent, many are choosing to leave.
In its petition to the New Jersey Public Relations Employment Commission, the Wayne Education Association (WEA) certified the reason it was trying to block Sunlight’s digital ad and email campaign: once teachers learned about the facts Sunlight presented, many were choosing to leave the WEA. So we decided to find out just how many had left the WEA as well as the statewide New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) since the Supreme Court’s Janus decision in 2018.
Using two methods of analysis, we determined that about 9% of the WEA had left, as had 9.3 – 9.7% of the NJEA. With a pre-Janus membership of 203,520, that indicates a loss of at least 18,000 members for the NJEA, which would place current membership around 185,000, far less than the 200,000 claimed on the NJEA website.
Of course, the NJEA knows exactly how many members it has, and it is revealing that they continue to exaggerate their membership. NJEA leadership does not want teachers to know just how many of them are choosing to vote with their feet.
The NJEA used to be a teachers’ association concerned primarily with education and the well-being of teachers, but today’s NJEA is a dues-funded political machine. Now NJEA leadership is doubling down by turning the NJEA into one, giant “Spiller for Governor” Super PAC — and using teachers’ dues to do it. Our research shows that when teachers learn these facts, they leave.
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