Largest public-sector unions spent eye-popping amount on left-wing politics — 86 percent funded by member dues

The country’s four largest public-sector unions spent a combined $915 million on elections and progressive political activism during the 2024 election cycle, 86% of which came from member dues. 

The Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit promoting free-market policies, highlighted the massive political spending by the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), in a new report released this week. The foundation published a similar report back during the 2022 election cycle as well, which found all four of these unions spent $708 million on progressive politics, 

The report’s findings, particularly that 86% of the unions’ nearly $1 billion in political spending stems from membership dues, underscore criticism that these entities work more to push a political agenda than support their members.

“What they’re doing when they’re making these political investments, is they’re trying to get people into office that will raise taxes and increase the size and scope of government,” public-sector unions expert Aaron Withe told Fox News Digital. “That’s the way that it’s been working for decades. That’s why you see the government grows every single year, that’s why you see taxes go up most every year as well.”

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Withe, a critic of both public and private-sector unions, said that private-sector unions at least have an incentive structure based on a company’s or industry’s bottom-line, but public-sector unions, Withe argued, are incentivized by raising taxes and growing government. 

“When you look at Union spending in politics, you have to remember that their goal – their primary purpose is a business – so they’re there to grow revenue. They’re there to gain more revenue than the year previously,” Withe pointed out. “The difference with the government union, is that that revenue comes from public employees, and the way that you hire more public employees is by raising taxes on the private sector so that you can hire more bureaucrats.”

David Osborne, Senior Director of Labor Policy for the Commonwealth Foundation and co-author of the report, said that “the big question” that arises from his report is whether rank-and-file union members are aware of how their money is actually being spent.  

“Years ago, [union members] could expect union executives to use dues to drive member services, including contract negotiations and grievance processing,” Osborne said. “Now, union members are unwittingly propping up left-leaning candidates and progressive causes like abortion, critical race theory, and defunding the police.”

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According to the Commonwealth Foundation’s report, the findings elucidated that approximately just 25% of the group’s total spending – or $642 million – goes toward “representational activities,” which the report describes as “the spending category most closely tied to membership support.” Meanwhile, the unions’ also spent approximately a combined 33% of their total spending – or $845 million – on general overhead, union administration, staff benefits, and other cost categories “linked to basic operations.”

But spending on elections and progressive political activism surpassed both those categories. Collectively, the unions spent around $755 million on federal elections and national progressive politics, while their state-level affiliates combined to spend another $160 million on state races and ideological causes. $650 million of that spending, or 86%, stemmed from union membership dues, according to the Commonwealth Foundation.

Meanwhile, the report notes, the unions also collect voluntary Political Action Committee (PAC) deductions from members and their families, which allows the unions to collect money that can then go directly to candidates, something that is not supposed to be done with member’s dues money. The union’s federal PAC spending accounted for 14% of the group’s political spending, according to the report.

“Government unions’ heavy use of membership dues money for politics—more than what they collectively spent on representational activities—underlines a disturbing trend: the growing, overt reliance by union officials to spend member dues rather than political action committee funds on their political and ideological agendas,” the Commonwealth Foundation says in its new report.

“Yet, much of this spending is possible only because of the lack of accountability and control over what powerful union executives do with members’ dues. Union dues, not the separately collected PAC funds, are the overwhelming power behind—86 percent—of union political spending. Few members are aware that union leaders launder much of their dues through super PACs and 527s to back political projects. Even fewer members can effect change within their union to stop it.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the NEA, AFT, SEIU and AFSCME for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.