Report: NC, national teacher union membership plummets

North Carolina has experienced one of the biggest drops in teacher organization membership since 2008, a new report has found.

The report's findings suggest a declining influence of teacher unions and organizations broadly, as the stronger organizations have historically been correlated with higher teacher pay and overall school spending.

Teacher union membership has plummeted nationwide, in part because of changes to state laws governing union membership requirements and a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that bars public-sector employees from being required to join a union.

Those movements don't apply to North Carolina, however, said Melissa Arnold Lyon, an assistant professor of public policy at the University at Albany, SUNY. Arnold Lyon was one of a handful of researchers on the project, which was funded by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The Institute is an education reform-focused think tank based in Virginia and Ohio.

So Lyon told WRAL News she isn't sure what caused North Carolina's membership drop.

"North Carolina was more of a surprise," Lyon said. Teachers could be joining other group that aren't employee associations, or it could be that new teachers aren't joining and replacing retiring teachers who were members, Lyon theorized, adding that she really didn't know. But the drop coincides with the state's declining rankings in average teacher pay.

If younger teachers are coming into the profession with lower pay and no collective bargaining rights, Lyon said, "then it wouldn't be a huge surprise to expect that those newer teachers wouldn't see the benefit of joining a union."

Researchers used the latest federal survey of educators' union membership, conducted in 2021, and compared the results to their last report on the topic, which used 2008 survey data.

North Carolina's teacher organization membership dropped from 49% of educators in 2008 to 21% of educators in 2021. Membership dropped in 44 states and the District of Columbia

The Fordham Institute report released Wednesday shows that it was the second-biggest drop nationally, behind Wisconsin, which in recent years passed sweeping reforms that weakened unions.

North Carolina, like many other states, hasn't allowed collective bargaining for public employees for several decades, so teacher organizations in those states often avoid calling themselves unions. The report released Wednesday includes membership in both unions with collective bargaining power and those professional organizations without it.

The report concluded North Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Mississippi have the weakest teacher unions. Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Hawaii have the strongest teacher unions, researchers said.

The report noted that the changes mean teachers unions may no longer be the most influential voices in the rooms where decisions are made in many cases. Large corporations and other groups with robust lobbying arms are growing in influence, by contrast, Lyon said.

Researchers also noted the states with the strongest teachers unions tend to have higher school spending, and that states with the weakest teachers unions tend to have lower school spending. Results can be more mixed when it comes to academics.

The strength of a teacher union can vary depending on what's being measured. In North Carolina, researchers concluded membership and perceived effectiveness of teacher unions are lower than in nearly all other states. But the state ranks more toward the middle of the pack when it comes to influence and policy wins, they concluded.

North Carolina spends about $13,000 per student, from all sources -- state, federal and local. It's a figure that's steadily gone up, but that ranks toward the bottom nationally, according to the National Education Association, a national teacher organization that counts the North Caroline Association of Educators among its affiliates.

The North Carolina Association of Educators is the state's biggest teacher organization. It reported having about 27,000 members in 2024, according to a report from the state auditor's office. That figure includes more than teachers. It includes administrators and many support workers who are eligible for membership.

North Carolina has more than 90,000 public school teachers and nearly 200,000 public school employees.

Other organizations in the state represent teachers, as well, and bus drivers typically join the Teamsters Union rather than NCAE.

NCAE didn't make anyone available for an interview Tuesday.

The group has made recent efforts to drum up support for more teacher and school funding, as well as a host of other demands.

On May 1, the group hosted a rally in downtown Raleigh attended by thousands of people from across the state. The rally forced the closure of about two dozen school districts because of a lack of teachers available in the building.

NCAE called for a 25% pay increase for all North Carolina school employees, which WRAL estimated to cost about $2.6 billion, based on current state, federal and local spending on salaries. That doesn't include any benefit increases that could be triggered by the higher pay.

Earlier this month, legislative leadership announced an agreement for an average 8% increase in teacher pay, with less experienced teachers getting the biggest boosts. No comprehensive budget has been put forth yet.

As society becomes more politically polarized, national teacher organizations' politics have shifted, too, Lyon said. They've become more Democratically aligned on a national level, which could be polarizing to some potential members, Lyon said, but that's not necessarily true at levels below the national groups.

"We, I think, are more inclined as a whole society to want to put organizations into buckets than we might have been even 10 or 15 years ago, and so as that's happened, the national unions have more and more been pushed onto that Democratic side, and that's why it's not really a big surprise that we see the strongest teachers unions are also in bluer states," Lyon said.

But it's not that simple of a story when you dig into the organizations at the state level, especially in states where the organizations have more collective bargaining power, Lyon said. In those states, the unions are much more structured and more influenced by teachers at the local level. Republicans have gotten endorsements from teacher unions, she said, including in left-leaning states such as New York and Vermont.