The nation’s largest teachers’ union has come to a tentative contract agreement with its own staff after locking them out without pay for more than a month, an extraordinary move that complicated its run-up to the 2024 election cycle.
National Education Association Executive Director Kim Anderson and National Education Association Staff Organization President Robin McLean announced late on Aug. 16 that both are seeking to to end a six-week lockout in its Washington headquarters. Details of the agreement are under wraps until it is fully approved, but the contract expired at the end of May, and bargaining disputes hinged around issues like health benefits, telework, and wages.
NEA management locked out nearly 300 staff members in its Washington headquarters on July 7, after staff walked out of the union’s Philadelphia convention in July—effectively ending the group’s largest event of the year three days early and disrupting the union’s political activities ramping up for this year’s campaign season. (The July walkout and a one-day strike in June were related to claims of unfair labor practices, not directly to the contract negotiations.)
President Joe Biden, originally scheduled to give a speech to delegates at the NEA convention, canceled in solidarity with the staff union—and to avoid crossing the picket line—just two weeks before he formally withdrew his reelection bid. Had he remained in the race, the lockout could have had larger effects on the presidential election, said Bradley Marianno, an associate professor of educational policy and leadership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies teachers’ union engagement in politics.
“The NEA convention is a massive opportunity to get the Democratic nominee before friendly supporters and get that press coverage, and that didn’t happen as a function of this lockout,” Marianno said.
The NEA also scrambled to issue statements during major political events—like Biden’s choice to drop out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the nominee—in part because its communications staff was among those locked out.
Neither NEA nor NEASO would discuss the details of the contract or whether the tentative agreement would allow Washington staff to return to work on Monday. NEA spokesman Michael Misterek said details will be kept confidential until the tentative agreement is ratified. To the contract, NEA management must approve it, and members of the staff union must separately vote to approve it.
A contract could help NEA get back to election-related activities
Harris delivered a similar keynote to the scuppered Biden address at the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston on July 25.
“It’s going to help Kamala Harris that she is soon able to better interface with the NEA again, without crossing picket lines,” Marianno said.
The GOP has made efforts to court more labor union support in the 2024 elections, but teachers’ unions historically have proven critical for funding and turnout.
According to the federal campaign-finance tracker OpenSecrets.org, teachers’ unions, including the NEA and the AFT, have increased political contributions in the past 20 years and have , with 94 percent of their contributions going to Democrats.
While disputes at NEA headquarters have had little effect on grassroots organizing outside the Capital, they did spur , such as in Delaware and Washington state.
Charlottesville, Va. literacy specialist and local union president Mary McIntyre wrote on X that the lockout was “ridiculous.”
“It is appalling & embarrassing to have the national union that my small local is an affiliate of, using the same tactics that you tell us to fight so hard against,” McIntyre wrote.
The rare sight of picketers outside of NEA events, and the resulting lockout—a hard-driving tactic the NEA has deplored in other contexts—precipitated much discussion among labor groups and online, fueled by an active social media presence by NEASO staff.
Paging this one is for the books!!
— Miguel (@Onemigzy)
(The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents eligible staff of Education Week, previously issued a statement of support for the NEA staff union. Education Week is an independent, nonpartisan media organization whose newsroom managers retain editorial control over the content of articles.)
