FreedomWorks Foundation Content

Ohio Teachers Forced to Pay Union Employees an Average of $100,000

The average Ohio Education Association (OEA) employee was paid $43,838 more than Ohio’s average teacher in 2012, as OEA staff and officers raked in an average of $100,553 while the teachers forced to pay received an average of $56,715.

Statewide average annual pay was $44,253 in 2012, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 2003-2012, the gap between OEA employee pay and pay across all industries in Ohio grew from $45,002 to $56,300.

The following chart shows the widening gulf between OEA and the Ohioans forced to pay OEA employees’ salaries, even as the union’s membership declined by nearly 7 percent.

In 2012, the average OEA employee was paid 77 percent more than the average Ohio teacher and 127 percent more than Ohio’s average worker.

From 2003-2012, the average OEA employee’s annual pay increased by $20,398. The average Ohio teacher’s pay increased by $11,070 during the same period, and the average Ohio worker’s pay increased by $9,100.

The latest teacher pay shown above is for the 2011-2012 school year, and comes directly from the Ohio Department of Education.

Average OEA pay was calculated after removing board members, who receive no salary, from the list of OEA staff and officers the union submitted to the U.S. Department of Labor each year.

Media Trackers previously reported that OEA President Patricia Frost-Brooks was paid $267,916 in the union’s most recent fiscal year. As the preceding chart shows, this outrageous compensation was less of an outlier than populist OEA propaganda would suggest.

OEA Executive Director Larry Wicks, who leads “citizen-driven, community-based, bipartisan” union front group We Are Ohio, was paid $222,167 last year. A total of 25 OEA employees were paid in excess of $150,000 in fiscal year 2012.

The teachers union is able to pay such lofty salaries because it takes more than $400/year from public school teachers across the state – even teachers who dare to make themselves targets by opting out of OEA membership.

National Education Association (NEA) salaries are higher still, because NEA takes $180/year from teachers in Ohio and America’s 25 other forced-unionism states regardless of whether they want to join OEA’s parent union.

Mandatory union dues have made OEA the state’s most powerful progressive lobbying group; OEA bosses paid over $200,000 a year demonize wealthy Ohioans while claiming to speak on behalf of all the teachers OEA loots.

Last December, OEA shared a venomous California Federation of Teachers video bemoaning “widening economic inequality” and blaming “the rich” for all the country’s problems.

OEA is currently fighting to block workplace freedom, which would enable Ohioans to choose whether to support union bosses like Larry Wicks and Patricia Frost-Brooks. Among other ridiculous rhetoric paid for with teachers’ dues, OEA warns this would result in more workplace deaths and increased infant mortality.

Because they have no logic to stand on, OEA bosses rely on a complicit press to report juvenile We Are Ohio talking points without skepticism – and without drawing attention to the six-figure union salaries squeezed out of Ohio teachers.

This story originally appeared at Media Trackers Ohio.