Labor Day. Teacher union membership is down.

On this Labor Day what we can say about the drop in teacher union membership since the Supreme Court’s Janus decision five years ago is that it could be worse.

On June 27, 2018, the Court ruled in a 5–4 decision that the application of public sector union fees to non-members is a violation of the First Amendment, ruling against AFSCME.

But it applied to public school teachers and our unions as well.

Justice Alito wrote for the Court, joined by Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and Gorsuch. Alito wrote that a union-shop agreement violate "the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern."

Yet, our union was required to represent district employees whether they paid union dues or not.

At the recent 2023 Representative Assembly the NEA reported it will have about 2.3 million full-time equivalent members—which includes teachers, education support professionals, retirees, and community allies—in the 2023-24 fiscal year.

In total, the NEA has about 3 million members, but many of those are part-time teachers.

The membership numbers are about a 1.2 percent decrease from the union’s projected total by the end of the 2022-23 fiscal year.

The NEA and the AFT lost more than 59,000 working members combined during the 2021-22 school year, according to U.S. Department of Labor disclosure reports.

That decline comes after an 82,000-member loss the previous year.

The NEA leadership says that the decrease is driven by a reduction in members currently working in schools.

How much is the drop a result of working teachers choosing not to sign a membership form?

It’s hard to know.

But it’s not hard to know what the next attack on teacher unions will be.

There are at least five states where there are legislative effort at eliminating payroll deduction and check-off.

For example, in Illinois teachers who want to be a union member can sign up to have their dues automatically deducted from their paychecks.

The service is a convenience for both teachers and their unions, but Republican lawmakers are trying to get rid of or limit that option.

Ron DeSantis is making Florida a model state on this issue.

No surprise there.

National teacher union leaders thought they could counter the impact of Janus by making our unions look more like a service organizations, providing good deals on insurance, auto and vacation rentals rather than on organizing and aggressive contract enforcement.

Clearly that approach has been less than successful.

Perhaps they will do better in the fight against dues check-off prohibitions.

I’m skeptical.