How Randi Weingarten Wrote Herself A Fat Paycheck And Left Taxpayers With The Bill

Perhaps no person more frequently represents themselves as the spokesperson for educators than Randi Weingarten, the infamous president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

With her tenure at the helm of the nation’s second-largest teachers union approaching two decades and no term limits for AFT officers, Weingarten has had ample opportunity to entrench herself as a key player in the progressive media and political apparatus.

But as can occur in the classroom — or any institution, for that matter — lengthy tenure untethered from performance and accountability breeds hubris and entitlement. And the greater the power, the greater the opportunity to abuse it.

To that end, two new reports released this week provide fresh evidence of Weingarten using her perch at AFT to leverage members’ dues for her own personal benefit.

The first analysis, produced by my organization and first reported on by the New York Post, examined AFT’s most recent annual financial disclosure to the U.S. Department of Labor and discovered that the union appears to have financed the production, publication, and promotion of Weingarten’s recent book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers (WFFT), entirely with members’ dues.

Among other things, AFT footed the bill for Weingarten’s apparent ghostwriter — progressive commentator and communications consultant Sally Kohn — who received more than $400,000 from AFT during the year Weingarten’s book was in production.

In response to inquiries from the New York Post, AFT argued that not all the payments to Kohn were related to WFFT. That may be technically true, but the most Kohn had previously been paid by the union in a year was only $125,000, and Weingarten herself described Kohn in her book’s acknowledgments as “indispensable as a day-to-day thought partner and collaborator.”

Other payments associated with WFFT were beyond even such minor quibbles.

AFT did not dispute paying $6,000 to an editor in Montana to fact-check WFFT, nor did it deny paying $5,200 to a Juilliard-trained celebrity photographer for the black-and-white author photo appearing on the inside dust jacket at the back of Weingarten’s book.

The union’s members also unwittingly funded $64,000 in payments to Weingarten’s literary agent, to say nothing of the untold thousands of dollars expended on her cross-country book tour, or the time invested by dozens of AFT personnel in assisting in Weingarten’s literary pursuits.

That AFT members were not asked whether they wanted to underwrite Weingarten’s self-promotional work of antifascist political commentary in the first place is bad enough. But the real kicker is what happened to the proceeds.

In past comments, Weingarten emphasized that half of the royalties from WFFT would be donated to two AFT charities under Weingarten’s control, but never indicated she would benefit financially from the book sales.

In reality, the $375,000 in advance royalties from the book were divided into thirds among AFT, two Weingarten-controlled charities, and an opaque Delaware-registered LLC. When pressed by the Post about the Freedom Foundation’s analysis, AFT admitted that the LLC served as a conduit for payments to Weingarten herself.

Weingarten already receives a compensation package worth nearly $600,000, and it’s not clear how leveraging members’ dues for Weingarten’s personal pecuniary benefit aligns with AFT officers’ legal obligation to hold the union’s “money and property solely for the benefit of the organization and its members.”

Similarly, a second report released this week documenting the pervasive progressive political advocacy of the AFT and its larger counterpart, the National Education Association, flagged a $10,000 contribution by AFT to Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which it describes as “a New York-based synagogue led by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum (now Rabbi Emerita), Randi Weingarten’s wife.”

Taxpayers have also been left holding the bag for Weingarten’s union activism.

In 2023, the Freedom Foundation documented that Weingarten’s time as a New York City public school teacher — which she often hearkens back to in her writing and speeches — amounted to a grand total of three years full-time and three years as a substitute.

Her limited classroom tenure was not enough to qualify her for pension benefits, but thanks to a sweetheart deal with the city, her 11 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers were credited toward her pension seniority, securing her a taxpayer-funded retirement potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Weingarten may want to pose as the champion of American educators, but unfortunately, her track record at AFT starkly illustrates the need to empower educators with alternatives to her corrupt enterprise.

Through projects like OptOutToday.com, teachers can take steps to cancel their membership in far-left unions like the AFT and the NEA. Conservative educators seeking support can turn to non-union professional associations such as the Teacher Freedom Alliance.

For their part, policymakers should follow the example of states like Idaho, which recently adopted legislation prohibiting direct and indirect taxpayer support for teachers’ unions.

Until union executives like Weingarten and the organizations they steer face meaningful accountability, it should be no surprise that they continue to exploit their members and taxpayers alike.

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Maxford Nelsen is director of research and government affairs at the Freedom Foundation.