The Midwesterner: U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg investigating school union boss for using dues to fund ghost-written book

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg and the congressional committee he chairs are investigating teachers’ union boss Randi Weingarten, citing allegations that she used union dues to fund her left-wing book.

Walberg, who chairs the House Committee on Education & Workforce, sent a letter on Tuesday to Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who last year published the book “Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy.”

The letter cited reporting by The New York Post on AFT’s spending to get the book published, including $977,000 for legal review, over $400,000 for a ghostwriter, and $11,000 for a fact-checker and photographer.

“The prospect that rank-and-file educators’ dues may have financed a project that generated private financial gain raises serious questions about transparency, accountability, and fiduciary responsibility within one of the nation’s largest labor organizations,” Walberg, who represents Michigan’s 5th District, said in the letter.

“Recent reporting and analyses of AFT’s federal labor disclosures raise questions regarding whether union funds, personnel, contractors, and other resources were utilized to support the development and promotion of your book while you simultaneously retained a portion of the resulting royalties and proceeds,” it added.

The letter requested that Weingarten provide the committee with all AFT expenditures, contracts, documents, and the history of proceeds related to the book and its promotion.

The committee also acknowledged in the letter that Weingarten has disputed the allegations.

“This desperate fishing expedition by a far right group that refuses to disclose its donors only proves my book’s point — that Fascists Fear Teachers,” Weingarten said to The Post in May, referring to the Freedom Foundation, the conservative think tank that initially published an analysis of AFT’s financial disclosure documents.

“Educators need people making the public case for them, for critical thinking and for public schools. I am glad to have been in full partnership with the union on this project — and any and all proceeds from the book are shared equally,” she added.

A description for the book reads in part: “As the head of one of the largest teachers’ unions in America, Randi Weingarten is among the last lines of defense for American public education. For decades, she has sounded the alarm that attacks on teachers are part of a larger, darker agenda—to undermine democracy, opportunity, and public education as we know it. After the Trump administration declared its intention to dismantle the Department of Education, that alarm became undeniable. This book tells the story of what teachers do and why those who are afraid of freedom and opportunity try to stop them.”

The Freedom Foundation said in its analysis that “most AFT members pay dues in exchange for workplace representation, not to fund the union president’s literary pursuits. However, AFT appears to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in members’ dues on top-tier consultants and agents to get WFFT published.”