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Because We're Worth It

NEA launches a national initiative to gain professional, competitive pay for all K-12 teachers, higher education faculty and staff, and education support professionals.

Sure, you're committed to your profession, your institution, and the students you serve, but neither that commitment—nor even the highest academic credentials—will buy you more at the supermarket, the gas station, or the home repair center.

As the national voice for more than 2.7 million educators, NEA knows that too many of its members have been denied competitive pay for too long. K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, and education support professionals (ESPs) should be paid what they are worth.

To this end, NEA has launched a national pay initiative to achieve these goals: a $40,000 minimum salary for every K-12 teacher, improved salary compensation for all higher education faculty and staff—full-and part-time, and an appropriate living wage as starting pay for every education support professional.

The campaign aims to establish NEA as the national advocate and "go-to" organization on professional-level pay for educators, reaching this goal through research, training, and partnerships with state affiliates bargaining or lobbying for higher pay.

"If we in NEA don't start talking about professional pay now, "we're never going to do it," argues Bill Raabe, NEA director of collective bargaining and member advocacy. "We've got to talk about this issue in every forum, not just where it's comfortable."

Throughout, NEA will work to "ensure that higher ed colleagues are part of this initiative," Raabe adds. It won't be an overnight process; current salary data must be analyzed, priorities must be determined, and innovative tactics must be devised.

But higher ed concerns won't be hard to pin down. On top of other pay inequities —by discipline, by gender, or by hiring salary placement—public sector higher education faculty increasingly find themselves paid less than private sector colleagues. That can generate a "brain drain" to better-paying institutions, at a time when college-age programs are expanding and more adults are viewing a degree as the ticket to economic survival. And yet another inequity, substandard pay and working conditions for contingent (adjunct) teaching staff, can only pull down standards gained by full-time faculty through years of struggle.

It's time to even out the odds on campus. And NEA's the best bet there is. Keep abreast of developments in NEA's pay initiative at www.nea.org/pay.