It represents its workers.

Insofar as the workers are professional teachers, and that professional teachers are not in the profession to get rich but to teach, the NEA's purpose also includes supporting better education for children.

But primarily, the NEA is there to protect its members and make sure they have things like a living wage, health insurance, and job security.

Jobs whose primary demographic is female have along and illustrious history of being poorly paid and overworked. I'm in one of those jobs. Nursing is another. Teaching, until teachers unionized, was another. The thought was, women should be supported by their husbands and should work for the community for free. In the case of teaching, my grandmother, a teacher, had to resign when she got married. Up until the time we were in high school, Tom, many married women who taught had to resign if they were pregnant. Not just because of the maternity leave issue, but because it wasn't "healthy" for children to see pregnancy in the classroom. Teaching didn't pay enough to support a family. It was a "hobby job".

With unionization, that has changed. A lot of people resent it. A lot of people resent it when nurses go on strike, too. What they don't realize is that people work hard, and they need to be able to live, regardless of the leftover expectations of a society that thinks the schoolmarm and Florence Nightingale are still the professional standards.

Next time you talk to teachers in your community, please note what they drive and whether they are wearing chic designer clothes they picked up at some exclusive little shop on Rodeo Drive. Then note whether they have all their teeth. They probably don't have the clothes or the car, but they have all their teeth because they have (and deserve) a dental plan. For that, they can thank the NEA, and their own understanding that they will work better when they don't have to worry about stuff like that.