Membership in the AFT is usually established by joining an AFT local, a council of locals or in some cases a statewide affiliate. Please note that most AFT locals are organized around a specific employer (such as a school district, a hospital or a municipality).   Click here to locate the nearest state and local affiliates. 

NOTE:  Membership requests are handled by our affiliates and not at the national level, except for associate membership.

Associate Membership

If you are not eligible to join the union through your workplace or live in a jurisdiction where there are no AFT locals or state affiliates, you may be eligible for AFT's associate member program. Also, students are eligible to join as associate members. We offer two types of memberships. With our $30 basic associate membership, you will receive our award-winning quarterly magazine, American Educator, plus a subscription to one of our regular newspapers (American Teacher or AFT On Campus), access to group insurance rates and other member benefits and discounts, and an invitation to participate in the union's biennial professional issues conference for educators. Our $60 membership for working teachers includes all these benefits plus $1 million in occupational liability insurance and up to $10,000 in legal defense protection. Both types of membership are available at reduced rates for two-year periods. For details, contact assocmbr@aft.org.  Please note: If you are eligible to join an AFT local as a regular member, you cannot join as an associate member.

AFT locals are affiliated with the state and national AFT as well as with the state and national AFL-CIO. Dues paid through regular membership will include each of those organizations, as well as your own local. Those dues are established in the constitution and by-laws of each organization and vary from state to state and from local to local. AFT does have different dues categories for part-time workers and for those whose salary is below a specified amount.

AFT Dues and Political Candidates

AFT has a political action fund, as do many of our locals, which we encourage members to contribute to so that we can have a voice in the political arena. That fund is separate from dues, however, and is funded only by voluntary contributions from union members. Your basic dues are used to strengthen AFT at all levels through direct servicing from the state and national, through further organizing to increase the impact of unions in your profession and for many other activities.

AFT and its affiliates carefully adhere to the laws that govern expenditures of union funds for political purposes. While these laws require us to strictly account for and report all union funds used for political purposes, they also expressly permit unions to communicate with their members on politics.

All voting members of the union have a say in deciding if the union will support any candidate in an election and to whom the union will give that support.  The AFT requires that 60 percent of the voting members—a "super majority"—is necessary to endorse a candidate at the national level.  AFT locals are advised to follow this rule in making local political endorsements, but a majority vote is legal.

The U. S. Supreme Court, in response to a challenge brought by labor union members who wanted to prohibit unions from participating in the political process, cautioned that "the majority…has an interest in stating its views without being silenced by the dissenters."