Labor can learn lesson from teachers

Bill Knight column for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, March 12, 13 or 14

Last week’s unexpected outcome of West Virginia teachers’ nine-day strike may not be a turning point for organized labor, but their victory is surely a valuable lesson.

Given teachers’ job description, let’s say, appropriately, that we should learn from teachers.

On Tuesday, West Virginia’s legislature and Democrat-turned Republican Gov. Jim Justice unanimously agreed to give striking teachers a 5-percent wage increase, and schools reopened the next day.

A struggle led by the rank-and-file involved tens of thousands of workers, earned widespread support, and ended with a substantial victory – the largest pay raise in the state’s history, GOP State Sen. Craig Blair told CNN.

West Virginia’s legislature also:

* dropped demands for disastrous changes to the Public Employees Insurance Agency,

* shelved terrible education bills, and

* dropped anti-union measures such as the misguided (and misnamed) “Payroll Protection” proposal, a retaliatory nuisance bill that would have prevented union dues from being deducted from members’ checks.

Lessons include: Change is possible; common ground exists despite differences in politics, sports, food, whatever; helping each other is natural; and even John Denver music can be embraced on picket lines.

The strike was organized mostly outside the traditional union structure because West Virginia is a Right To Work state with few collective-bargaining rights, teachers unions operate there but don’t have the legal authority to exclusively represent employees, and workers don’t have the “right” to strike.

Further, the way West Virginia funds public education required strikers to deal directly with state lawmakers.

“When workers have no contract or collective bargaining and do not belong to the union that says it represents them, they have not organized a ‘wildcat’ strike because they are not violating the ‘no strike’ provision of the contract,” said Lois Weiner in New Politics.

February 22 saw the massive mobilization of some 35,000 teachers – who’d gone four years without a wage increase. They struck the state’s public schools in all 55 counties, affecting 227,000 students and countless families.

West Virginia teachers were facing rising health-insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles, and everyday people could identify. Also, according to National Education Association data, West Virginia teacher pay in 2017 ranked 47th of out the 50 states (Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Dakota were worse).

Throughout the strike there was an almost joyous sense of community; the teachers’ action became more than a work stoppage. In nine days – the longest strike in state history – the walkout turned into a movement. Participants were from inside and outside classrooms, throughout school-job classifications; eventually the settlement benefited the state’s entire public sector; and the job action saw impressive community support from parents, other workers and taxpayers. Despite the inconvenience of finding child care, a feeling of good will prevailed.

“I feel like my life won’t ever be the same again,” Charleston middle-school teacher Jay O’Neal told Jacobin magazine writer Eric Blanc. “If we can do it, anybody can do it. You need to organize people around a specific issue.”

Now, other teachers are rising up in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, organizing at workplaces and on social media with a determination not seen for too long.

Tulsa, Okla., teacher Larry Cagle on March 1 said, “If we strike, I double-dare you to fire us. We’ll just go to Texas. They’re looking for new teachers.”