Teacher Strikes Help Entire Community

The wave of teachers walkouts and strikes for almost a year forced on the workers by penny-pinching and tax-cutting GOP administrations and politicians represent successful examples of community-based action where victories benefit everyone, says Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten.

Thats because those walkouts, in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Denver, Los Angeles, Oakland, among Chicago charter school teachers and now in Indiana and at Summit Academy in Parma, Ohio, centered not around pay and pensions, but around whats best for schools and kids, she adds.

That community-centric focus is a model that other unions could plan to follow, and she believes they will.

Weingarten gave her analysis in a March 13 interview after a session on organizing during the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in New Orleans. The session featured presentations by Weingarten, UFCW President Marc Perrone and other leaders.

Some of those leaders, including Weingarten and Communications Workers President Chris Shelton chair of the AFL-CIO Organizing Committee also participated in a Future of Unions conference in D.C. several weeks ago. Speakers there discussed engaging with and involving communities, not just unionists, in issues that matter to all. Weingarten said that works for the teachers and it works for other causes, too.

Youre seeing more and more people engage in issues they care about, she explained. Good schools for our kids, keeping our skies safe, health careYou get people more and more involved and you win.

But they wont get involved unless they see examples of prior wins using community-based issues, she warned. Thats where the past teacher strike successes come into play. Those strikes featured bottom-up organizing, community concern and involvement and mass action to pressure politicians to change anti-education, anti-teacher policies.

The first strike in West Virginia, over crumbling schools, revenue robbed from them by tax cuts for the rich and corporations, outdated textbooks, a 1 percent raise after a 10-year wage freeze and huge health care premium hikes, kicked the whole wave off.

With eager participation from parents and students, every public school in the entire state closed for nine days until the GOP governor and GOP-run legislature agreed to fix all but one of those conditions. They didnt repeal the tax cuts.

West Virginias impact showed up in federal figures. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in February that 20 major strikes and lockouts, each involving at least 1,000 workers, occurred last year. They covered 485,000 workers, the highest total in years. Eight of them, covering 379,000 of the workers, were in education.

The West Virginia walkout was a vote of solidarity on issues of common concern, Weingarten said. It sparked a recognition of interest. But it doesnt happen in a vacuum. Theres a root cause: Failure to adequately fund public education.

That can be tried elsewhere and around other issues, Weingarten contended, even in right-wing states such as those where de-funding schools became a toxic brew. West Virginia, Arizona, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Indiana all fall under that definition. Then people say enough is enough Weingarten said.

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