https://socialistaction.org/2018/04/03/teachers-strikes-rank-and-filers-take-the-lead/
/ 22 hours ago
April 2018 Okl. teachers 2 David Wallace : The republic
Teachers rally before the statehouse in Tulsa, Okla., on April 2. (David
Wallace / The republic)
By MARK BRUNT
Across the country, teachers have taken West Virginia’s lead after a
successful wildcat strike. In Kentucky, legislators passed a teacher
pension reform bill, and, although a strike on the specific day was not
planned, so many teachers called out on March 30 that 20 counties were
forced to close schools. They remained out the following week.
In Oklahoma, legislators passed a bill to increase teacher pay that they
hoped would put an end to strike talk. But teachers were not solely
concerned about their own income; on Facebook, teachers from Oklahoma
posted photos of decrepit textbooks that still referred to George W.
Bush as the current president. Teachers walked out on April 2 and, as of
this writing, have yet to return. In Jersey City, teachers struck for a
single day before a new contract was negotiated. Teachers in Arizona are
aggressively talking about striking.
Oklahoma teachers are among the lowest paid in the entire country, and
around 20 percent of the school districts are so underfunded that they
have cut back to a four-day school week. Meanwhile, the state
legislature is seeking to redirect a billion dollars in funding to
building two new prisons. While students suffer, Oklahoma’s
incarceration rate ranks second in the nation.
Educators across the country have taken the lead over their unions. By
and large, union officials have tailed behind rank-and-file organizing.
Walkouts have been organized on Facebook and other social media
platforms. In West Virginia, teachers refused to return to work even
after union leaders called for an end to the strike.
The timing of the wave of strikes couldn’t be more appropriate. In oral
arguments before the Supreme Court on Janus v. AFSCME, in which
right-wing forces are seeking to undermine unions by striking down
direct collection of agency fees, union attorney David Frederick warned
that a ruling in favor of Janus could “raise an untold specter of labor
unrest throughout the country.”
Frederick’s words proved to be even more prescient than he likely
intended. Indeed, the original ruling in favor of agency fees, in Abood
v. Detroit, was largely a concession by the capitalist class in the
hopes of weakening one of labor’s strongest weapons—the strike. By
mandating agency fees, the state reasoned, unions would no longer have
to be militant in order to attract members. And while agency fees did,
in fact, strengthen union protections for public-sector workers, it also
minimized union militancy, and created a relative peace between labor
and capital.
Frederick’s warning that labor unrest, always bubbling beneath the
surface of American society, could resurface was meant to frighten the
Supreme Court justices on the grounds that striking down agency fees
could lead to new, radicalizing unions. But if the justices need to see
the possibilities of labor unrest, they need look no further than
teachers, especially those in conservative states, who have consistently
been targeted since the Reagan era.
Teachers are the largest group of public union workers in America, and
yet their pay, benefits, and overall respect are a constant target for
the right wing and the political establishment. The strike in West
Virginia was the turning of a tide. Striking primarily over health
insurance premiums, teachers took to the streets, and refused to go back
even when their union bureaucrats accepted a deal that was substantially
less than what the rank and file had demanded. The unwillingness of
rank-and-file teachers to simply obey the edicts of the bureaucracy and
politicians announced that the power of labor is not dead and buried.
The wildcat strike went on to win far greater concessions than the union
had previously been offered.
Oklahoma teachers also threatened on Facebook to drop their union
membership in response to the union bureaucracy’s willingness to accept
a lesser deal. While Socialist Action does not endorse dropping union
membership, we recognize that this is a sign of the threat of labor
unrest and the rising of the sleeping giant of increasingly hard-pressed
workers, no longer prepared to submit to what Lenin called, “labor
lieutenants of the capitalist class,” meaning bureaucrats whose primary
purpose is to preserve stability at the expense of workers’ interests.
Socialist Action encourages workers to struggle to make their unions
fully democratic, as fighting institutions that are answerable to the
needs of the membership.
Perhaps most interestingly, these strikes are taking place predominantly
in deep “red” states. They represent the power of the working class to
make gains, even against the most reactionary elements of the ruling
class. Demands in West Virginia were not won against progressive
reformers, but against the forced hands of conservative lawmakers who
had no choice in the face of a conscious and confident workforce. This
model can be applied everywhere. No governing body is too reactionary
for militant labor action to succeed.
The wave of teacher strikes has the power to fundamentally alter the
face of labor in the United States. Is the era of “labor peace” over? We
have yet to see for sure. But the willingness of public-sector
workers—especially some of the most targeted and demoralized in the
country—to walk out even against the orders of labor bureaucrats is
indisputably a turning point.
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April 3, 2018 in Education & Schools, Labor.
Related posts
West Virginia teachers’ strike: A militant model for the labor movement
Labor Briefing for March 2018: West Virginia teachers strike
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