Teacher’s Unions and the resurgence of Union Activity in America.
By Adrian Rivero
This paper will focus on 2018 West Virginia Teachers strike… its causes, its main actors, its main enemies, the political historical context in which it happened in, its effect/legacy, its conclusion, and what this means for the future of Unions in general. I will be using secondary documents to detail the events and actors of the strike, mostly news and articles from major publications.
The Strike Started on February 22, 2018 by the West Virginia group “American federation of Teachers and the National education association, and other organizations. The strike happened because Of teacher’s complaints about low pay and nonexistence healthcare. Around 20,000 teachers and public employees participated in it, and it affected around a quarter million. It lasted 9 school days. This strike included a large portion of teachers and not just public employees. The teachers helped raise awareness and support for their cause. (Annotation)
The main personalities of this event were; Dale Lee, Jim Justice and other conservative lawmaker’s vs A variety of West Virginian Teachers including Richard Ojeda, who we will talk about later. This was a very much grass root movement which helped them gain wide support, this wasn’t outside politicians, but their very own and well-liked community leaders. This movement had to be grass roots, since there has been no true pro-union political figure aside from Bernie Sanders in the last few decades.
While many Strikes have happened throughout American History, this one might be the most pivotal in recent years. Ever since the rise of Neoliberalism in the 80s with Reagan, Thatcher, Blair, the Clintons, etc. Unions have played less and less of a role in the US economy and Society, and even a few months ago, the republicans mounted a huge blow to unions across America.
The Janus v. AFSCME case hurt union’s ability to collect dues from non-members for negotiations. Unions have for the past few decades been losing the fight to remain a legitimate institution in the US.
“The public sector unions argue that they are required by law to represent all employees regardless of if they are members and that no one is required to join the union.
If non-members don’t have any obligation to pay fair share fees for the collective bargaining obligations, they would become free riders, benefiting from the representation without sharing the costs, the unions say. The coffers of public sector unions would also suffer if non-members were able to get services for free.
Alito noted, and dismissed, the impact to union funds.
“We recognize that the loss of payments from non-members may cause unions to experience unpleasant transition costs in the short term, and may require unions to make adjustments in order to attract and retain members,” Alito wrote.” (Vogue&Foran,2018)
West Virginia has had a history of being very Pro-Union, thanks to his history of peaceful and violent union activism and its miner culture made it a perfect place for this movement. With many citizens being part of unions or have relatives who were in unions. West Virginia was also a state that supported trump during the 2016 presidential elections, with many of the organizers like Richard Ojeda voting for him because of his promise to bring mining back to Appalachia.
As I stated earlier the pressing concerns that started this Strike happened because of 2 big reasons, Teachers felt that their salaries were too low and that they had no access to decent health care programs and that their pay wasn’t raising enough to keep affordable programs. They wanted access to healthcare and a general pay increase. They thought that such actions would help not only themselves but also the state of West Virginia attract and keep teachers, which West Virginia had a hard time doing.
The push back from the government and conservatives was that such a strike would be very detrimental to the state’s young population that would miss school. And that the state did not have the funds to finance what they wanted.
“Republican Gov. Jim Justice called the pay raise, which also affects state employees, “responsible” in a statement last week. “We need to keep our kids and teachers in the classroom,” the governor said. “We certainly recognize our teachers are underpaid and this is a step in the right direction to addressing their pay issue.”(Rhodan,2018)
The Unions sought help from prominent US democratic leaders but that call went mostly unanswered.
A deal was reached on March 1st, the unions had started to call on their employees to return to work, but in a move of sheer tenacity… The teachers continued to protest. This strike had become a wild cat strike with the teachers going their own way and ignoring the unions. These types of strikes happen rarely throughout history. But when they do happen its devastating for the establishment, now it was up to the teachers to collectively decide what they wanted not representatives in suits.
Richard Ojeda, pictured here in Military uniform.
is now a prominent democratic figure and prospective democratic presidential Candidate, had his start during these strikes, as a teacher himself and was in the true dirt and grit of this event. Ojeda a past trump support said that his support for trump rested on trump’s broken promises of helping Appalachia.
“Ojeda told me he’d supported Bernie Sanders during the primary. He says he regrets his vote for Trump but admits to being taken in by Trump’s rhetoric on coal. “All of a sudden, somebody’s talking about putting West Virginia back to work and getting people back on track,” he says. “Is everything that he’s saying right? No, but hey, maybe he’s right here.” (Murphy,2018) Ojeda which is a support of unions in general and is in support for medical marijuana isn’t your typical progressive candidate. But maybe that’s what the dems need in Appalachia right now.
The Strike, while succeeding in some areas did fail to reach some of its objectives. “Both the state’s House of Delegates and Senate unanimously approved the bill giving teachers the pay raise. And the governor agreed to set up a task force to address the state health insurance program on March 13.” (Park,2018) But as noted in this quote the healthcare that they wanted hasn’t effectively been put in place yet. But it did start similar movements across the states, right now several states such as “Oklahoma, Arizona and Kentucky” (Parker,2018) all have either planned or are currently in the striking phase or reasons that are similar and completely different than West Virginia’s. But the strike’s success certainly has had ramifications.
One of the biggest ones being that teachers in California are preparing to strike.
“A strike authorization does not mean that a strike will occur, but it gives the union’s board of directors the power to call a walkout without returning to the membership for approval. The authorization was expected; the main unknown was the size of the mandate — and it was considerable, which was widely expected.
About 81% of teachers cast ballots. Of those, 98% voted for the authorization, according to preliminary totals.” (Blume,2018) California has one of the biggest public school systems in the US, this strike (Primarily happening because of large class room sizes and low salaries) could mean new teacher strikes for all 50 states. And a series of successful strikes could lead the way for union activism in other sectors and industries of the economy.
America certainly has the image of prosperous capitalism, of rugged individualism and free markets. America certainly isn’t the place and hasn’t been for a long time in which large strikes happen, it isn’t a place where these large strikes are supposed to win. But this resurgence in the last few years of public sector strikes, and union participation has certainly shaken the geopolitical arena. This radical change in one of the world’s most neoliberal countries could affect other nations like Britain which had its own union collapse under Thatcher. One thing remains clear, the West Virginia teacher strikes of 2018… will live on in America’s memory whether as the turning point in the battle of the legitimacy of unions or as a last-ditch effort of a dying social institution before completely losing. This event has had huge ramifications for the public and private sectors and for the owners and employees of all business organizations.
Bibliography
Rhodan, Maya. “Why 20,000 West Virginia Teachers Are On Strike.” Time, Time, 26 Feb. 2018, time.com/5176094/west-virginia-teacher-strike/.
Vogue, Ariane de, and Clare Foran. “Supreme Court Deals Major Blow to Public Sector Unions.” CNN, Cable News Network, 27 June 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/06/27/politics/supreme-court-union-fees-decision/index.html.
Murphy, Tim, et al. “Why Democrats Are Thrilled about This pro-Pot, pro-Coal Trump Voter Running for Congress.” Mother Jones, 8 May 2018, www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/05/he-voted-for-trump-now-hes-running-for-congress-as-a-pro-pot-pro-coal-democrat/.
Park, Madison. “Teachers in West Virginia Went on Strike — and Won. Now, Teachers in Other States May Follow Their Lead.” CNN, Cable News Network, 9 Mar. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/03/09/us/teachers-union-movement/index.html.
Blume, Howard. “L.A. Teachers Authorize Strike as Tensions Rise.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 31 Aug. 2018, www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-teachers-strike-authorization-20180831-story.html.
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