Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
I wrote this up for the March edition of Another View in the UFT which we were going to hand out at today's postponed Delegate Assembly and will hand out next week. I had to squeeze this on so I didn't say a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to touch on. One of my thoughts was that the strike in WV, possible upcoming ones in Oklahoma and elsewhere
strikes fear into union leaderships like Weingarten and Mulgrew because they will never have the stomach for a strike and if there is a day when the rank and file revolt (as we did in 1975 when Shanker opposed striking) they wouldn't be able to control things -- though Shanker managed to manipulate things to end the strike.
West Virginia, Oklahoma Strike Lessons – Right to Work does not have to be a Death Sentence
By Norm Scott, MORE, Education Notes blog
On the Saturday evening of March 10, 2018, about 300 people showed up at the meeting hall of the NY State Nurses Association (NYSNA) on West 33rd St to hear a presentation by three West Virginia teachers who played key roles in the recent victorious strike. Starting with the idea of a sickout, termed “the blue flu”, in a few counties, the movement turned into a full-fledged wildcat strike in every single county in the state that led to the closing of every school in the state. A right to work state. A state where strikes by public employees are illegal.
Yet, despite all, they struck. And won. Not only did they win the 5% raise they asked for plus an agreement to control rising health care costs, but attempts by the state legislature to impose charter schools was also turned back. The state is one of the few without any charter schools. After the presentation, one of the teachers leading a similar movement in Oklahoma called in and told their story, which includes enormous resistance of the state union leadership which is being dragged kicking and screaming by the rank and file towards taking actions they clearly are not comfortable with.
With the Janus decision on the horizon, the stories coming out of West Virginia and Oklahoma have been remarkable, especially since both states are the heart of what is considered heavy Trump territory and most probably many of the teachers themselves are Trump supporters or centrist Democrats. While local activists here often assume that the most militant voices come from the left, these stories prove that militancy can come from any segment of the labor movement when conditions reach a breaking point.
Even more impressive has been that the actions in both states seem to be led by actual classroom teachers, as state and county union leaders (and maybe national too) urge greater caution.
An immediate thought was that the actions coming out of these states, and maybe more to come, is the threat they represent to the top teacher union leaders who won’t even whisper the “S” word. How often have we been warned about the Taylor Law over the past 40 years since our last strike in 1975? No matter how difficult it may be to face the truth, the greatest gains we have made often came out of strikes or the threat to strike. With the people running the city assured that we will never strike, de Blasio can refuse parental leave or any other improvement of working conditions without demanding give backs. It will be certainly interesting to watch how Mulgrew and other union officials dance around these stories as they offer cheerleading support for them while also trying to tamp down similar moves that might come from the UFT membership. I have been posting stories about the strike at: ednotesonline.com.
The worst places for poor white children are almost all better than the best places for poor black children.... Poor white children struggle in parts of the Southeast and Appalachia. But they still fare better there than poor black children do in most of America. In effect, the worst places for whites produce outcomes that are about as good as the best places for blacks.... Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys..... ......NY Times, March 19
Monday was a beautiful sunny day out here in Rockaway and I managed to spend 3 hours sitting in the backyard reading the NY Times and getting some much needed sun - and a jolt of vitamin D. That it took me so long to read the paper was due to some intriguing articles, three of which connected some dots.
The major article was the front page one I quoted above with some important data about the impact of racism. I would bet that many people feel that if a black boy grows up in a high income family there would not be much difference in long time outcomes from white boys. But that seems so not true.
White boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way. Black boys
raised at the top, however, are more likely to become poor than to stay
wealthy in their own adult households. Most white boys
raised in wealthy families will stay rich or upper middle class as
adults, but black boys raised in similarly rich households will not. Even
when children grow up next to each other with parents who earn similar
incomes, black boys fare worse than white boys in 99 percent of America.
And the gaps only worsen in the kind of neighborhoods that promise low
poverty and good schools.
The numbers are very different for black girls. And from my own experience with black kids I could see the different gender trajectories in elementary school.
I often issue a challenge to people who say race is not a factor. "A black guy dressed in a suit and carrying a brief case and a white guy dressed in fatigues and carrying an AK-47 walk down a street. Which one is more likely to get stopped by cops?" I've never had one white male answer that it would be the white guy. Reminds me of the great 1970 film, Where's Poppa, where a well dressed black couple have cab after cab pass them by but George Segal dressed in a gorilla suit is picked up immediately.
I remember a story told to me by a white high school teacher who had a deep understanding of racial issues - she took in kids to live with her family over the years, including one of my former 6th graders who grew up poor. A few of his relatives had apparently escaped the pull of gravity of poverty and had middle class jobs. The teacher pointed out that the escapees never quite escape the pull of poverty gravity because the rest of the poor family was always pulling on them for help.
At any rate, the article is a must read, especially for educators though some of the charts gave me a headache. Read it here - and I have a bunch of excepts below the break - but no charts.
Article 2 is this one about discipline. It is a complex article addressing issues that come up often here in NYC about punishing kids, suspensions, etc. I won't print any of it but leave those interested to read it at the link
As I often say I learned a lot from my students, especially about racism. Here are a few stories that sort of fit into the framework of the article above.
I once had my class(roughly 65% Hispanic and 35% black) lined up ready to go back up after lunch and told them we weren't moving until everyone was quiet and in line. Some kids were still rambunctious and pulled one after another off the line into a separate line. Then I noticed that every single one of the kids I pulled was black. It made me stop and think about whether I was being objective or exhibiting some prejudice. I thought I was objective but it was a wake-up call for me to be sensitive.
Another story about race has to do with a black boy in my 6th grade class who gave me a hell of a lot of trouble the first month of school -- I had moved up with my 5th grade class and they were attuned to my teaching and happy to be in my class again - but he was an addition - his also problem brother had been in the 5th grade and was not in this class - than goodness. It was a known problem family with all the kids having been problems. Did this prejudice me? Well, I got pretty exasperated with him and finally said I was coming to his house after school to talk to his mother. He didn't seem to care -- so I decided to go. The projects were pretty rough at that time so I had some butterflies. When I knocked on the door he answered. His eyes were disbelieving. I sat down in the living room waiting for his mom to appear. He sat there looking scared when she came in. I can't explain why I did what I did - I had no plan - but the first words out of my mouth was how funny he was (he was) - but I think at that moment it was the first time I thought of him that way --he looked so relieved. I did lodge some complaints about his behavior but said with her help we could work things out.
From them on he and I were pals and had the most fun in class. My attitude towards him totally changed. I began to laugh at his antics instead of punishing him and we often entertained the rest of the class. He did have some very rough years - or decades - ahead but now I see him on facebook and am delighted at the way his life seems to have turned out. What was my lesson here? That sometimes we as teachers can change our views of certain kids.
In retrospect, I found that I often connected with most of the black boys I had in my class and later on when I began to hang out with one of my former students and his friends when he was on the high school basketball team years later I learned a lot about black teenage boys - a view I wish everyone had a chance to be part of. They were poor urban kids - but so interesting and delightful - I at times took a bunch to my house after school to play video games. A few slept over once or twice. It was my honor to be invited into their world.
How does this tie in? Well think of the disciplining and arrests of so many black boys and men. Do all cops lie? Obviously not. But if a cop is even subconsciously racist - or views black teen boys very differently than the view I had of them -- always a menace -- and certainly some are -- then they are more likely to overreact. And shade the truth to match their point of view.
All of the above, a complex problem with mo easy solutions.
Legislature must get serious about pay raises for Oklahoma teachers
Oklahoma has been hemorrhaging teachers to neighboring states which pay much more. Something's gonna blow. I went to an event where one of the main players, teacher Larry Cagle, a Republican I believe, spoke on the phone in depth about what is going on there. You can hear him and West Virginia teachers at: https://www.facebook.com/jacobinmag/videos/2087299477963409/
Immediately above this editorial is a note about a coming crisis, a completely avoidable statewide teachers’ strike.
We have 14 days — two weeks — until thousands of Oklahoma teachers will walk away from their jobs, bringing children’s educations to a halt and creating havoc for Oklahoma families from border to border.
It doesn’t have to happen; but unfortunately, a solution relies on the Oklahoma legislators, who are best at doing nothing or, alternatively, doing next to nothing and claiming they’re hard at work.
Teachers have gone without a state-funded pay raise for nearly a decade. The Oklahoma Education Association, the dominant teacher organization in the state, is demanding a $10,000 teachers’ raise over three years; $5,000 raises for support personnel; solid funding for education programs and a sustainable, rational revenue plan to pay for it.
It’s a reasonable demand, but instead of working to meet it, the Legislature is fiddling around the edges.
Last week, the state Senate proposed a raise package that fell well short of the teachers’ position. It included no money for support personnel and nothing for classroom funding. A revenue package to pay for it fell two votes short of the supermajority needed for passage.
Then Speaker of the House Charles McCall rolled out an even less acceptable plan: Incremental increases over six years, starting with about $2,000 next year. The McCall plan included no specifics on how it would be funded.
Both plans should be scrapped and legislative leaders need to get to work on a real effort to fund education adequately.
A statewide teachers’ strike would be bad for children, teachers and the state. If lawmakers continue playing political games and teachers end up walking out on April 2, there will be no doubt about who will be at fault: Oklahoma’s political leaders who lack the courage to fund public schools adequately.
Call your legislators and insist that they fund education and stop playing political games as the crisis nears.
With most of the ballots counted, Putin had received 76% of the vote, the central election commission said.
"The Unity Caucus operation manual is my bible and Michael Mulgew is my hero," stated Putin. "He gets the same or greater percentage of votes and he doesn't even have to poison people."
"Sixty years in power is even better than Stalin."He hopes to meet with Unity officials soon to get ideas on how he can increase his dominance.
Putin smirked that the opposition in the UFT should not to be fooled by the improved food at the executive board and suggested they bring food tasters to future meetings.
He promised that Russian hackers would hack into the MORE emails accounts and be involved in the next UFT election to push Unity totals even higher.
Some teachers, having bought the hype, enter teaching in a charter with exuberance. Think of the joy of a hot shower. Early on you are in ecstasy. And very soon, the horror begins. Read the horror stories coming out of charter schools. The music is eerily familiar.
“[W]hen teachers aren’t unionized, they’re exploited — and when teachers suffer, so do kids.” — Florina Rodov This amazing piece by Florina Rodov on Shondaland is a must read. Taking place at one of the seedy charter corporations here in Los Angeles, the story Rodov tells is all too familiar to all of us that are anti-privatization activists. Much of the mistreatment of faculty and students mirrors the accounts in Professor Horn's Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys Through "No Excuses" Teaching. Hat tip to Leonie Haimson, whose Tweet regarding this essay caught my eye... Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene posted at at Schools Matter
=======
Another teacher quits Noble charter in Chicago on March 1.
I left Noble because I could no longer stomach feeling unvalued and untrusted by the administration and the network, and hampered in my ability to provide an environment in which my students could thrive. https://whyileftnoblenetwork.blog/2018/03/11/i-left-noble-because/amp/?__twitter_impression=true Noble needs a Union because teachers need to feel respected, valued and trusted in the work that they do. Leadership and education are collaborative endeavors, and they require trust and respect on each side. The policies that Noble enforces on its staff, students, and communities are not equitable because they do not represent the voices of those populations in a meaningful, substantive, or concrete way. Noble designed and implemented a payscale without transparency or formal outlets for staff input, and as a result it does not adequately account for teacher experience or equally recognize the work of our paras, facilities workers, office staff, or culture team. My experience, though potentially an outlier because of credentials, is surely not an anomaly in the dismissive manner which Noble treats much of its staff and their service to our kids. Noble constantly demands that teachers are to trust their administrators, yet they fail to show us that trust in return. A union would allow teacher and staff voices to be heard, teacher autonomy to be respected, and teacher expertise to be valued. Without those things, your network will continue to be a revolving door for educators and the students will suffer the most for it.
Renegade Teacher hast taught in both public schools and charter schools in Detroit. He writes here about the highly profitable fraud of online charter schools. Among their most prominent supporters are Betsy DeVos (who invested in them, and now advocates for them) and Jeb Bush, who relentlessly promotes online learning.
From his own experience as a teacher, he saw what online learning lacks: human relationships between students and teachers and between peers. It is soul-deadening.
“Online education in the K-12 sphere is a growing trend- as of 2015, there were some 275,000 students enrolled in online charter schools. In my home state of Michigan, from 2010 to 2014, the number of students in Online Charter Schools increased from 718 students to 7,934 students (over 1000% increase).
“Private, for-profit companies (using public funds) are cashing in- the two largest online charter companies, K12 and Connections Academy, are raking in an estimated $1 billion per year (as of 2014). The motive is profit over substance: less operating costs, less teachers, and less building maintenance.
“The results have been damning: according a study from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CREDO), students in online charters lost an average of about 72 days of learning in reading and 180 days of learning in math IN THE COURSE OF AN 180-DAY SCHOOL YEAR. They could have had equal math progress if they had spent the entire year asleep.
“In Philadelphia, a system composed of mainly poverty-stricken Black and Latinx students, online schools educated more than one-third of students as of 2014 [1]. The kicker is that, between 2011 and 2014, 100% of those students failed their state achievement tests. 100%!!! [2].”
The biggest online charter school in Ohio recently collapsed, both an academic and financial disaster.
Renegade Teacher thinks they should be banned. They are educational frauds.
Dear Norm, I am former UFT delegate during the time that the current APPR law was being voted on. I was shocked that there was no mention at delegate assemblies to oppose testing. I was so upset, I called my State Representative to ask that he vote against the current teacher evaluation that includes testing as part of a teacher's rating. He was surprised that teachers were against this measure, and kept repeating how our Union "shook hands on it". Other states have already repealed that part of teacher evaluations. Why is NY dragging its feet? The moral: Mulgrew is piece of $#&*!!!
---- Retired teacher
On Thursday morning the UFT held an event with Daniel Koretz who wrote "The Testing Charade." I intended to go but something came up. Lisa North went and reported that Mulgrew was trying to line himself up with the testing critics. What a crock. Lisa reports"
I attended a UFT event with Daniel Koretz who wrote "The Testing Charade"....It was mostly made up of UFT employees since it was during the school day. Mulgrew spoke as if he was always against the tests. I asked him when the UFT would send emails to members like NYSUT did concerning testing...His response? We are NYSUT! He said the UFT's main objective now is to make sure the teacher evaluations do not include tests.... Mulgrew's wording was mostly something like this....When "No Child Left behind" was passed, I know there was going to be big problems with testing.....He did not come out saying he was always against testing.... Lisa North
We're hoping this is just the beginning of a much larger movement and that people wake up... ---- Let's talk about step two, which we called that "blue flu" [everyone
calling in sick and staying home]. We said what does everyone think
about a "blue flu" day? Everybody was in support. Our union reps
were there, and I think they were surprised. They said: Let me tell you
about all the legal repercussions, you may lose your seniority, you
might lose your job, you're definitely going to lose a day of pay. But
everyone was still on board. The momentum and energy in the room was intense.----- other counties were saying we weren't giving them enough time, that
they needed more time to organize. We talked about that in our
leadership meetings: Do we stop? Do we wait on other counties to get
organized, or do we just go ahead and do it? We decided,
no, let's just go ahead and do it. The day before I went, someone
looked at me and said are you really going to go to the Capitol with
four counties? They will laugh you out. You need at least 45 to make a
difference. I said I don't believe that. I think that it wouldn't
matter if it was one county. It's going to start a movement. You
just wait and see if other counties don't start jumping on board and
following our lead. And sure enough, it happened. It was like a domino
effect.....
Yes, the union leadership warned them of consequences. They weren't scared off. It depends on how you look at it. Here we see the union leadership as damping militancy. In this account Katie says they were doing their job to warn them but then also telling them they'd have their backs.
How the spark became a flame in W. Virginia
March 12, 2018
Teachers were celebrating at the West Virginia Capitol last week, after their nine-day, statewide strike won the passage of legislation that gives them and other state employees a 5 percent raise. Some 20,000 educators in a "right-to-work" state walked out February 22 over wages and the underfunding of the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA), which provides health care coverage for state workers.
The day after the strike ended, 10th and 12th grade English teacher Katie Endicott from Central Mingo High School spoke with Dana Blanchard about how this struggle came together.
Teachers stand united during a nine-day strike in West Virginia
I WOULD love to hear a little bit more about the Mingo story. I know you've probably told this a thousand times in the past weeks, but you all kind of started this whole thing.
ON MARTIN Luther King Jr. Day, there was a rally. That's a holiday that West Virginia schools have off, and teachers went to the rally in Charleston.
My little boy had the flu, so I stayed with the kids while my husband went to the rally.
When he came home, he was so dejected because he said there were only about 150 teachers there. And when he talked to state senators and delegates, they were telling him: You should be scared, you have no idea what is coming your way.
What bothered Null the most, she said, was when legislators
made clear they “have money for businesses but not for you.” The money
for businesses in question is a $140 million tax break on mining and
manufacturing business inventory, money that would ordinarily mostly go
to fund schools. Null believes that this tax break largely benefits
corporate interests outside of the state. So at the
suggestion of Cheatham, a group of teachers went to the state capitol
to talk about their concerns. Null said, “Most of [the lawmakers] gave
nice political answers, but there were a handful of Republican senators
who decided to use sarcasm.” These responses served to galvanize the
teachers and they set to organizing.... Rewire News
Here's another article on the WV strike. The UFT has another lobbying day coming up. Ho-hum, I guess. Here is what the teachers in WV put on the table but our UFT/NYSUT leaders won't -- hard economics.
What bothered Null the most, she said, was when legislators made clear
they “have money for businesses but not for you.” The money for
businesses in question is a $140 million tax break on mining and
manufacturing business inventory, money that would ordinarily mostly go
to fund schools. Null believes that this tax break largely benefits
corporate interests outside of the state.
I'm posting all these articles so we can have as much info as possible from all sides - including from the right - so we can learn what lessons we can. For those who dream of it happening here, it will never happen as long as the current leadership can control the membership. Now if that gets to a point where the membership is angry enough to rise up, even with the current leadership in power, they would be forced to become more militant but I still wouldn't trust them. Watch the WV and OK stories to see how the leadership is operating. More to come.
Powerful social movements throughout history have been led by women and children, and the statewide strike in West Virginia, along with the movement ignited by students from Parkland, might be the sign of major changes ahead.
While the pussy hat became the best-known symbol of the Women’s March in 2017, the West Virginia education strikers of 2018 had their own head gear: red bandanas and occasional bunny ears. The bandanas were a nod to labor history in West Virginia—striking miners at the Battle of Blair Mountain tied the bandanas around their necks to symbolize solidarity that spanned differences in ethnicities and languages, making them the original rednecks. But it was also a defiant gesture to Gov. Jim Justice (R), who told a crowd at a town hall at Wheeling Park High School that he could be “the town redneck, too.”
Many have noted the long, proud history of labor activism in West
Virginia, with some tracing the activism of the striking teachers to
their “fathers and grandfathers” active in the coal mine wars. But this
ignores the rich history of women organizers such as trailblazing union
leader Mother Jones, or Fannie Sellins, who was killed during a coal
mine strike. Vice News / YouTube
The bunny ears came after Governor Justice declared the teachers were “dumb bunnies” if they trusted other politicians rather than him.
“Wages and health benefits were almost a distraction.
They are important, but there were five major stances we took, and we
won all five.”
These included defeating an expansion of charter schools,
killing a proposal to eliminate seniority, and scuttling a
paycheck-protection bill (aimed at weakening unions by taking away their
right to deduct union dues through payroll collection), as well as a
mechanism to fix the health-insurance crisis and a raise big enough to
matter. ... The Nation
Here's my third piece of the day on the WV strike as I sit and watch the nail biter from Western PA. This time from the left- The Nation. Note the wins were more than wages -- they killed a charter school initiative. I asked one of the WV teachers at the big show last Saturday night about charter schools in WV - he said "None." I figured that was the case since how do you close every school in the state if there were charters? That is the hidden purpose of charters -- to assure teacher unions cannot get the power to close every school. Who knew WV had no real charter influence? He told me that was because they are so rural with such big distances.
I have some stuff on WV and OK from the right - my pal Mike Antonucci - some snark, as usual, but always with stuff not being covered by others --- some of that coming up Thursday night.
The strikers won all five of their demands by shutting down every public school in the state.
Feeding the schoolkids was a
tactical masterstroke (as doing the right thing so often is)...
“What are their demands?” — that the teachers are
making, as opposed to the demands that careless journalists say they are
making; and then I’ll present a grab bag of interesting characteristics
worth noting, partly about West Virginia, partly about this strike.
I’ll conclude with some remarks on the role of the Democrat Party in
creating the conditions that led to the strike....
we enter phase three! The rank and
file rejected the deal, turning the strike into a wildcat strike. ..... by Lambert Strether
If you continue reading Ed Notes you will learn everything there is to share about teacher actions in W. Virginia and Oklahoma - and hopefully other places too until you can't take anymore.
For the 2nd West Virginia strike article of the day that I'm posting, this one looks like a goodie even though it was posted over a week ago. Look at the opening line up top. Feeding the kids. I can just imagine some of the selfish oafs who comment on mine and other blogs thinking, "how social justicy" - why worry about the kids?
I still have at least one more to post later around midnight. (I want to give readers a chance to get to the articles.) Why am I focusing on WV and OK -- lessons galore -- and not only what you may be hearing from the left the center or the right. By reading everything we can come up with some conclusions - hopefully - on how we may be affected here in NYC and beyond. The answer may very well be not at all.
Note the section in red with the * - these 3 unions have not gotten along and according to a West V teacher I spoke to, there is still a lot of tension and resistance to working together from union leaders at the top --- yes, this crap never goes away.
I still have to report on the March 10 Saturday night event attended by 300 people who heard directly from 3 WV teachers.
Obviously, the West Virgina teachers strike is a big story, and
potentially an enormous one, especially if it turns out to be the more
successful cousin of the the Wisconsin State Capitol occupations of 2011 which followed Tahrir Square and preceded Occupy proper.
(As we’ll see below, “teachers strike” is a bit of a misnomer, and
that’s important, but I think we’re stuck with the phrase.) So I ought
to present a general theory, or at least a hot take, but on working
through the sources as best I could, I realized how little I knew of
realities on the ground[1], so my ambitions for this post will be more
modest. First, I’ll review the state of play; then, I’ll reinforce the
demands — one of the nice things about a strike is that there is an answer
to the question “What are their demands?” — that the teachers are
making, as opposed to the demands that careless journalists say they are
making; and then I’ll present a grab bag of interesting characteristics
worth noting, partly about West Virginia, partly about this strike.
I’ll conclude with some remarks on the role of the Democrat Party in
creating the conditions that led to the strike.
First, one piece of background. There was a massive and successful eleven-day West Virginia teachers strike in 1990. The Charleston Gazette-Mail:
In March 1990, teachers across West Virginia refused to go to work
and headed to the picket line, shutting down hundreds of schools for 11
days. They walked out after legislative leaders and Gov. Gaston Caperton
were unable to come to an agreement on a package of pay raises.
The 1990 strike is often referred to as West Virginia’s first
statewide teacher strike, but eight of the state’s 55 counties didn’t
participate in the walkout.
Teachers returned to work after union leaders secured promises from
state Senate President Keith Burdette and House Speaker Chuck Chambers
to address teacher pay and other issues.
Among other results of the strike, teachers received a $5,000 pay
increase, phased in over three years. That boosted West Virginia
teachers’ salaries from 49th in the nation before the strike to 34th
after the raises were implemented. Teachers also got new support and
training programs, and money was set aside for faculty senate groups in
every school, in an effort to give teachers more of a voice in education
policy decisions.
Then as now, the strike was “unlawful” without being “illegal” (I’m not sure I understand that, either)
but in any case nobody was arrested (even though, unbelievably,
teachers have no right to collective bargaining in West Virginia, and
their wages are set by the legislature). Two other differences leap out:
In 2018, all 55 counties participated (the hash tag is #55strong), and this time, the rank and file rejected the “secured promises” obtained from the Governor by the union leadership.
The State Of Play
So far, the strike has gone through three phases: The build-up, the
walkout, and the wildcat strike. Let’s look at each phase in turn. Labor Notes has a good retrospective
of the thinking and organizing during the build-up to the strike, sadly
(or fortunately?) not made visible to the rest of the world by the
press:
The first rumblings began late last year, when a group of teachers
formed a secret Facebook page[2] and started planning a “lobby day” at
the state capital on Martin Luther King Day, when they knew the
legislature would be in session. Word spread, and soon the West Virginia
Education Association, the state’s NEA affiliate, was planning an
official rally.
“This was almost completely a grassroots movement,” said Erica
Newsome, an English teacher in Logan County. “The unions kind of
followed us.”
Organizers estimate 150 people showed up. “The rally was kind of
small,” said Ashlea Bassham, a teacher at Chapmanville Regional High
School, “but then it just sort of happened.”
Teachers and school service employees started holding walkout votes
county by county. West Virginia has two statewide teachers unions,
affiliates of the AFT and NEA, which often compete for membership. There
is also the West Virginia School Service Professional Association, or
WVSSPA,* which represents bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, and
clerical workers. But teachers and school service employees decided
that in this case, any school employee could vote—whether they were a
member of any one of the unions or no union at all.
We now enter the walkout phase, marked by Capitol protests and rallies:
Strikers converged on the capital again. This time there were 1,000
teachers, public employees, students, and parents at the statehouse.
“The gallery filled up too quick for me and some co-workers to go
in,” said Bassham, “So we waited in the breezeway to talk to our state
legislators. Some of our representatives were willing to talk and take a
minute and listen, and some of them had their heads down, walking
really quickly.”
The legislature responded by announcing a temporary freeze to Public
Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) premium increases, and offered a two
percent pay raise in the first year.
At this point (February 27), the union leadership declared victory[3]. The Payday Report:
After 4 days of striking, the West Virginia teachers’ union has reached an agreement to end their historic work stoppage.
Under the deal, the teachers would get a 5% raise during the first year. Initially, teachers had been offered 1% raise.
The state also agreed to appoint a task force to look into improving
the troubled Public Employee Insurance Agency [PEIA], which insures the
teachers.
The teachers will return to classes on Thursday after a brief cooling-off period.
In fact, that didn’t happen, and we enter phase three! The rank and
file rejected the deal, turning the strike into a wildcat strike.Jacobin interviewed Jay O’Neal, a middle-school teacher and union activist in Charleston:
[O’NEAL]: As is the case these days, everybody was on their phones,
trying to follow the news to get a sense of what was going on.
Within ten minutes, we found out through the governor’s press
conference [not a good look!] that a deal had been reached. Teachers and
school staff would get a 5 percent pay raise, and 3 percent for all
state employees. The governor also said that a task force would be set
up to figure out how to improve PEIA, our statewide health insurance
plan for public sector workers. Fifteen minutes after the press conference, union leaders came out
and addressed the crowd. The basic problem was that they presented this
deal as a victory. They told us we’d be out on strike one more day, then
return to school on Thursday.
People were up in arms, really frustrated. Of course, a 5 percent
raise is great, but what we’ve been really fighting for in this struggle
is PEIA. This has been a huge issue, causing problems for years.
They’ve been cutting our health insurance over and over, making it
really expensive to survive.
So when it was announced that all we got on PEIA was a task force, people were upset.
And:
In my county at least, the sentiment is that
we’re not going back to work until there’s solid proof that our demands are going to be met. Our biggest fear is that they’re just going to keep pushing back the question of PEIA.
(There was also a hilarious subplot where Governor Justice pulled “$58 million out of thin air”
to pay for the raises, IIRC continuing a storied tradition in the
state.) And in fact, the rank and file were right on the money, as
hilarity ensues in the state legislature. The Charleston Gazette and Mail:
On Saturday evening, the Senate Finance Committee took up a pay raise
bill passed by the House, and reduced the pay increase for teachers,
school service workers and State Police troopers from 5 percent to 4
percent.
But the Senate then, mistakenly, passed the House version of the bill
with the 5 percent raise, rather than the 4 percent version. After
Senate leaders announced the mistake, senators walked back their passage
vote and certain procedural votes, and passed the bill with a 4 percent
raise after 9:30 p.m. Saturday.
House members wouldn’t agree to that change, and both sides appointed
three members to a conference committee, which will try to hash out the
differences on the bill.
“At this point, the three organizations announce that we are out
indefinitely — we will not accept the 4 percent,” said Dale Lee,
president of the West Virginia Education Association, speaking on behalf
of his group, as well as the state arm of the American Federation of
Teachers and the West Virginia School Service and Personnel Association,
following Saturday’s committee vote. “Until this bill passes at 5
percent, we will be out indefinitely.”
Immediately after the committee amendment vote (the first time around), jeering broke out from the Senate gallery.
Many school employees interviewed say maintaining Public
Employees Insurance Agency health insurance costs and benefits at their
current levels is a bigger issue than pay increases. PEIA Finance Board
members, at the governor’s urging, have delayed premium increases and
benefit cuts, but teachers say that just delays the pain, and a
long-term solution is needed.
At the heart of the matter, teachers say, isn’t their salaries. It’s their soaring healthcare costs.
“We’ve seen [people say] ‘teachers are not happy with the 5%
increase’ — that’s not it at all,” said Mary Clark, 49, a fifth-grade
teacher in Monongalia County. “That’s not what kept us out. It’s the
insurance. That’s the big deal.”
In West Virginia, teachers and other state employees receive health coverage through the Public Employees Insurance Agency.
The state program is funded 80% by employers and 20% by employees.
That means as healthcare costs continue to rise significantly, the
program’s long-term solvency requires “significant revenue increases in
employer and employee premiums” over the next five years, according to
an October 2017 financial report prepared for PEIA.
In other words, employees are going to need to pay up. “They are wanting to raise our rates,” Clark said.
But there’s a problem with that: After teaching for a little more
than 10 years, “I’ve not seen [my take-home pay] go up any at all,” not
even counting inflation, Clark said. If her healthcare costs increase,
“that’s not feasible.”
Which is obvious when you think about it: What’s the point of a raise
if your insurance company takes the money right out of your pocket,
like you’re some sort of pass-through?
Bottom line here is to beware of any source that presents the raise
(4% vs 5%) as the only, or even the main issue. That includes, as we
have seen, much of the press, but also the Governor and the legislature,
and the union leadership (at least as far as I can find). PEIA needs to
be fixed, and not by some pissant kick-the-can-down-the-road [family
blogging] commission, either.
West Virginia on the Ground
Now the promised grab bag: Items I noticed collecting information for
this story that seem to be unique to West Virginia. The first two
relate to the history and culture of the state; the final three are
about this strike in particular.
Item one: The word “county.” Teacher O’Neal uses it in his interview above:
From below,
I can only really speak about the situation in my county,
which is local to Charleston. We decided to have a meeting at 1 PM to
try to straighten things out and to get some correct information. It was
all super last minute, we had to plan it in a couple of hours. We met
in a nearby church. The room was absolutely packed, with pews and aisles
filled way past capacity.
And I ran across teachers talking about their counties constantly.
Now, I don’t know what to make of this. I am very much from my place or
patch in Maine, but I situate myself more in my town, or at the
intersection of the Penobscot and the Stillwater Rivers; I don’t think
myself as being from Penobscot County at all. Perhaps some West Virginia
readers can enlighten us?
Item two: West Virgina has a storied labor history. State Senator Richard Ojeda, a Democrat, amazingly enough, in the Morgan County, USA blog:
“The teachers of West Virginia are not just fighting for themselves,
our children or all public employees,” Ojeda wrote. “In my view,
teachers in West Virginia are joining a fight for the soul and spirit of
West Virginia that started hundreds of years ago.”
“Hundreds of years ago, investors came to West Virginia and purchased
most of the land for all but nothing. Even today, you will be hard
pressed to find many people in West Virginia who own their mineral
rights.”
“They wanted our salt, timber and coal. They came in, paid our people
essentially nothing for it and then put in the railroad. West Virginia
has always been a colony.”
I’ll stop there, but it’s worth a read in full. (It’s is a rolled up
Tweet storm from Ojeda, but I wanted to give a local site some hits.)
Item three, now on the strike itself: Feeding the schoolkids was a
tactical masterstroke (as doing the right thing so often is). From Today:
During the four-day strike, teachers throughout West
Virginia went out of their way to provide students with food. Teachers
and staff at Horace Mann Middle School in Charleston prepared bagged
lunches to send home with their students before they hit the picket
line. Others worked with local food pantries to drop food off at
students’ homes.
Item four: All school unions are involved, not just the teachers, unlike the 1990 strike[6] (making the phrase “teachers strike” a misnomer). The Charleston Gazette Mail:
Teachers, this time joined by school service personnel,
walked off the job Thursday…. The 1990 strike also did not involve
public school service personnel, a category that generally includes
non-teachers, like bus drivers and cooks.
This is a second tactical masterstroke (besides, again, being the
right thing to do). Awkward situations described in this photo caption
are avoided:
Protesters block school buses from leaving a garage during the West Virginia teachers’ strike on March 9, 1990.
This time, the bus drivers walked out with the teachers (which certainly does make it easier to enforce the school closures).
Item five: The teachers (and cooks and bus drivers and janitors and
all school employers) are, as Ojeda points out, fighting for all West Virginia public employees, not just themselves, since PEIA stands for “ Public Employee Insurance Agency.” A third tactical masterstroke (and again, the right thing to do).
Actually, having written the items, I now see a common thread between them, or at least for two through five: Solidarity.
Conclusion “West Virginia Spring” may
be over-stating the case[5], but the teachers strike — need a better
phrase! — is already an interesting and potentially important flashpoint
(especially if the teachers in Oklahoma follow their lead,
or even Florida, if Florida teachers decide they don’t want to be
security guards on top of everything else). Before I close, I did
promise I’d have a word to say about the role of the Democrat Party in
all this.
The towering Justice, who owns coal companies, resorts,
and a host of other businesses, has emerged as the bete noire of the
saga. He won his office running a Trump-like campaign as an outsider businessman, but
flipped from Democrat to Republican at a Trump rally in Huntington last summer. As West Virginia’s only
billionaire, Justice has developed a reputation for not paying taxes or federal fines—a fact frequently touted on signs and in conversations among the teachers striking for better pay.
Governor Justice, in other words, besides being self-funded, is a
Blue Dog with the courage of his (Republican) convictions (rare, I
know). He is, that is, exactly the sort of candidate that the DCCC is trying to foist on us to make sure, among other things, that #MedicareForAll “never, ever comes to pass.”
Second, West Virginia troubles with PEIA are due to tax policies
suppported by both parties, very much including a second Blue Dog, Joe
Manchin. HuffPo:
A decade ago, West Virginia began gradually winding down certain
business taxes that could have helped pay for the across-the-board
raises that teachers haven’t seen in four years. They also could have
helped fill the funding shortfall in the Public Employee Insurance
Agency, or PEIA, which many workers list as their top concern. Although Republicans now control both chambers of the statehouse, the
tax cuts that Over the following years, the state wound down its
corporate net income tax rate from 9 to 6.5 percent, and phased out its
business franchise tax. It also slashed its tax on groceries from six to
three percent, and later did away with it entirely under Manchin’s
successor, Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin. Over the same span, the state also
created a family tax credit, increased its homestead exemption and got
rid of an alternative minimum tax and corporate charter tax, according
to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.
All told, those cuts diminished state revenue by more than $425
million each year, the center estimates.squeezed the state budget were a
bipartisan undertaking. Then-Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who’s now one
of the state’s two senators in Washington, had urged legislators to
pursue the tax cuts in 2006, arguing that West Virginia needed to slash
taxes on corporations in order to be competitive with other states.
“Appalachia was not different from the rest of America,”
the Appalachian historian Ronald Eller wrote ten years ago, in his
history of the region, “Uneven Ground.” “It was in fact a mirror of what
the nation was becoming.” Maybe that is the real source of the
suspense, in the conflict between educators wearing red and the
Trump-supporting governor: it isn’t at all obvious whether these
teachers are professionals in a middle-class place or workers whose
footsteps get tracked by an app[7], because it isn’t at all obvious what
the nation is becoming.
Well…. NOTES
[1] Whinging a bit: Google News gets worse and worse, so it’s hard to
find stuff; newsrooms are being slashed, which means there’s less to
find; the labor beat,
at least in the newsroom, is a thing of the past; and social media
nuked a lot of the small blogs (and Facebook search is miserably
inadequate, even if it weren’t so toxic I can’t bring myself to use it
anymore). All of which is by way of asking readers, especially West
Virginia readers, for local sources I should be looking at. Surely there
are some small West Virginia political blogs worth reading?
[2] Not, of course, “secret” to Facebook. Gawd knows who Facebook was selling that data to.
[3] See this clickbait tear-jerker from CNN: “This 6th-grader helped end West Virginia teachers’ strike.” Always “this.” Never “these.”
[4] Stoller comments:
13-dimensional chess alert, Obamacare was
structured so badly that higher health care costs are inducing a revival
of the labor movement. https://t.co/vVcSgcwQyh
“This was almost completely a grassroots movement,” said Erica
Newsome, an English teacher in Logan County. “The unions kind of
followed us.” Organizers estimate 150 people showed up. “The rally was kind of
small,” said Ashlea Bassham, a teacher at Chapmanville Regional High
School, “but then it just sort of happened.”... Labor Notes
You never can tell when a spark will ignite a fire. West Virginia and Oklahoma happened outside the teacher union leadership outside the school level but there was some leadership at the school rank and file level. This article is from Feb. 22 but worth reading for background -- though I always run articles coming from any ideological source (as Labor Notes is) through my filter to see is there is a dog in the race. This is a straightforward piece chronicling what happened. It doesn't get into the the battle between the NEA and AFT inside West Virginia, nor the fact there is a 3rd statewide union involved that split from the AFT. I'm going to dig up more stories on WV and OK today and also write up my own blog on what I learned from attending the Labor Notes - plus others, including MORE - sponsored event last Saturday night which was attended by 300 people.
Teachers
and school service employees in West Virginia have launched a two-day
statewide strike, riding a wave of indignation that has washed over the
state. Photo: Cassie Allara
Teachers
and school service employees in West Virginia have launched a two-day
statewide strike, riding a wave of indignation that has washed over the
state.
They’re protesting health insurance changes that would result in pay
cuts for many state employees. Governor Jim Justice’s initial proposal
would have provided raises of just 1 percent a year for the next five
years—while health insurance costs would rise significantly.
Pay for West Virginia’s teachers ranks 48th in the country, and the
state is constantly losing teachers to its neighbors, where they can
earn much higher salaries.
The first rumblings began late last year, when a group of teachers
formed a secret Facebook page and started planning a “lobby day” at the
state capital on Martin Luther King Day, when they knew the legislature
would be in session. Word spread, and soon the West Virginia Education
Association, the state’s NEA affiliate, was planning an official rally.
“This was almost completely a grassroots movement,” said Erica
Newsome, an English teacher in Logan County. “The unions kind of
followed us.”
Organizers estimate 150 people showed up. “The rally was kind of
small,” said Ashlea Bassham, a teacher at Chapmanville Regional High
School, “but then it just sort of happened.”
PACKED STATEHOUSE
Teachers and school service employees started holding walkout votes
county by county. West Virginia has two statewide teachers unions,
affiliates of the AFT and NEA, which often compete for membership. There
is also the West Virginia School Service Professional Association, or
WVSSPA, which represents bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, and
clerical workers. But teachers and school service employees decided
that in this case, any school employee could vote—whether they were a
member of any one of the unions or no union at all.
At Bassham’s school, the walkout vote was conducted by paper ballot,
all in one day, and the response was resounding: 49 yes, 9 no. So on
February 2, Chapmanville Regional High walked out—along with the rest of
Logan, Mingo, and Wyoming Counties. Other counties organized “walk-ins”
before school.
Strikers converged on the capital again. This time there were 1,000
teachers, public employees, students, and parents at the statehouse.
Wyoming County teachers had so much support that they rented county
school buses to make the 90-mile trip.
“The gallery filled up too quick for me and some co-workers to go
in,” said Bassham, “So we waited in the breezeway to talk to our state
legislators. Some of our representatives were willing to talk and take a
minute and listen, and some of them had their heads down, walking
really quickly.”
The legislature responded by announcing a temporary freeze to Public
Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) premium increases, and offered a two
percent pay raise in the first year. But that wasn’t nearly enough to
satisfy West Virginia teachers, who want a more permanent fix to the
PEIA and the state’s low salaries.
There is no collective bargaining for public employees in West
Virginia. Salaries are set by the state legislature, though some
counties supplement them through local levies.
OUTRAGEOUS CUTS
“When I first started teaching, I understood that our salaries
weren’t going to be great, but that it was good benefits,” said
third-grade teacher Wendy Peters, the president of her union local in
Raleigh County. “Our insurance was kind of like the gold standard for
health insurance.”
But for years the PEIA has been struggling and underfunded. Late last
year, the governor and the PEIA board proposed several changes that
would undermine health benefits, which incensed public employees.
Teachers and school employees would see instant increases in their
prescription costs and in premiums—which would be recalculated based on
their total family income, instead of a flat rate based on a single
employee’s salary.
An initial proposal would also have hit retirees with a two-point
premium increase, but after an outcry this was walked back. Still, the
chronically underfunded PEIA is forecasting even harsher changes in the
near future.
One particularly contentious proposal, which has since been
withdrawn, was a wellness-incentive program called “Go365.” Teachers and
other public employees would have to earn “points” by, for example,
sending the state photographic evidence of their healthy behavior and
tracking their steps.
If they failed to meet certain benchmarks, their monthly premiums
would increase by $25 a month. Those who opted out would have $500 added
to their deductibles.
IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE
By February the secret Facebook group, West Virginia Public Employees
United, had over 20,000 members. Inspired by the first three counties,
more local unions began holding their own walkout votes, alongside a
surge of grassroots actions.
Governor Justice, who got the
WVEA’s endorsement when he ran as a Democrat in 2016—but has since
switched back to the GOP—has drawn particular ire.
“You feel like, ‘Gosh, we helped you get elected, and you were
talking about how education needed to be the centerpiece of our state,
and you’ve since switched platforms,’” said Peters. “You feel betrayed.”
While in office the governor has continued to coach a girls’ high
school basketball team; the games now draw regular protests from
teachers.
MOMENTUM BUILDS
In the first week of February, AFT-WV and WVEA leaders asked the
locals for each of the state’s 55 counties to ballot employees on
whether to authorize a statewide walkout before the March 10 end of the
legislative session.
An overwhelming majority of counties voted in favor.
While state union leaders discussed whether to call a statewide
action, the rolling walkouts continued. Mason and Cabell Counties voted
to go out Friday, February 16. The next day, three more counties signed
on, and a sixth had joined in by the time teachers and school employees
arrived at the capital Friday morning.
February 17, a Saturday, saw the biggest action yet. An estimated
10,000 teachers, service employees, and allies gathered outside the
statehouse. Leaders from the United Mine Workers and the Teamsters
spoke.
When the leaders of the two statewide teacher unions took the
microphone to declare that negotiations were “getting nowhere” and
announce a shutdown of “the entire state,” the crowd erupted.
The walkout was on.
PROUD 'REDNECKS'
West Virginia has a long history of militant union fights, especially
in the coal mining regions in the south of the state—including the
three counties where this year’s walkouts kicked off. Many teachers at
the statehouse have been wearing red bandanas, a tradition that
originated in coal miners’ union battles of the 1920s, one place where
the term “redneck” originated.
“Unions are what we’re raised on,” said Bassham. “The Battle of Blair
Mountain [a 1921 confrontation between 10,000 armed coal miners and
3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, and eventually the U.S. Army] was 15
minutes from my house.”
Parents have held informational pickets before and after school, and
even some school boards and superintendents have issued statements of
support.
When Logan County walked out, at first the district sent out text
messages and robocalls to parents and teachers, stating that school
would be closed “due to an illegal, unauthorized employee walkout/work
stoppage.”
But a week later the board came around and passed a resolution
declaring that it “supports our employees in their efforts to receive
higher wages and medical benefits commensurate with their commitment to
our children.”
To maintain public support, teachers and school employees have
organized food drives ahead of the two-day walkout, to make sure
students who rely on the school for lunch won’t go hungry.
Striking is illegal for public sector employees in West Virginia, but
there doesn’t appear to be much fear on the ground, thanks in part to
the 700 teaching vacancies in the state.
“There’s a sense of, What are they going to do, fire us all?” said
Jay O’Neal, treasurer for the Kanawha County local. "Who would they get
to replace us?" Dan DiMaggio is Assistant Editor of Labor Notes. Jonah Furman is a
labor activist in New York City. Hear directly from West Virginia
teachers at the Labor Notes Conference, April 6-8 in Chicago. Register today!
A member of the Panel for Educational Policy appointed by Mayor de
Blasio was forced to quit last week after voting against the city’s
plans to close several schools, The Post has learned....
“I find it deeply disappointing that the mayor would break his
promise to parents in this way,” said Leonie Haimson, a member of the
PAC board. “This ensures there will be no checks and balances on his
autocratic decision-making that affects so many families.” In the same survey, de Blasio claimed he supported PEP or Board of
Education members “with set terms, who cannot be fired at will by the
mayor.”
Cleveland has generally been pushing back against Charters and also was rumored to have the UFT behind her. We were told that she received a letter firing her but them decided to resign. Think of this in this way - de Blasio doesn't give a shit about the UFT anymore since he is not running again. That her vote affected handing over more space to Eva Moskowitz at MS 53 in Rockaway is also an interesting aspect, though Isaac Carmgnani doesn't seem to be facing blow back -- but then again he has been a good boy so far and his abstention was not a NO vote.
After voting down school closures, de Blasio appointee to education panel is out
West Virginia Strike Highlights Corporate Media’s Atrophied Labor Coverage | FAIR
MSNBC
coverage of the West Virginia school workers strike: One of the last to
the story, the cable channel had less coverage than any other major
network except Fox News.
NPR's On the Media has some interesting segments on the West
Virginia strike and goes beyond just the strike into other areas that
tie in, with a focus on West Virginia as being classified as heavy Trump
territory. Is the strike a reaction to Trump - the resistance? Or
something else?
They also go into the role country music plays to the right with some interesting history. The Sarah Jaffe piece is the must listen segment.
Since Cleveland voted with the 5 borough reps on some of the closing schools, leading to 7-6 votes to close, there was always the chance that if one more mayoral appointee joined her or abstained, the DOE plans for some schools would be upset. And so it happened when mayoral appointee Isaac Carmegnani did abstain on the Rockaway schools leading to a 6-6-1 vote. But there are rumors that he actually touched base with the de Blasio people, perhaps making the point that his political career might be endangered in Queens if he voted to close the schools. I urged that she force de Blasio to fire her. But maybe she has reasons of her own to leave.
de Blasio had promised not to fire PEP members if they didn't go along with him. And he hasn't had to. But I assume that people who go on the PEP have interests that might be helped by being on the PEP.
But pressuring people to resign is not off bounds to him. PEP member Robert Powell was forced to resign after he was the only PEP member to vote NO on a corrupt $1 billion contract that was later rescinded.
It is clear that the PEP is mostly a rubber stamp - or puppet - not looking out for the public interest. Here we see examples of how their allegiance to one person hurts public education. The only solution is to end mayoral control and go to elected school boards. Not nearly a perfect solution, but more perfect than mayoral control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQLfWZ3qPvU
Teachers stand united during a nine-day strike in West Virginia
![[Photo: A large crowd of teachers gather ouside of West Virginia's state capitol during the teachers strike.]](https://rewire.news/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Strike-1-740x525.png)
