http://themilitant.com/2018/8211/821101.html
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Vol. 82/No. 11 March 19, 2018
(lead article)
West Virginia school workers win strike!
Unity, solidarity show power of working class
Wheeling New Register & the Intelligencer via AP/Scott McCloskey
Woodsdale Elementary teachers, Wheeling, West Virginia, celebrate strike
victory March 6.
BY EMMA JOHNSON
PUTNAM COUNTY, W.Va. — “I think this will start a movement across the
country of working people rising up,” Phillip Eastep, a steelworker in
Huntington, told Socialist Workers Party members when we joined him
picketing with school bus workers outside the Hurricane bus depot here
March 6. “This is the strongest rank-and-file movement I’ve seen in my
10 years in the union. I hope this makes every union in West Virginia
stronger.”
Later in the day, school workers on the picket line learned they had
won. As thousands of teachers and school workers filled the Capitol in
Charleston, the legislature voted up a 5 percent raise — not just for
them, but for all state employees — and agreed to the workers’ demand to
set up a task force to find ways to fund their health care. The strike
inspired workers across the state and nationwide and forced the rulers
to back down.
Eastep, a member of United Steelworkers Local 40, had come directly from
getting off work to join the picket line. He said he has a special
reason to join the workers at this depot.
“She drove my school bus when I was a kid,” he said, pointing to one of
the pickets, Marsha Armstead, a driver with 21 years seniority. “They
deserve more than what they get, all of them.”
“Our local contract is coming up this fall,” he said, “and I hope they
set the example for us to stand up and fight.”
Workers support and are inspired by the strike. Drivers passing by honk
and wave, a man shows up with donuts. Workers have come by with pizza,
fruit and coffee.
“What we’re seeing is a movement in the U.S. Not just a labor movement,”
Sam Brunett, an art teacher at Morgantown High School, told the
Associated Press. “It’s a class of people rising up.”
This was the ninth day of the walkout. It’s the first strike by school
workers in the state since 1990, the first ever coordinated across all
55 school districts and first time all three unions representing them
have gone out together.
In West Virginia the state legislature sets the wages and benefits for
all state employees and workers in the public school system. Gov. James
Justice had originally proposed a 1 percent pay increase each year for
five years. This wouldn’t even cover the raise in health premiums he
proposed at the same time. Teachers’ pay in West Virginia ranks 48th
lowest of the 50 states.
School workers started mobilizing and preparing for a walkout. The
legislature responded by voting to freeze the health premiums and up the
wage increase for the first year to 2 percent. The members of the three
unions voted and overwhelmingly rejected this deal. On Feb. 22 they
walked out.
In addition to picket lines outside schools and bus depots, thousands of
union members and their supporters gathered outside and inside the state
Capitol every school day. Over 5,000 poured inside March 5, forcing
state officials to lock the doors for an hour.
After meeting with union officials Feb. 27, Justice announced they had
reached a deal for a 5 percent raise the first year, for a task force on
health care, and said the unions agreed that schools would reopen two
days later.
“I was outside the Capitol, when I heard about this,” a bus mechanic
picketing by the depot here said. “I was furious and I used language you
should never use. I had to apologize to a woman standing next to me.
They’re trying to bust the union, that’s how I saw it. I knew we had to
stay out. If you start something you see it through.”
Many workers expressed anger at the deal and frustration that union
officials had agreed to call off the strike even though the legislature
hadn’t voted to accept it. They said they just didn’t trust the elected
officials.
“We went back and voted again,” said Jan Henson, a teacher and one of
the pickets outside Morning View Elementary School a couple miles down
the road. “‘No’ it was. So we stayed out.”
Henson said the vast majority of people going by the picket are
supportive, but some give them thumbs down or roll down their windows
and yell, “Go back to work.”
Fight popular in working class
They’ve gotten support from coal miners across the state. Many strikers
wore red bandannas, a symbol of past pitched battles against mine bosses
and state cops.
“People are starting to get angrier and remember our history, remember
our roots,” Jenny Craig, a middle school special education teacher in
Triadelphia, in coal country, told the press.
Most school workers say health care is the biggest issue. “We need a
fix, not a freeze” was one common chant.
But what a “fix” would look like, and whether it’s possible under
capitalism, is a debate among workers on the picket lines. Some point to
the state-financed health system in Canada as a model, some propose
taxing shale oil exploration, others put forward various schemes to
raise money for the state budget expenses to cover health insurance.
“I agree that we need health care and not health insurance,” Henson
said. “I’m not sure how we can fix it, but I know it has to be fixed. So
we’ll just have to see.”
During the strike, Henson volunteered at the nearby Church of the
Nazarene, preparing and distributing food to kids who depend on their
school meals. Food donations came from stores, farmers, restaurants,
strikers and other workers. Dozens of volunteers — mainly teachers and
students — pack bread, vegetables, fruit, drinks and snacks. Similar
operations were organized in every county across the state and have been
important in building support for the strike.
A car stops and the driver tells us that the state Senate has just
approved the 5 percent wage raise and health coverage task force.
Senators had originally rejected the Feb. 27 deal between the governor
and the unions, saying the state couldn’t afford it. The pressure from
the continuing strike changed their minds.
More drivers stop by to tell us the deal passed unanimously in both
houses of the legislature. “For some reason, they suddenly found the
money,” one of them said. “This was going places they don’t want it to go.”
Teachers and school workers went back to work March 7.
The 41,000 teachers in Oklahoma face the same setup as here — prohibited
by state law from negotiating contracts and the state legislature sets
wages and benefits. They haven’t had a raise in 10 years and pay ranks
at the bottom of the 50 states.
They say they’re inspired by what happened here and are threatening to
strike in April. One teacher set up a Facebook site titled “Oklahoma
Teacher Walkout — The Time Is Now!” In less than a week, 36,000 people
joined up.
Related articles:
W.Va. telecom workers strike Frontier to defend jobs
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