It was truly inspiring. Thousands of people sang and danced in West Virginia’s state capitol building in a victory celebration. They chanted: “Who made history? We made history!” For nine days, more than 20,000 teachers and support staff went on strike in all 55 counties. It had been the longest statewide strike in West Virginia’s history.
This is a state where public workers can’t legally strike. They are barred by law from collective bargaining. West Virginia has two statewide teachers unions, affiliates of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. There’s also the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association, which represents bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians and clerical workers. Everyone voted on whether to go on strike, whether they were a union member or not.
Edwinia Howard-Jack, a 12th grade teacher in Buckhannon, was enthusiastic: “The solidarity and feeling of resolve, the fighting spirit and the gracefulness of my fellow teachers was both touching and empowering; I will never forget it. The reminder of who we are as a state, what our ancestors fought and died for on Blair Mountain signified by the wearing of red bandanas, is forever engrained in my memory.”
She was referring to the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War. In 1921, an army of some 10,000 union coal miners who had enough of inhumane and dangerous working conditions marched on Blair Mountain in Logan County and clashed with 3,000 lawmen and company thugs. For nearly a week, the two sides waged a fierce battle with rifles, machine guns and even bomb-dropping biplanes. About a million rounds were fired and dozens of people were killed. The conflict ended when President Warren Harding sent federal troops in.
This battle was only the most dramatic event in a long history of labor militancy. Many teachers wore red bandanas and would ask out-of-state reporters if they really knew what the term “redneck” meant. They would explain that miners wore red bandanas in response to the coal bosses’ contemptuous dismissal of them as “rednecks.” The bandanas signified union membership and a radical attitude.
During the recent strike, Governor Jim Justice ridiculed the teachers as “dumb bunnies” and they responded by wearing bunny ears at their rallies. Reporter Sarah Jaffe notes that Justice is “a second-generation coal tycoon and a billionaire who owes his own state millions in back taxes.” The fossil fuel industry dominates the state and the strikers advocated raising taxes on that industry to fund education.
The teachers emphasized that one of their major goals was to make education better for every child in West Virginia. They want smaller class sizes and they want to fill the 700 teacher vacancies in the state. Before the strike, the unions worked with churches and food banks to provide day care for the parents who needed it and to provide meals for the many students who get free lunch and breakfast at school. The teachers sometimes delivered the packages of food directly to students’ homes.
They won a big victory. West Virginia is ranked 47th among the states in teacher salaries and they won a 5 percent pay raise for themselves and all state workers. They got a freeze in health care premiums and ended a punitive “wellness’” program which invaded their privacy.
But they also forced the Republican-dominated state legislature to kill some toxic bills. They stopped an expansion of charter schools, a measure to eliminate seniority and a so-called “paycheck protection” bill (designed to weaken unions by taking away their right to deduct union dues through payroll collection).
There are indications that this is the beginning of something big. Labor lawyer Joe Burns says this is a return to the rebellious roots of public employee unionism: “During the high point of the 1960s and ’70s public sector strike wave — when millions of government workers were involved in work stoppages — unionists had a slogan: ‘There is no illegal strike, just an unsuccessful one.’ Lawmakers could impose draconian penalties, courts could issue injunctions, and the corporate media could fulminate endlessly. But if the strike was strong, if the cause was just, and if community support was robust, harsh penalties were rarely imposed.
“…Work stoppages occurred more frequently in states with bans on collective bargaining and striking. With no orderly process for bargaining, workers had no choice but to illegally strike to get their demands met. Faced with such intransigence, policymakers gave in and began recognizing public sector unions.”
The conditions have to be right. The West Virginia strikers were successful because they had strong public support and they were able to shut down schools in every county. Faced with this situation, a hostile Republican governor and a Republican-dominated state legislature had to give in.
This conflict comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering Janus v AFSCME. Its decision is likely to be a gut punch to public employees and their unions. Burns explains: “In the Janus framework, public employees (and all employees) should deal with employers as individuals. Unions — where they are allowed to exist — are merely collections of individuals instead of instruments of the working class.”
The courageous West Virginians have shown us that solidarity and militance is the answer.
This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.
