Teachers strike is going nationwide and the union isn't leading it
When the people lead, the leaders will follow.
That's true for both politicians and labor union heads.
“What I'm saying is April 2 there will be teachers here, they may be saying 'thank you,' they may be pushing for additional funding,” Priest said Tuesday afternoon. “I'm not going to speak for every teacher. I speak for the Oklahoma Education Association.
"We will have to hear from our membership before we make that decision (about April 3)," Priest added.
The union leaders aren't even pretending that they are leading this labor movement. They are simply along for the ride, and that's the way it's supposed to be.
Oklahoma is a right-to-work state, and the American Federation of Teachers has only about 2,700 members out of 42,000 teachers, so it can hardly speak for the teachers.
That's a major reason that Cagle calls the unions "weak and vulnerable." He says his group has been forced to take matters into their own hands. "We are the only unified protest group," he says. Teachers represented by Cagle's group want a $10,000 raise. "We had 70 percent turnover in the last five years in my school," he says. "You're not going to stop that with a $6,000 raise."
Oklahoma is only one of the states without teachers in the classrooms today.
Kentucky is having a statewide sick-out, or wildcat strike. It's hard to say which it is at this point.
Angry teachers sparked a wave of school closures across the state Friday as hundreds called in sick to protest the controversial pension reform bill that zipped through the Kentucky legislature this week.
From the eastern half of the state bordering West Virginia to the northern region near Ohio, 29 school districts were unable to hold classes, most citing unusually high numbers of absent employees and too few substitutes to fill classrooms.
Republican politicians across the country have been so successful at cutting and slashing teacher pay for so long that there is no available supply of qualified strikebreakers to undermine the workers.
Republicans have also been so successful at crushing teachers unions that there is no corrupt or compromised union leadership with the power to sell out the strikers.
Republicans have been so greedy and rapacious that they've undermined all the normal tools and levers of control, and I seriously doubt that they have a clue what to do next.
One month after a teachers’ “wildcat” strike ended with a deal to hike pay for all West Virgina state employees, teacher strikes are spreading fast across the country, with no clear endgame in sight.
...And in Arizona, teachers last week gathered at the statehouse in Phoenix with buttons reading “I don’t want to strike, but I will.”
In each case, teachers are pushing Republican governors and GOP-controlled legislatures to hike their pay, saying declining real wages threaten to drive staff out of the public school system. Educators see leverage in tight private sector labor markets and inspiration in West Virginia, where strikers defied union leaders by holding out for a better deal.
What is interesting is how this is happening in red states. Arizona will be next.
Gov. Doug Ducey said Thursday that teachers aren’t going to get the 20 percent pay hike they are demanding – not now and not in the foreseeable future.
And he intends to continue proposing further cuts in state taxes even as teachers say that, without substantially more money, they may have no choice but to strike.
One of these days, perhaps in Arizona, the teachers strike will fail. Maybe they will accomplish this with police clubs and tear gas.
However that will be a “Pyrrhic” victory for Republicans, because it will cause a state that is already short of teachers, to see a mass exodus of teachers. Their public school system will essentially collapse, and then we will finally have a nationwide discussion that we badly need about community values.
Comments
The RepigDemocrats and their pig union lackeys
don't give a flying fuck. They're too busy sucking dick and swallowing hard for whatever bribes the capitalists throw their way to keep the unsustainable system going/
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
You may have missed the point of this essay
Workers are taking things into their own hands.
This is a good thing.
Right, they have to negotiate with the mob now
They were successful in sabotaging organized labor representation, so now they have to negotiate with unorganized labor.
I like this unintended consequence -- the rank-and-file types won't willingly sell themselves out the way their leadership elites would have.
Poetically put:
Indeed, music to my ears!!!
"The RepigDemocrats and their pig union lackeys don't give a flying fuck. They're too busy sucking dick and swallowing hard for whatever bribes the capitalists throw their way to keep the unsustainable system going."
I genuinely LOVE your use of vulgar metaphor. It conveys the truth succinctly and simply, with a good dose of righteous contempt thrown in.
As for unions, I've always been a supporter. However, it has only been over the past decade or so that I've come to see the truth of the historic criticism about how union leadership gets corrupted (by organized crime, or by politicians, or by corporations), and sells out the interests of its rank-and-file members. (As George Meany once unwittingly admitted by way of trying to deny the following--that many people saw union leadership as having grown "sleak" and fat with privilege and perqs.)
The time is long past for organized labor to divorce itself from the Democratic Party and form its own third/labor party. No doubt, the reason it doesn't do so is because the leaderships of various unions benefit by remaining within the Democratic Party tent, even though the Democrats have done nothing but stab working people in the back for the better part of the last 25 years, while they have also used the millions of dollars of union dues/campaign donations coming their way to help themselves remain in power. In fact, in view of the call for the formation of third party in this country by many progressives, I've always thought that the backbone of such an entity could be disaffected members/unions of the AFL-CIO
If and when the rank-and-file of the unions wake up, start breaking with their corrupt and bought off leadership, and decide to defect from the Democratic Party, it will be yet another long overdue nail in the coffin of the faux-liberal Democratic Party.
It's nice to see the rank-and-file workers taking things into their own hands.
The next thing they need to do is make it clear they will start running their own candidates for public office, especially in the districts where it is clear the the Democratic candidate is no progressive.
Amen to that
They should have done that a generation ago.
It's not like remaining loyal to the Dems has done anything good.
Who gains with tax cuts?
The elites and the politicians they paid for. Eventually our system will collapse. Choke it down in the bathtub. Less is more. BS.
Go teachers! Fight back.
Betsy Devos can't privatize quickly enough
Republicans are probably surprised at the support of teachers
And surprised that they are that brave
And that goes for democrats as well
Obama's scty of ed was a numbers guy from TX
Could it be that students with gun control and teachers with their efforts could force politicians to face what is going on in our country?
What if the facts about Climate destruction were taught to every student starting from kindergarten? That would overcome the Koch brothers but it would be hell for the kids and their future knowing that they will be living in a wasteland that they cannot change.
We are the generation that will be remembered for knowing about the destruction of the country and the destruction of the earth ...
and didn't do enough
Public support
You would hardly know it. This was the only poll I've seen about public support for teachers.
OTOH, there are literally dozens of polls regarding arming teachers. So it's not like they can't do any polls for something that matters.
Update: One finally came out today
OT: the people are right
fake news
Also OT: America's f*cked up values
tragedy
comedy
reply to gjohnsit 2 OT comments
predator / prey
From a review of a book on Hamlet just out in NY Review of Books
Views of Hamlet have changed over the centuries (e.g., Freud made big changes and the reviewer who has taught Shakespeare for 30 years at Columbia has students scoff when told about Freud's views)
Below is from the review. The reviewer in the first paragraph and then a quotation from the book in the second paragraph and the reviewer for the last two paragraphs and ends with the predator / prey statement quoted above
Trump and things happening like the 2 OT above show how screwed up things are.
The Question of Hamlet: Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness
Revolting
I will memorize those figures so I can recite them to any idiot who defends either topic.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Will charter school teachers join the strike?
They often don't have any union representation at all, and can't even count on a job lasting through the school year, should enrollment drop too far. (Too few students = laid off teachers).
I'm all for the teachers and the union gj
but the thing that caught my attention is only 2700 teachers out of 42000 joined the union. As you have stated Oklahoma is a right to work ( for less ) state, Which from my understanding means that one has the choice of joining the union or not and over 39000 chose not to join the union. With support like that it's no wonder the union has no power.
That seemed to be a theme in the post
This is an uprising by galvanized workers and they cannot be represented by a (typically) co-opted union leadership, thanks to a states anti-labor policies.
To me it seems like both a hopeful sign and an indication of how desperate the situation has become.
People have been being told that unions are bad
for some time and it looks like a lot of them believe it. I see comments from people in Utah who are always criticizing unions because they think people make too much money, their retirement packages are why companies have to charge them more for their products and they get too many vacation days, etc. Whenever the SF Gate has an article on BART, the transportation system in SF, the comments on it are in this vein.
The PTB have been using their propaganda against unions and so many other things that used to give workers more power. I've even seen some about teachers making too much money and not having to work all year. This is one more way of dividing us from them bullcrap.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Unions are awesome
But only when the membership is engaged.
If the membership is complacent then unions become like any other bureaucratic institution.
Aye
kind of like the democratic party.
A little OT but still in the same vein as far as
how propaganda works pretty well for tptb
https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/noamknowsthescore?source=feed_text
and I wonder how many of the commenter's you mention are
paid corporate trolls
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
When politicians tell the truth
I dunno
I disagree with the second part. Republicans hate poor people because they ask for help, and that would interfere with their punishment.
Now, it's time for parents to file lawsuits.
If their state constitution guarantees free public education, it's time for parents to sue their states for full-funding of public schools since they are closed due to these strikes. If lawmakers have it coming from teachers and parents, something might turn around. This might just be pie in the sky thinking, but it's a thought!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
As usual, I love your thinking!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
This one has video
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/02/us/oklahoma-kentucky-teachers/index.html?...
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Unions are dead, worker cooperatives are the future
Just like those in power have pushed China and Russia together, thus signaling the end to the petro dollar.
The powerful are also pushing the American people into the arms of worker cooperatives, thus spelling the end to capitalism.
It truly is the brutal vs the rest of us right now. I wish we didn’t live in a capital based society because I would love to go to these strikes and educate the teachers on the benefits of worker cooperatives.
Imagine the teachers saying F u to the government and setting up worker owned cooperative “schools” ( because these wouldn’t be schools in the way we are used to, we would finally be able to address problems that those in power haven’t let us tackle) and leaving all of the disgusting administrators who have helped destroy education in our country
Unions are more needed than ever
Hopefully a resurgence in union activity will sweep away the dead wood at the top.
The strike is illegal in Kentucky (maybe OK too?)
Teachers used their sick days to call out of work and protest — sometimes called a "sick-out" — since strikes are technically illegal under Kentucky law.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/kentucky-teachers-strike-sick-days-st...
a Kentucky teacher explains (10 min video or text)
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:21494:Wildcat-Teacher-Strikes-Spread-to-...
Any form of protest will not be tolerated....but it sure is nice to see! Hooray for the teachers!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
A Right to Work state is the same damned
deal as a Right to (Make) Serfs state. I'm a retired worker who lives and worked my whole life in one. I hate Right to Work with a passion. I back the teachers and all workers who strike against these FRightwing hellholes! Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.