The best gift of 2018

As 2018 winds to a close, I'm thankful for a lesson it taught me: that unexpected good fortune can come when things seem pretty dark. I'm thinking particularly of the great and victorious WV 2018 Teachers' Strike (technically the teachers' and school support workers' work stoppage, but let's not be  picky).

That historic struggle inspired other successful strikes in several states and gave hope to those who believe in the labor movement and public education. And it just resulted in another victory of sorts, a year of coverage under the Public Employees Insurance Agency without benefit cuts or premium increases. This wasn't a perfect or even a long term solution but it was a clear win.

Charleston Gazette-Mail statehouse reporter Phil Kabler, who has been doing his kind of work for about as long as I've been doing mine, summed it up beautifully:

...What was most remarkable was that this was a grassroots effort. It wasn’t, as critics unsuccessfully tried to portray it, as labor bosses directing their minions. It was teachers fed up with low pay and benefits and a general sense of being unappreciated banding together to let leaders in Charleston know they weren’t going to take it anymore.

Also remarkable was the spirit. Despite the seriousness of the issues at hand, the rallies at the Capitol were joyous affairs, with singing, chanting, dancing, and featuring colorful (and clever) signs. This was a celebration....

Wearing red, teachers in 2018 paid homage to the state’s proud labor heritage, and when the governor and legislative leadership tried to use the strategy of divide and conquer, trying to pit school boards against teachers, then parents against teachers, and then state employees against teachers, the teachers stood united.

Early on, when leadership contended that students would suffer, particularly those needy students who depend on school lunches, teachers and others did the noble thing, rising before dawn each day to pack lunches for their students before heading to Charleston, not only putting their students first, but assuming the moral high ground in the fight.

Most importantly, West Virginia teachers started a movement that spread, so far, to Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, showing that while organized labor may be a shadow of its former self, the ability of working people to fight for their rights may not be lost.

I can still see plenty of hard fights on the horizon in the coming year--including further assaults on public education in the legislature--but these will take place on a completely different landscape.

So thanks, teachers and school workers, for many things, including reminding me that we live in an open universe in which all kinds of wild and unexpected things can occur, some of which may be better than anyone could have expected.

These are the times

These are really stressful times for West Virginia's education workers, all of whom want to get back to work when a decent settlement has been reached. At such times, it might be good to remember that those who came before us faced much worse challenges and came through. For the last year or so, I've gone back over and over to these lines by Thomas Paine, America's most rebellious founder:

"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."-- The Crisis, 1776.

What's next in WV's Appalachian uprising?

It's pretty much official. This is more of an uprising than a work stoppage. The movement is driven from below and no formal organization is pulling the strings.

Historically, that's often the way change happens. Working people's organizations fight the day to day fight for their members and allies but most of the time they do so in the absence of a huge movement willing to disrupt business as usual. When movements like this arise--they can't be manufactured or sustained at will, alas--there's sometimes a bit of a disconnect.

But spontaneous mass movements need organizations to consolidate their gains. And organizations can always use the power of a mass movement behind them. But either alone is in this context could be a recipe for disaster.

I could be way off but here's my take on where things stand now:

*First, as I argued here, this uprising has already resulted in major victories in a political climate MUCH more hostile than the 1990 strike. I'll say it again, don't minimize the victories. To see all the changes most of us want means we need to change the composition of the legislature so that friends of working people are in positions of leadership. And Congress.

*Second, I think the proposal to use the $58 million, wherever it may come from, for PEIA is just a distraction designed to defeat the movement. I'm no PEIA expert, but the people I know and trust who are all say it needs a long term fix, not a one time bump.

*I think the best outcome would be to push for the raise and long term task force with adequate representation from people directly affected--but to commit to long term educating, organizing and mobilization through May and November and beyond. The progress made shows what can happen when people wake up--but the ground working people have lost in recent years shows what damage can be done when we fall asleep.

*As to the senate president's assertion that the state budget is a fixed amount, that just isn't true. The state budget is the product of deliberate values and choices--or the lack thereof--not cosmic destiny.

*Division and confusion play into the hands of our opponents. And time may or may not always be on our side.

Don't minimize your success!

This post is for all WV public employees who put themselves on the line in this struggle (which isn't over yet). I'm showing my age here, but this isn't the first big labor struggle I've seen, although it is one of the best. Here are a few thoughts from someone who has been in a few dozen fights:

1. First, give yourselves a pat on the back. Over a few weeks, you mobilized thousands of people of all ages to stand up for working people and actually get something out of it, even though it wasn't all we wanted. That used to happen here in decades past, but hasn't for a long time.Trust me on that one. Or ask any union worker.

2. I know a lot of folks out there may feel disappointed by where we are now. But one danger of social movements is that they often perceive failure when they've achieved considerable success. Think about where we stood even a month ago with PEIA premiums and Go365, not to mention raises.

3. Realize how bad things are for working people. I wish there was a nice way to say this but there isn't: the legislative majority is in the hands of enemies of working people. Period.  That's been the case for the last few years and it hasn't changed over the last few days. Other steps are needed to change that. To have gotten this far under these conditions is little short of amazing.

4. Our union brothers and sisters  have experienced agonizing defeats over the last two years while many of us weren't even paying attention. There are three kinds of unions: industrial, skilled trades (think construction); and public sector. Two out of three lost serious fights in the last few years. Industrial workers lost a huge one with the passage of so-called "right to work" legislation in 2016. Skilled trade workers lost another huge one with the repeal of prevailing wage for state construction projects. Public sector workers (teachers, school support workers and public employees) just won one, even though their legal status is weaker than other unions with the lack of collective bargaining.

5. Your actions helped kill or delay other bad legislation, including unproductive tax cuts and anti-worker bills, such as the "paycheck pilfering act."

6. The fight for justice is a marathon, not a sprint. Consider this: the first unfree African laborers were brought to what became the United States in 1619. The Emancipation Proclamation wasn't issued until 1863, the same year WV became a state. The Civil Rights Act wasn't passed until 1964. The Voting Rights Act wasn't passed until 1965. Lots of people died to get that far. Many other struggles, such as that for the right of women to vote, took decades to win. We did pretty good in less than a month.

7. No offense, but some people new to the struggle don't realize how badly the deck is stacked against working people and how much work in terms of education and organizing it will take to change that. We didn't lose this much ground overnight and won't gain it back that quickly either. Be proud to have gone as far as you did.

8. I suggest you resist the temptation to criticize your leaders. Let our enemies slander "union bosses" all they want, but the leaders of WVEA, WV-AFT and WVSSP are all former teachers and support workers. They have the hard and thankless job of trying to get the best they can for members in a bad situation. They could do a lot more if that situation changes, which will take mass mobilization by you.

9. It isn't over. The power you just used to shake the state to its foundation is always in your hands, provided we act together. People who have power don't own it; they only have it as long as people below cooperate with it. Withdraw that cooperation (strike!) and their power evaporates. 

10. Remember The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy thought she needed the wizard to get back home, but she had the power all along. That power is the power that comes when working people act together. Remember the last verse of the WV-inspired labor song "Solidarity Forever:"

"In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold

greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old

while the union makes us strong."