The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Teacher strikes lead pack in 2018
About 485,200 workers were involved in major work stoppages in 2018, new Labor Department data show. It’s the highest figure since 1986. The trend is striking.
Wave of unrest
The labor unrest wasn’t a result of prominent unions in manufacturing, such as United Automobile Workers, or transportation, such as Teamsters. It was driven by a wave of teacher strikes that spread from West Virginia (35,000 workers) to Oklahoma (45,000) and Kentucky (26,000). Within months, 267,000 more teachers in Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina staged walkouts.
The 2018 teacher-strike tsunami was decades in the making. State budget cuts, especially after the Great Recession, squeezed school spending and teacher salaries.
A gap develops
Until the mid 1990s, teachers were paid almost as much as other educated workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of Labor Department data. As of 2017, the most recent year for which data are available, they were paid an average of 18.7 percent less. Their 7.6 percent advantage in benefits does not close the gap.
“Not only had teacher pay declined since the late 1990s, class sizes had grown larger. The working conditions for teachers and the learning conditions for students had declined really radically,” said Julie Greene, a historian at the University of Maryland.
Chicago inspires Oklahoma
State budget cuts have been particularly harsh in Oklahoma, where the general-fund allocation for schools decreased by 28.2 percent in the decade ending in the 2018 fiscal year, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
The damage caused by funding shortfalls extends beyond teacher
pay. The state has 54,000 more students than it did in 2008-09, said Rebecca Fine, an education specialist at the Oklahoma Policy Institute, yet the number of aides, secretaries, plumbers and other support staff has fallen by 391. The state also offers fewer fine arts and music classes than it did four years ago, Fine writes.
Organizers and advocates began campaigning years before strikes brought their struggles into the headlines. They were inspired by events like the Chicago teachers’ strike of 2012, where demonstrators won major concessions by framing their demands as part of a social and community movement aimed at improving the lives of students, Greene said.
“They were arguing that it wasn’t just about their own pay,” she said. “They were arguing about the need to confront the austerity measures pushed by mayors Richard Daley and Rahm Emanuel.”