’18 strike seemed like a victory for teachers in W.Va.
But a year later, movement returns to where it started
W.Va. – The coal miner’s son had studied his county’s rough-and-tumble labor history, written his dissertation on it, taught his high school students about it.
Now Eric Starr, who knew history never repeats itself, felt history doing just that. And he was part of it.
Standing at a secret meeting like those held by striking miners a century ago, dressed in black except for a red bandana like the ones those miners wore, he exhorted his fellow public school teachers to defy the governor and their own unions and stay out on strike.
“I’m not going back,” he said. “We’ve been sold out!”
That was last winter. Mingo County teachers – with no legal right to strike and no encouragement from their union – became the first in West Virginia to vote to walk out over their health plan and their pay.
On Feb. 22, 2018, teachers across West Virginia went on strike, sparking a teacher movement that spread to other red states, including Okla- homa and Arizona, and then, this year, to Los Angeles and Denver. On Thursday, teachers plan to strike in Oakland, California.
But the 2018 West Virginia teacher strike, which changed so much nationally, didn’t change that much back where it started. And on Tuesday, West Virginia teachers again staged a walkout – just to maintain the status quo.
Starr sees the irony.
“I love seeing what’s going on elsewhere,’’ he says. “But West Virginia can be a slow place to change.’’
When the 2018 strike ended March 7, it seemed like a great vic
“I love seeing what’s going on elsewhere. But West Virginia can be a slow place to change.”
Eric Starr, West Virginia teacher
tory for public school teachers, who for years had been blamed widely for the failures of U.S. schools.
But the strike’s legacy is still in doubt.
❚ The state’s promise of a dedicated funding source for public employees’ health insurance – the main issue in the strike – remains unfulfilled.
❚ Despite a 5 percent raise, teacher pay remains far behind neighboring states’.
❚ The settlement did not increase the number of school specialists, like counselors and nurses, to help families scarred by the state’s opioid epidemic.
❚ The teachers’ vow during the strike to “remember in November’’ produced only mixed results. This year Republicans revived proposals that helped prompt the 2018 strike. Teachers and service personnel went on strike again.
The walkout Tuesday closed schools in nearly every West Virginia county. Lawmakers sidelined the education legislation teachers were protesting. That’s a victory for teachers. But, teachers say, they’re still waiting for the kinds of policies that would show them respect.
‘Any talks of striking’?
If the strike wasn’t revolutionary, it was remarkable.
At a time when organized labor seems in terminal decline, a national public school teachers’ movement emerged from the coalfields of southern West Virginia.
Children here are raised on stories of battles between miners and mine companies. Many of the teachers who walked out were first on picket lines when they were in diapers.
On Jan. 6, 2018, a teacher posted a query on a Facebook page: “Just curious if there are any talks of striking.’’
Soon, there was talk of little else.
Welcome to the Mountain State
Jay O’Neal is a middle school social studies teacher who moved to West Virginia in 2015. After his first year, he realized that because of increasing health insurance costs, he’d take home $450 less than the previous year.
West Virginia ranked 48th in teacher pay before the strike, according to the National Education Association.
Yet teaching in West Virginia has gotten harder as students have gotten needier, partly because of the opioid crisis. One of O’Neal’s students found his father with a needle sticking out of his arm, dead of an overdose.
In October 2017, O’Neal started a Facebook group page to unite members of the state’s two main teacher unions.
The state’s public employee health insurance agency had announced a new round of cost-saving measures. One based premiums for family coverage on the household’s total income, rather than just the teacher’s. Another was a wellness program that would effectively penalize those who didn’t do things like provide personal biometric data, go to the gym or wear an activity tracker like a Fitbit.
O’Neal heard plenty of grumbling in the teachers’ lounge, but little in public.
It was as if “strike’’ was a dirty word. “Everyone was thinking about it,’’ recalls Starr. “Then someone worked up the guts to say it.’’
That someone was Rachel Kittle, a 32-year-old special education from -no surprise -- the coalfields.
Shortly after her Jan. 6 post – “any talks of striking?’’ – O’Neal got a message from a friend: “Have you looked at Facebook?’’
There was Kittle’s query, followed by an explosion of comments. Soon, O’Neal couldn’t keep up with requests to join the group.
Strike fever spiked after Gov. Jim Justice, who’d been elected as a Democrat with union support before becoming a Republican to back Trump, proposed a mere 1 percent raise in his State of the State address.
Dale Lee, president of the WVEA union, felt compelled to address the topic at a rally on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Teachers were disappointed.
“It’s not the first step in what we should do to achieve our goals,’’ he said.
But this was a battle in which union leaders would be followers.
It started in the coalfields
On Jan. 23, Mingo County teachers became the first in the state to decide to skip school for a day to go to the state capital to protest. They called it “Fed Up Friday.’’ Several other southern coalfield counties quickly followed suit.
A month later, on Feb. 22, after another one-day walkout and a statewide strike authorization vote, 20,000 teachers went out.
School was closed in all 55 counties. Superintendents, already facing a teacher shortage, didn’t have nearly enough subs to hold classes.
Five days into the strike, the governor and the union leaders, who’d been negotiating, announced a settlement, including a 5 percent raise. They told teachers to go back to work two days later, on March 1.
But the Senate’s Republican leaders had not signed off; the rank and file had not been consulted; and the governor, some teachers pointed out, was a coal company owner. “We weren’t gonna fall for his word,’’ Kittle recalls. Teachers outside the capitol chanted: “Back to the table!’’ and “We got sold out!’’
At county meetings like the one in Mingo where Starr spoke up, the rank and file agreed. They weren’t going back – they were going wildcat.
Finally, West Virginia’s Republican Senate agreed to a 5 percent raise for all state employees. And the governor promised to freeze health insurance premiums for 18 months; to find a dedicated source of health insurance funding; and to waive costs for workers who didn’t comply with the wellness plan.
March 7, after nine canceled school days, the teachers went back to class.
But teachers in other states started to walk out. On April 2, Oklahoma and some counties in Kentucky; April 26, Arizona; April 27, Colorado.
A glass half empty?
A year later, it’s easy to emphasize what the West Virginia teacher strike didn’t do.
The raise, which averaged about $2,000 per teacher, was hardly lifechanging. It let teachers pay off some bills or maybe buy a car. But their colleagues continue to flee to higher-paying districts in other states. Mingo High School, for instance, has been trying since May to replace its choir director, who left for a similar job in Ohio that paid $10,000 more. No one has even applied for the vacancy.
As for health insurance, the governor has proposed $150 million in the state budget to stabilize employees’ costs. But the state lacks a long-term solution.
The strike’s political legacy is also unclear. The teachers’ failure in November to elect more supporters in the Legislature came back to haunt them..
The broad education bill that prompted Tuesday’s walkout would have given teachers another 5 percent raise, but also allowed the state to establish its first charter schools and given students vouchers for private school tuition.
To kill a bill that hadn’t even been passed, teachers had to strike again. They won a victory in ensuring their situation didn’t get worse. But it also didn’t get better.
The old-time miners went on strike against mine owners. Today, public teachers ultimately strike against taxpayers. Taxpayers are voters, and voters say they’re for higher teacher salaries.
They also say they’re against higher taxes.