NYU sociologist and former high-school teacher Eric Blanc was commissioned by Jacobin magazine to cover the 2018 teachers’ strikes. He focused on three: West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona, the states where multi-day walkouts resulted in significant concessions from conservative governments. What Blanc finds has eye-opening implications for organized labor. But I question how portable these insights are.
Schoolteachers, like other skilled professionals throughout the American economy, accepted austerity as the necessary condition following the 2008 financial crash. But ten years later, despite putative recovery, their wages, benefits, and working environment remained locked in post-crash conditions. School districts granted waivers to put non-credentialed teachers in front of classrooms. Insurance was getting adjusted downward amid a supposedly hearty economy.
However, as Blanc observes early, “Economic demands are rarely only economic.” Schools in many states, especially states with historic Republican governments, have been long neglected, with class sizes exceeding what qualified teachers can handle, physical plants in disrepair, and an adversarial relationship between legislatures and teachers. Educators didn’t only strike for improved pay and insurance; they felt the state had denied them the authority to teach.
Legitimate action began in West Virginia. Donald Trump won this state with a two-thirds share, and Republicans with an anti-organized labor stance controlled the statehouse. Admittedly, West Virginia has a longstanding union tradition, dating back to the Coal Wars of the 1890s. It was once a Democratic Party stronghold. But like many Democratic-leaning states, West Virginia grew disgusted with Democrats running on center-left promises, and governing on right-wing principles.
Blanc provides generous evidence that, since at least Jimmy Carter, Democrats have consistently fielded a lite-beer version of the Republican economic agenda. Both parties have repeatedly cut public education funding, mandated standardized tests written by private contractors, and shifted financial responsibilities onto local communities unprepared for the burden. Teachers’ unions have complied with this trend, apparently on a devil-you-know basis.
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| Striking teachers in the West Virginia statehouse, 2018 (CNN photo) |
West Virginia’s strike combines old-school organization with innovative grassroots action. The state’s teachers were divided among three competing unions (which isn’t uncommon in right-to-work states), so coordination had to begin with the membership. While union leaders feared upsetting the apple cart, educators and, importantly, support staff organized online, including much-despised social media, to create pressure from below. It ultimately worked.
America hadn’t seen a statewide teachers’ strike since 1990. Accepted wisdom for an entire generation held that strikes created bad blood and undermined communications between labor and management— and sometimes, they do. But compliance with authority hadn’t produced any better results, either. When union membership pushed a strike authorization vote, almost ninety percent of West Virginia teachers supported a walkout. The die was cast.
Inspired by West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma and Arizona elected to strike. But these states learned largely opposite lessons from the experience. Oklahoma gave remarkable power to non-union firebrands who had great energy, but no organizing experience. Importantly, Oklahoma forgot to include support staff in their organizing efforts. Arizona fared better, taking time to lay groundwork for an unprecedented strike action in possibly America’s most Republican state.
Blanc basically provides an oral history of the three movements. Why did West Virginia and Arizona succeed, while Oklahoma resulted in a split decision at best? And why did other states with similar grievances, like Kentucky and Colorado, manage just one-day walkouts with only salutary effects? The answers to these questions largely exist in participants’ testimonies, and Facebook groups where the grassroots members created momentum.
Also, Blanc acknowledges significant limitations to the model he describes. Teachers were able to engage community support because their local connections cross class boundaries in ways, say, auto workers cannot. Blanc admits the strikes avoided addressing race issues, which isn’t insignificant; as Ibram Kendi points out, labor unions have long been bastions of White protectionism. Ignoring race might work for one strike, but isn’t sustainable.
Still, even if Blanc’s account doesn’t create a blueprint for revitalized American unionism, it provides pointers of ways workers build countervailing power against capitalist might. Teachers broke the taboo against labor stoppages, and proved that simple numbers can reverse intransigence. They didn’t solve everything, certainly. But they proved change is possible.
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