Weingarten: Teachers strikes “successful examples” of community-based action benefiting workers
NEW ORLEANS—The wave of teachers’ walkouts and strikes for almost a year – forced on the workers by penny-pinching and tax-cutting GOP administrations and politicians – represent “successful examples” of community-based action where victories benefit everyone, says Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten.
That’s because those walkouts, in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Denver, Los Angeles, among Chicago charter school teachers and now in Indiana and at Summit Academy in Parma, Ohio, centered not around pay and pensions, but around what’s best for schools and kids, she adds.
That community-centric focus is a model other unions could plan to follow, and she believes they will.
Weingarten gave her analysis in a March 13 interview after a session on organizing during the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in New Orleans. The session featured presentations by Weingarten, Food and Commercial Workers President Marc Perrone and other leaders.
Some of those leaders, including Weingarten and Communications Workers President Chris Shelton – chair of the AFL-CIO Organizing Committee – also participated in a “Future of Unions” conference in D.C. several weeks ago. Speakers there discussed engaging with and involving communities, not just unionists, in issues that matter to all. Weingarten said that works for the teachers and it works for other causes, too.
“You’re seeing more and more people engage in issues they care about,” she explained. “Good schools for our kids, keeping our skies safe, health care…You get people more and more involved and you win.”
But they won’t get involved unless they see examples of prior wins using community-based issues, she warned. That’s where the past teacher strike successes come into play. Those strikes were characterized by bottom-up organizing, community concern and involvement and mass action to pressure politicians to change anti-education, anti-teacher policies.
The first strike in West Virginia, over crumbling schools, revenue robbed from them by tax cuts for the rich CONTINUE READING: Weingarten: Teachers strikes “successful examples” of community-based action benefiting workers – People's World
