HOW “ILLEGAL” TEACHER STRIKES RESCUED THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT
Organized labor in the U.S. is having a moment. Sen. Bernie Sanders recognized a staff union for his campaign, the first presidential candidate ever to do so. Kamala Harris, the California senator running for president, unveiled her first big 2020 policy plan, which is all about taxing America's hyper-rich to give heavily unionized public-school teachers a $13,500 raise.
As if confirming Big Labor’s new clout, President Trump took time this month to attack UAW Local 1112 President David Green by name on Twitter, saying he should “get his act together and produce,” a big moment for a guy who represents laid-off auto workers in Lordstown, Ohio. The broadside got Green on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, and a visit from another 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke.
The nation is paying attention to labor again, and for that America has one profession to thank more than any other: the public school teacher.
In 2018, 485,000 workers participated in what the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as a “major work stoppage,” up from just 25,000 in 2017. It was the first major increase in work stoppages in three decades, and it was nearly entirely driven by 379,000 teachers and other education workers, who accounted for 78 percent of all those who went out on strike.
But while teachers — with their #RedforEd movement — brought new attention to labor, healthcare, fast-food service, graduate student, and hotel workers also went on strike. Marriott employees, for example, led a strike against the nation’s largest hotel chain in December and won San Francisco housekeepers a pay bump and some workplace protections.
By their sheer numbers, teachers breathed new life into the stagnating U.S. labor movement — even with nationwide union membership at historic lows. Union membership stood at 10.5 percent in the U.S. in 2018, down 0.2 percent from 2017, and down by nearly 50 percent since 1983, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track.
“In recent decades it has become much harder to organize a union in the U.S.,” said Julie Greene, a history professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. “That makes this recent burst of organizing and successful striking particularly significant.”
Despite mostly flat union membership rates, the number of workers participating in labor strikes hasn’t hit this high in a generation. To put it another way: There may not be many strikes happening, but their size is huge. More than 24,000 workers participated, on average, in each major work stoppage in 2018. That’s tens of thousands more workers than your typical strike.
Polls are also showing a generational attitude shift: 47 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds want a “militant” labor movement rooted in a multi-racial working CONTINUE READING:How “illegal” teacher strikes rescued the American labor movement – VICE News
