The New Unionism: Bargaining for the Common Good
The Chicago teachers’ strike is over but it performed a valuable service that reaches far beyond Chicago and its educators. In recent years, the union movement was recoiling from blow after blow as its adversaries attempted to destroy it by passing right-to-work laws in the states, attacking it in state courts with challenges to due process, and winning a Supreme Court victory (Janus) that was intended to kill the unions off.
But the teachers’ strikes that began in West Virginia in 2018 and continued through the Chicago strike point to a new brand of teacher activism.
Although legislatures have tried to limit collective bargaining solely to wages and benefits, the new unionism has a different vision, which they call “bargaining for the common good.”
Teachers are as concerned about children’s health and well-being, about class size, about having a full-time nurse in every school as they are about their own wages. In Chicago, they worked out the salary gains before the strike started. The strike was about improving conditions CONTINUE READING: The New Unionism: Bargaining for the Common Good | Diane Ravitch's blog
