In Solidarity with Striking Teachers

As public-sector workers, we earn our pay by looking after the needs of our communities, and we recognize the vital role that public school teachers, and all teachers, play in enriching the lives and minds of our children. We also recognize that teachers, and all public workers, face escalating attacks from the business class and its drudges in federal, state, and local governments. We all face creeping privatization and ratcheting take-backs of health benefits and wages. We all are forced to do more work with less staff and fewer resources every year. We all are attacked by business tools in the legislature, who accuse us all of being lazy, greedy, and unreasonable whenever we point out the ways in which we are being bled.

We recognize the right of public workers, and workers every-where, to fight for our rights by any means necessary, includ-ing but not limited to strikes, slowdowns, and walkouts. We recognize the historical and necessary role that illegal, radical, large scale working class actions such as public-sector strikes have played in winning more respect, pay, and power. AFSCME existed before public workers could legally have unions. Public sector workers, including teachers, regularly strike, legally or not, and win. If it were not for this radical activity, we would not have the few labor rights that we have. The actions of striking teachers in West Virginia, in Oklahoma, in Kentucky, and soon in Arizona, have shown us all the future of public sector organizing. When all of the teachers in the state show up at the Capital, the legislature listens. When public sector workers can forge deep, meaningful ties to the community, the people are immune to the lies the legislature tells about us. When public sector workers stand strong together, we force the bosses to deal with our demands.

In states like Iowa and Wisconsin, collective bargaining rights have been stolen from public sector workers. We are going to have to fight for our basic rights as unions. We are going to have to fight like our forebears just to hold on. Teachers in West Virginia fought like that. They understood the hardball politics of labor and capital. Legal or not, they struck. They made the legislature negotiate, and when “the union leadership” caved too early, teachers went back to the picket and won five percent pay raises for all state workers. Teachers in Oklahoma weren’t afraid either. They struck to get a living wage, and to get resources for their criminally underfunded classrooms. The legislature tried to buy the teachers off with their first major raise in years. But that didn’t help the students. So the Oklahoma teachers went back on strike.

AFSCME 2822 stands in solidarity with striking teachers, and we back that up with cash. For this reason, the membership has approved $200 donations to the Oklahoma teachers, the Kentucky teachers, and (soon) the Arizona teachers.
Fight like hell, brothers and sisters.