The Atlantic looks at the history of American teacher strikes and today’s unprecedented wave of teacher activism…
“Many teachers’ unions have been modifying their brand and their explicit mission, placing emphasis on issues beyond educators’ own pocketbooks. In last year’s West Virginia strike, for example, teachers decried students’ limited access to quality instruction; in Oklahoma, their targets were outdated textbooks and dilapidated facilities; in Los Angeles, they condemned the paucity of counselors and classrooms packed like sardines.”
So much for the labor movement’s funeral
A Washington Post columnist concludes the right-wing strategy to topple unions with the Janus court case has backfired.
“Many of the agency-fee payers, the ones whose free speech was allegedly compromised because they were ‘forced to subsidize a union,’ as Alito put it, have become full members of unions instead of quitting. Rank-and-file members, meanwhile, perceiving the threat to the union, have become more aggressive in recruitment. Workplace units have organically launched everything from social media campaigns and town-hall meetings to civil disobedience and full-blown strikes.”
