West Virginia's Victory. How and Why They Won.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Last Saturday, I attended what was described as a Mass Solidarity Meeting to support the Oakland teachers and their union, the Oakland Education Association (OEA). The OEA might be going on strike in January and so might the Teachers in Los Angeles. The mass solidarity meeting was called by the East Bay Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). 

“This battle will be difficult”, said the notification for the meeting, “But if we learned anything from Chicago, West Virginia, and Arizona, it is that when teachers, students, parents, and community members stand together in solidarity, we can breathe new life into a movement of working people.”

In the class struggle it is indeed crucial for unity between all workers, on the job and in our communities. Unity about what and with whom is an equally important aspect of this as the old saying goes, “Class consciousness is knowing which side of the fence you are on. Class analysis is figuring out who is there with you.” And at all times we must not underestimate the importance of international working class solidarity. Recognizing that the working class is the force that can change society is no small detail either and unfortunately too many on the left and especially left academia do not really grasp this and seek shortcuts that can only lead to defeat.

But what jumped out at me in this notification, was the attempt to link the present contract disputes in California and the 2012 strike of teachers in Chicago, with the strikes and protests earlier this year in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere. The announcement talks about what was ‘learned’ through those struggles which is positive but leaves out the most important earth-shattering lessons of all. The 2018 strikes were rank-and-file led. They struck despite the leadership not supporting them and they struck in states where striking is ‘illegal’. After an Oakland Education Association official introduced the gathering and never mentioned these crucial differences, some of us had the opportunity to say a few words.  As far as I can recall no one else took the opportunity to point out the obvious so I had an opportunity to speak and pointed this out although I did forget a few things that I will include here.  My short comments are in this video.

The way the strikes and activity were organized earlier this year was the complete opposite to how the leadership of organized labor has conducted such actions for decades. If you have seen the videos of three of the women who played major roles in these actions in Kentucky, West Virginia and Arizona we see, very clearly described in the Arizona strike, that any worker in education was included in the decision making, the actions and so on. Union, non-union, Janitors, cooks, groundskeepers, even teachers from the dreaded ‘charter’ schools were included. This is unprecedented in union battles. They union hierarchy pays lip-service to this sort of inclusion, but the competition between various leaderships and squabbling and fights over jurisdiction and for dues money, not to mention the egos of various leaders, always holds this back.

The other crucial lesson that we stress on our Facts for Working People Blog is that the reason this uprising took place in conservative Republican states is that the union bureaucracy is weaker there or hardly present at all, so it was not powerful enough to stop or crush the movement from below. The Republicans, and to a lesser extent Democrats, have savaged education and teachers’ rights, wages and conditions over the past period as the private sector seeks to get its grubby little hands on education money. The conditions they have to teach under are disgusting, along with their pay and on top of that they end up spending a lot of their own money on supplies. The right-wing state governments have pushed too far, have overplayed their hand.

The trade union bureaucracy cannot ignore these strikes and so they point to them, but they never make these crucial points – and for obvious reasons. They want to push this genie of rank-and-file based actions back in to the bottle because it undermines their policy of cooperation and concessions, under what they call the ‘Team Concept’.  Their position has been that ‘we cannot win’ and claim they have to make a deal and rank and file power threatens this world view. There are the perks and the obscene salaries that many of them receive that contribute to the betrayals but these are secondary.

To broadcast and point to the tremendous victories earlier this year, and the tactics that won them,  West Virginia won a 5 per cent raise for all state workers, is particularly dangerous in California. Some two million workers are affiliated to the California State Labor Federation. The LA Labor Council has 800,000 or more workers affiliated to it. The non-AFL-CIO National Education Association, NEA, the largest union in the US with three million or so members, has around 300,000 members in California. The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) that is affiliated to the AFL-CIO’s American Federation of Teachers, represents another 120,000 “education workers”, including cooks, groundskeepers, janitors and other education personnel. The labor hierarchy is terrified of its own member becoming conscious of this power and acting on it.

I attended California Labor Federation bi-annual conventions in the 1990's and every Democratic Party politician made sure they were represented. The potential power of California's unionized work force must be kept in check. California is the 6th largest economy in the world, it is crucial to Pacific Rim trade and from Canada to Mexico the docks are unionized. None of the top labor officials want to disturb that hornets nest. They are well aware of the affect rising militancy and especially victories will have on the millions of workers outside organized labor.

On the other hand, the bureaucracy is is also much larger than in the Red States, more influential among the ranks and in a stronger position to to try and stop it. But even this force would be brushed aside in the wake of  a significant movement from below. At this point it does not appear there, although my knowledge of the level of rank and file activity in the education unions is limited.  In these times we cannot say it won’t. And that points to another thing – no-one predicted the earlier events: not me, not the left, not the liberal academics and all the other smarty-pants that add intellectual legitimacy to the trade union leaderships concessionary policies.

I am a DSA member but not very active for health reasons but it is refreshing to see the energy and dedication of some of the young people that have flocked in to DSA and taken its membership up to 50,000 or more. This is a significant force and has the potential to have a major affect in society and within organized labor.  The teachers’ meeting we attended had about 150 people at it. Individuals on the left have joined DSA and were very present. I looked at the agenda and the only scheduled speaker I saw was the Oakland Education Association official. I was told a state NEA full-timer was also present no doubt to ensure things stayed within the confines of standard fare.  But after the woman from the OEA leadership spoke – an uninspiring effort indeed – and before they were going to break out in to ‘groups’ in order to plan solidarity actions, the announcer said that people who were bringing solidarity greetings could come up and say a few words.

If you watch the video you can see my contribution to the issue was short and I offered solidarity from my former union and I would do what I could to take the issue in to it and that the Facts For Working People blog of which I was a part was in solidarity with the teachers.   

I did say that it would be remiss of me if I did not point to the important omissions as I can say with absolute confidence that any serious effort to drive back the capitalist offensive and transform our unions in to the fighting organizations they should be, will be bring us in to conflict with the present leadership whose interests lie in the status quo. They are trapped by their own consciousness, as I say in the video, they have the same world view as the boss.

I stressed that for 40 years I have been told we cannot do what they did, not just by the bosses, but by union staffers, officials, academics and experts.  I forgot to add that in these situations we are not simply cheerleaders which is what some of the left actually are and what they appeared to be in their contributions before me. Some young people came up and thanked me. One said we need to listen to those that have struggled before us and learn from them, which is good. I have to say that in my experience, normally crowds like this that have a significant petit bourgeois presence can be an arrogant bunch that think they know more than they do. There were very few black folks there, more Latinos and a high percentage of young women.  I left before the breakout in to groups.

Overall, I think the mood was exciting and it was good to see so many young people wanting to help unionized workers win in their struggles for a better life for them and all of us. But again, we must not fall in to the trap of simply being cheerleaders.

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