Kentucky: Teachers Shut Down Schools Again Ignore Union/District Deal

Facebook has been down most of the day for me and still is. This is a further report from WAV3News in Kentucky about today's school shutdowns. This is all being organized  from the bottom up and is beginning to sow some fear not only among the employers and the state but also the established union leadership that has been bypassed. We can see in the video below how angry top down leadership can get when the troops move in to struggle. This is the head of the KY120 group. We always stress on this blog how the trade union hierarchy is terrified of real victories as it threatens the relationship they have built with the boss based on labor peace. This development with educators will be closely watched by the concession obsessed leadership of the AFL-CIO whose turn to face the anger from below in a more organized way is not so far away.

Below this post is a short video of Facts For Working People co-founder Richard Mellor speaking at a DSA meeting in Oakland building support for the Oakland educator's strike. He took the opportunity to warn young workers new to the movement that they will inevitably be drawn in to a conflict with the trade union hierarchy if they seriously want to transform our unions and change the concessionary course that we have been in so far. This cannot be avoided and the teachers last year and again in 2019 are leading the way, are showing union members and all workers how it is done. Too often, numerous groups that become involved in these union struggles, including many of the self styled socialist organizations end up as cheerleaders, never questioning the failed policies of the established leadership.  Cheerleading ends though when the real movement from below raises its head.

Sickouts still happened despite district’s plan with union, so who organized them?

Reprinted from Wave3News Louisville

By Sara Rivest | March 13, 2019 at 6:25 PM EST - Updated March 13 at 7:30 PM

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Jefferson County students were out of school again Wednesday as teacher call outs caused the district to cancel class for the fifth time in two weeks.

The local teachers’ union, the Jefferson County Teachers Association (JCTA), worked with the district to prevent this, but their plan fell flat as teachers organized a sickout through social media anyway.

Last spring, KY 120 United successfully organized protests of the pension reform bill. But this year, they didn’t call for the teacher sickouts.

Instead, several Facebook pages led by JCPS teachers have popped up over the last few weeks.

“Because the legislation affects us so differently than it does the rest of the state, the teachers are pretty united on the message that we want -- but at the same time there’s some teachers that feel more action should be taken,” Noe Middle School teacher Jason Nelson said.

Last week, he created the Kentucky Teacher Demands page on Facebook.

“There are groups of teachers in JCPS who feel like we’re in a unique situation and we need to take the lead," Nelson said. “And we need to step up and educate the public.”

Nelson said his page is focused on sharing information, not making calls to action.

Before he branched off with his own page, Nelson was part of JCPS Leads. The secret Facebook group has since become a space to make sickout plans.

Posts are often shared on public pages.

“The community needs to be able to participate in this dialogue and participate in the shaping of our public schools,” Gay Adelmann, of Dear JCPS, said.

Dear JCPS was started a few years ago by Shawnee parents. Now it has more than 10,000 followers, acting as a sounding board for parents and teachers across the district.

"A lot of the messages have been controlled from the top down, up until now,” Adelmann said. “With the advent of social media it has definitely made it easier for grassroots groups to organize and for rank and file teachers to communicate.”

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