For nine days, teachers in West Virginia went on strike to protest their painfully low wages – so low, in fact, that the state is ranked 48th in the U.S. in terms of teacher salaries. Ultimately, the teachers attained a five percent pay raise as described in the bill signed by Governor James C. Justice. But the course of the strike was anything but pleasant.
First of all, the teachers were engaging in unlawful activity, as they do not legally have the right to collectively bargain in the state. This led to the unorganized, “uprising”-esque protests shown in the media throughout the nine-day ordeal.
Why the decentralized form of protests? Unionism in the U.S. has not been doing so great lately, and recently the Janus v AFSCMEcase that reached the Supreme Court isn’t helping matters. The case concerns the obligation of non-union members to pay fees to support their employers’ labor unions. The Court has not yet delivered a verdict, but regardless the case poses a threat to the financial stability of labor unions.
Many people watching the strike unfold day by day on the news may have been appalled at the fact that schools were closed for so long. But the truth is that teachers in West Virginia were left with no other option than to act relatively militant. Why are they not allowed to strike? They are workers just like those in any other industry and deserve – in a nation that boasts of its democratic ideals – to have the right to negotiate their pay and conditions. Their low pay contributes to a cycle of poverty that has trapped West Virginia in a slew of problems, arguably the biggest of which is the opioid crisis. People are literally selling painkillers so that they can afford other prescription medications that they need.
In addition to low salaries, teachers in West Virginia are provided poor health-care benefits. One teacher who has multiple sclerosis has been denied medications and said that “the battle of having to deal with the insurance kind of took over more than actually having the disease itself.”
I think the takeaway point here is that teachers in West Virginia (and the rest of the country, for that matter) are undervalued. They are taken for granted, they are barely treated as professionals in terms of being able to negotiate their own needs. One study that created teacher status rankings for different countries based on how much they were respected found that teachers in western countries such as the U.S. and U.K. were ranked lower than those in Asian countries such as China, Korea, and Singapore.
Fortunately, it seems like the issue of teachers’ pay and status may finally come to the forefront. Teachers in several other states around the country are taking the West Virginia strike as a source of inspiration to plan their own movements to draw attention to the problem of low pay. Hopefully, labor unions can re-emerge as a feasible way of negotiating demands, because otherwise, the “uprising” seen in West Virginia will continue to spread and grow until it can no longer be ignored. It’s high time that we speak up for professionals who are given arguably one of the most important jobs in the country: cultivating its future.
