Portside

It’s actually illegal for teachers to strike in West Virginia. They’re doing it anyway. Thousands of public school teachers across West Virginia went on strike this week in protest over their pay and benefits, affecting more than 277,000 students.

Union leaders hope that by organizing teachers and staff at charter schools, and giving them a voice to advocate for more resources through collective bargaining, the charter model will become less attractive to investors and public officials.

Teachers at Cesar Chavez Prep will be the first teachers at a charter school in the District to unionize.

To create pressure on the district, a group of teachers organized their own protest. The 11,000-member Philadelphia Federation of Teachers didn’t authorize the action. Instead it was a rank-and-file group that got the employer's attention.

This election proved that you overlook the labor movement at your peril. Democrats took rank-and-file union members for granted. They must make labor central to the conversation again .

With 3,000 teachers gathered in Minneapolis for the American Federation of Teachers convention, the two Twin Cities teachers unions led a march to protest the recent police killing of an African American man, Philando Castile, at a traffic stop. Educators want to link their struggle for resources for public schools with the wider need for public investment in neighborhoods and cities, particularly for communities of color.

A National Labor Relations Board hearing officer has ruled that Teach for America teachers should be included in the union at a Detroit charter school chain.

Even though AFT's press release explained the process of how members were polled, including several town hall meetings, multiple surveys and a "you decide" website, the announcement of the endorsement erupted a firestorm of outrage from AFT teacher members nationwide on twitter.