As the year comes to a close, take a look back to one of the most surprising and exciting labor uprisings of 2018.
Although Janus threatens to deal a blow to U.S. unions, the West Virginia teacher strike suggests a way forward for organized labor. The strike effectively used social media as a tool for mass organization, centered on the needs of the community, and linked its cause to issues of social justice.
Strikes can improve wages and working conditions, but history shows that more formal channels of negotiation are required to resolve the contradictions between society's reliance on public employees and its failure to value their labor.
Republicans on and off the bench are moving to kill unions. But millennials—the most pro-union generation since the 1930s—may yet find a way to organize.
What makes the West Virginia Teachers strike similar to other effective acts of solidarity against entrenched right-wing power is that it was borne in the democratic cauldron of public schools.
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West Virginia shows that we can fight back and win. We talk to two teachers to assess the tentative settlement and what comes next.
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