Wesley Fryer
The Oklahoma teachers’ nine-day walkout ended on April 12 without resolution, and there are fears that the unity behind the school shutdowns will be lost. Nevertheless, the solidarity on display has been historic, providing a valuable lesson in the political power teachers can have.
As the National Education Association’s Senior Counsel Jason Walta explains, the recent teacher work stoppages in Oklahoma and other states offer a possible preview of what could happen if the U.S. Supreme Court does what is expected and issues an anti-union decision in Janus v. AFSCME.
Teachers are challenging a decades-long nationwide conservative campaign to shrink government so that it could be drowned in a bathtub. Oklahoma unions and groups advocating for progressive causes have been stymied for decades by the three-fourths legislative majority required to raise taxes. And term limits mean that the state’s legislature lacks institutional memory.
At the end of the walkout’s first week, teachers had succeeded in pressuring the legislature to pass an additional $40 million in taxes. When combined with the already agreed upon $6,100 average pay raise, 95 percent of the teachers’ demands were met.
None of these victories would have been possible without the support of local school boards, students, and parents. Some 30,000 to 35,000 people a day attended events during the walkout’s first week. Education supporters marched from Edmond, Del City, and Norman.
Still, it took both the threat of an extended walkout and an initiative petition to persuade the legislature to increase the gross production oil tax to 5 percent. The focus now should be to raise the tax all the way back to 7 percent, as well as to defeat an initiative that would defund the pay increase. Both efforts have great potential for building unity among education allies and dividing their opponents.
Also, teachers would do well to remember the needs of state employees, who pulled out of the walkout just before the Oklahoma Education Association ended it. Oklahoma Public Employees Association Executive Director Sterling Zearley explained, “Recent discussions focus solely on education funding and exclude public safety, veterans’ services, mental health, protective services, or any other state agency services.”
Given the legal and political complexities of the job actions, perhaps the pullout was inevitable, but the overall needs of students and families are clearly intertwined with the goals of educators. By 2016, Oklahoma state lawmakers had cut social and medical support agencies by one-quarter to one-third of their 2009 levels.
The biggest issue, however, is the November election.
As former teacher, Senator J.J. Dossett of Owasso put it, teachers have transitioned from apathetic to activists. Led by teachers, hundreds of additional candidates filed for office last week, leaving almost no Republicans unchallenged.
In Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky, and other conservative states, teachers are leading an innovative counterattack.
In Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky, and other conservative states, teachers are leading an innovative counterattack. Most of the current crop of lawmakers weren’t in office when the legislation was passed to impose extreme tax cuts and to push corporate school reform on educators. The hope of many older advocates is that a new generation of pragmatic conservatives and energized Democrats will learn from the fiscal messes small-government ideologues created.
Harold Meyerson, executive editor of The American Prospect recently recalled his old wisecrack: “China has strikes but no unions; America has unions but no strikes.” A series of teacher rebellions in “Right to Work” states show how the United States is “becoming more like China every day,” he wrote. “So maybe – just maybe – we’re seeing the 21st century version of 1934.” That was the year when general strikes pushed the New Deal to the left.