In These Times

The Lesson From West Virginia Teachers? If You Want to Win, Go on Strike.

By Miles Kampf-Lassin        March 6, 2018

After the nine-day strike, West Virginia teachers won a 5 percent pay increase. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)  

For many years now, observers have been ringing the death knell for the U.S. labor movement. West Virginia teachers haven’t just pumped life back into that movement—they’ve reaffirmed the fundamental principle that the key to building power and winning is for workers to withhold their labor.

On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Jim Justice signed a bill passed by the state legislature that will provide a 5 percent raise for teachers and school personnel. The deal reportedly also includes a 5 percent raise for all state employees, though that will have to be finalized through an upcoming budget bill. The state has also agreed to set up a task force to address the increasing costs in teachers’ healthcare plans—a key issue for striking teachers.

While the details on how the pay hike would be funded were not immediately clear, what is certain is that the prolonged strike has forced the state’s hand—and teachers have won major concessions that will directly improve the lives of workers across the West Virginia.

A remarkable strike

The strike in West Virginia has been astonishing from the outset. Since Feb. 22, more than 20,000 teachers in all 55 counties took part in what became the longeststatewide strike in West Virginia’s history. The mass action was led not by union leadership but by rank-and-file members who refused to accept a compromise proposal last week and continued to rally at the capitol in Charleston, demanding an increase in pay and healthcare protections. They were joined by other public-sector workers standing in solidarity with striking teachers. And teachers benefitted from goodwill and support from the public, which helped make their protest all the more effective.

All of this has taken place in a state that does not officially recognize collective bargaining or the right to strike. Teachers in West Virginia have proven that even under hostile conditions for labor, winning is possible when workers are willing to take risks and stage dramatic and militant actions. This is a lesson that will become all the more important following the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME, a case that could defund public-sector unions across the country.

The strike sent political shockwaves throughout West Virginia, halting other business at the capitol and catapulting the struggle for labor rights into the public eye. Workers draped in red—a callback to the state’s history of mineworker activism—stood on picket lines and held mass rallies across the largely rural state for nine days. The potential effects of the strike on other workers around the country are already beginning to come into focus.

Starting to spread?

Just days after the West Virginia strike began, teachers across the state of Oklahoma announced their intention to walk off the job in order to win higher pay. As is the case in West Virginia, Oklahoma teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation and are similarly prohibited from striking by state law. Yet following West Virginia’s lead, 41,000 Oklahoma teachers could be on the picket lines within weeks, and some teachers are already contemplating a wildcat strike without the official consent of union leadership. Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, tellsBloomberg’s Josh Eidelson that while some teachers may have previously been reticent to engage in a walk-out, the West Virginia strike “has given them an emboldened sense of purpose and a sense of power.”

On Feb. 26, graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign launched an ongoing strike to protect tuition waivers and make the university accessible to low-income students. On that same day, teachers in Jersey City, N.J. voted to authorize a strike over increasing healthcare costs.

And the militancy is not limited to educators: On March 4, 1,400 Frontier Communications workers in West Virginia and Virginia walked off the job to demand a fair contract including increased job security.

Labor’s onslaught

The spirit of defiance and disruption fueling these worker-led actions is a welcome development for a U.S. labor movement that is increasingly under attack. In addition to the threat of an unfavorable ruling in Janus, the Trump administration’s labor department has been hard at work rolling back workers’ rights, including allowingbosses to pocket their workers’ tips, opening the door to the spread of unpaid internships, making it easier for employers to pay women and minority workers less, and refusing to defend an Obama-era rule that would have provided overtime protections.

Meanwhile, the National Labor Relations Board, now stacked with Trump appointees, has repealed a slew of rulings that had previously buoyed union organizing. As Mark Joseph Stern reported for Slate, “Taken together, this spate of decisions will hinder millions of employees’ abilities to unionize and bargain collectively.”

This onslaught comes on top of state-level efforts to curtail the power of labor unions. Twenty-eight states already have “right to work” laws on the books, and the Januscase could, in effect, spread these laws to the public sector in the remaining 22. These laws, allowing union members to “opt out” of paying dues, have been shown to weaken the power of labor unions while undermining their ability to protect and bargain for their members. They also lead to lower wages: Research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that wages are 3.1 percent lower in “right to work” states for both union and non-union workers alike.

The push by many states to privatize public services and starve public budgets of funding through austerity measures has put public-sector workers at greater risk of seeing their jobs disappear—and left them fighting over scraps when it comes to pay and benefits.

Walk off to win

The teachers’ strike in West Virginia is a prime example of how workers can organize and win in the midst of such an anti-labor climate. Rather than agreeing to accept a meager 2 percent pay increase previously signed by the governor, teachers channeled their anger and frustration into collective action. By banding together and refusing to work, the teachers exerted monumental pressure on the state government and won a pay increase more than double what had been on offer a mere two weeks before.

This is the kind of victory that proves why strikes work. Teachers and all workers who are considering walking off the job to win demands can look to West Virginia and say, “it worked for them, so why not for us?”

Winning a 5 percent pay raise is already a triumph, but if West Virginia teachers help spark more militant worker action across the country, the impact of their victory could be transformative—and just what an imperiled labor movement needs.

Miles Kampf-Lassin, a graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School in Deliberative Democracy and Globalization, is the Community Editor at In These Times. He is a Chicago based writer.

Yahoo – Health

Teenagers are testing positive for HIV and syphilis in large numbers in this city

Elise Solé, Yahoo Lifestyle       March 9, 2018

At least 125 people — including a dozen high school kids — in Milwaukee have been infected with HIV, syphilis, or both in one of the biggest outbreaks ever reported in the city.

According to Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel, which broke the story on Tuesday, the outbreak has been identified as a “cluster,” meaning a large number of people have become infected in a particular time and place.

According to local reports, 125 people in Milwaukee, including teens, have been diagnosed with HIV, syphilis, or both. (Photo: Getty Images)

“This is an epidemic people are not talking about enough, and it leads to people taking unnecessary risks,” public health consultant Melissa Ugland told the Journal Sentinel. Those involved may have all connected with one another during a 12-month period, added Ugland, who could not be reached for comment by Yahoo Lifestyle. Many of the infected are men, 45 percent of which are HIV-positive, according to Ugland and other health care advocates.

Representatives from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, the Milwaukee Health Department, and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment.

Less than 10 percent of those infected attend MPS, though the numbers could rise. The district sent a statement to the Journal Sentinel which read, “Because schools have a significant number of students in the 15-18 age group, we are working with the Milwaukee Health Department, in a collaborative and preventive effort, to share information with young people in middle schools and high schools to keep them healthy and to protect their health.”

The news outlet also reports that the cluster is being called a “sentinel event” due to the number of youth infected with HIV and because three area babies were born with syphilis in 2016. “It’s a really big deal,” Ugland told Journal Sentinel.

The National Coalition of STD Directors, which called the Milwaukee case a “crisis,” published a statement Friday calling out lawmakers. “This is unacceptable,” wrote executive director David C. Harvey. “Those of us working in the field know that STD prevention works when it’s funded. Investing just 10 cents per person per year in syphilis prevention could cut the number of syphilis cases by almost a third.”

He added, “Congress must recognize that these epidemics will continue to rage if federal investment does not rise to meet the ever-rising tide of STD rates, and we call on Congress to increase federal funding for STD prevention at CDC.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease that during the first two stages causes painless genital sores, swollen lymph nodes, and fever. The final stage involves no symptoms but can damage the heart and brain, as well as other major organs. Mothers may also pass syphilis to their unborn children during pregnancy and experience complications such as stillbirth. Syphilis is treated with antibiotics.

HIV, which stands for human immunodeficiency virus, is an autoimmune disease contracted through unsafe sex or sex with multiple partners. The virus, for which there is no cure, destroys white blood cells called T-helper cells, and spreads throughout the body, presenting itself with a variety of symptoms, including fever, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes, and night sweats. The late stage of HIV is AIDS, which greatly weakens the immune system and the body’s ability to fight other infections.

“HIV and syphilis spread efficiently within the first few months, often with the person experiencing nonspecific symptoms or those that mimic the flu,” Jeffrey Klausner, MD, a professor of medicine and public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “And because doctors rarely ask questions about patients’ sexual activity — either because they’re embarrassed or untrained — the diagnosis could be missed.”

He adds, “We’ve seen a massive erosion in public health resources due to the 2008 recession. Many city clinics were shut down and never refinanced.”

Klausner says syphilis is treatable if done so timely, and that “HIV is manageable and treatable — not the death sentence it was 20 years ago.”