Strikes, Legal or Not
By 
Many of the teachers strikes of recent years have been illegal, since most states have laws on the books banning public sector employees (or at least some public sector employees) from striking. And yet….who cares. What is an illegal strike? The answer is a strike that doesn’t work. Schools can’t fill the teaching positions open right now. What power do states have to stop teachers from striking then? The answer is that they don’t. We saw this in West Virginia in 2018, when it turned out that if you strike, no one is going to be rushing into your job making $35,000 in a mold filled dilapidated school with no resources. The state could do nothing.
But it’s not only in states such as West Virginia. It’s the same in New England. That includes in Massachusetts, where teachers do not have the right the strike. And yet…..
A wildly successful, illegal three-day strike by the Andover Education Association in November has reverberated statewide for educators in Massachusetts.
The lowest-paid instructional assistants got a 60 percent wage jump immediately. Classroom aides on the higher end of the scale got a 37 percent increase.
Members won paid family medical leave, an extra personal day, fewer staff meetings, and the extension of lunch and recess times for elementary students.
Andover is 20 miles north of Boston, and the strike involved 10 schools.
For 10 months and 27 bargaining sessions, the Andover School Committee had insisted that none of these demands was possible. But by the end of the first day of the strike, they had ceded many items. By day three, they agreed to almost all of the union’s demands.
Public school workers can’t legally strike in Massachusetts—but Andover’s is just one of a series of school unions that have struck over the last four years, defying the ban, and in some cases paying heavy fines as a result.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association is pushing for legislation that would legalize public sector strikes after six months of bargaining.
The wins at Andover come after years of building rank-and-file power and democracy within the Andover Education Association (AEA).
When President Matt Bach and his slate won leadership in 2019, they startled the district by refusing to meet privately with the superintendent, insisting that all meetings would include at least one member.
The new leaders opened up union meetings and budgets. They shared union budget details, including that coffers had been significantly depleted by leadership travel to conferences. They encouraged discussion of critical issues, and the union started organizing building by building.
The first big fight was at South Elementary School, where a bullying principal was targeting teachers. The new union leaders sent out a survey about the school climate, but the recently deposed union leaders alleged that those asking for the survey were themselves the bullies.
Siding with the former union leaders, the district began an investigation and interviewed dozens of teachers. Instead of being intimidated, members got angry and organized a rally to call out the bullying. Under this pressure, the principal and the head of human resources were removed by the superintendent.
You can read about the rest of the strike. But the bigger point is that talking about the legal nature of a strike is really kind of an abstract notion. Yes, it’s always possible that the state could crack down and fire everyone. After all, that is what Reagan did with the air traffic controllers in 1981. But the idea of firing teachers in 2024 is extremely unlikely because it would just mean kids did not have school. The politics of striking are thus far more in teachers’ favor than we might believe. Why not strike? Especially when your strikes have the kids in mind anyway, as they have through this teachers strike wave over the past few years.