Education Week - September 28, 2022 - 6

Q&A
Why Teachers Are
Going on Strike
This Fall-and What
Could Come Next
In a few places, the start of the school year has already been
disrupted-not by virus outbreaks, but by teacher strikes.
Teachers in Columbus, Ohio, went on strike for the first
time in 47 years last month, coinciding with the first day of
school. The district started the year instead with substitute
teachers and nonunion staff leading remote instruction.
The teachers secured and approved a new contract that
included pay raises, a commitment to add heating and air
conditioning to student learning areas, a reduction in class
sizes, and a paid parental-leave program for teachers.
Then, more than 6,000 teachers in Seattle went on strike
for five days. Teachers there won a 7 percent pay raise in the
first year of the new contract, with an additional 4 percent
and then 3 percent bump the following years. The three-year
contract, which was approved by members last week, also
adds workload protections for teachers, school counselors,
nurses, and social workers, according to the Seattle Times.
Also this fall, teachers in Kent and Ridgefield, cities in
Washington state, went on strike. In both districts, the strikes
lasted for more than a week.
Since 2018, there has been a historic wave of teacher
Conversation with
Jon Shelton
associate professor and chair of democracy and justice
studies at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay and
the author of the book Teacher Strike! Public Education
and the Making of a New American Political Order
activism, with statewide teacher walkouts in West Virginia,
Oklahoma, and Arizona, as well as smaller-scale statewide
protests in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia,
Kentucky, and Colorado. There have also been several
big-city teacher strikes, including in Los Angeles, Chicago,
Denver, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, Minn.
Much of this activism fell under the umbrella of RedforEd,
a rallying cry for higher teacher wages and more school
funding.
To understand how the latest strikes fit into this pattern and
whether they signal the possibility for more activism to come,
Education Week spoke to Jon Shelton, who studies teacher
strikes and labor relations.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
With the strikes this fall, are
there any common themes
that you're seeing? Or are
they localized issues?
I think this trend that we've seen
with teacher unions for about a decade
now, going back to the Chicago
Teachers Union in 2011, is teachers really
putting the needs of students front
and center. Just like in other strikes that
have happened over the past decade,
teachers are concerned about their
salaries and benefits, and that's always
a part of the negotiations-especially
now given that inflation means that
without a significant salary increase,
teachers are getting a pay cut.
In Seattle, a big part of those demands,
in addition to salary increases,
was enhanced access to special education
services. And that really builds
on the social justice orientation the
[teachers' union there] has had for
at least a decade now. They've in the
past negotiated over things like racial
equity.
And then, in Columbus, it's literally
going on strike over climate-controlled
classrooms, which is obviously about
the working conditions of the teachers,
but it's also about the learning conditions
of students. Imagine trying to
teach 30 5th graders when it's 95 degrees
in a classroom-it's impossible.
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Education Week - September 28, 2022

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