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by: Hollowdweller
All public employees in WV know what the Wisconsin public employees are facing.
WV Public Employees have no collective bargaining rights, can't strike, and are 49th in the nation in pay.
We see the gov and legislature raise their own salaries while WV public employees don't even get a cost of living raise.
We can also see that the legislature raises the amount public employees have to pay into insurance all the time, many times without any increase in pay.
It's interesting that Walker identifies collective bargaining as the culprit in the budget problems due to pension issues yet in WV public employees have NO right to collective bargaining, strikes are illegal, and the we still have underfunded pensions and are talking of cutting benefits further.
Meanwhile we see the state in the past negotiating environmental fines down. Not pursuing firms that failed to pay workers comp premiums, the A James Manchin pension fund fiasco that lost the state millions. Super tax credits that were secret and businesses getting tax credits, staying in the state long enough to collect them, and then pulling up stakes and leaving.
Now that Walker and the GOP have found a way to cut their benefits and remove their right to bargain it's interesting reading the various liberal blogs talk of recall or the next election.
I personally believe that they are dreaming. Outrage just doesn't last long. As soon as the protestors go home the issue will be forgotten by the public, Walker will be a conservative hero and the public will go back to worring about what Charlie Sheen is doing.
If WV has anything to teach Wisconsin other than by our poor example. It has to be in history. The WV teachers strike of 1990.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Twenty years ago, Donna Hark of Charleston taught at Horace Mann Junior High School in Kanawha City, but as winter turned into spring, she wasn't in the classroom.
Instead, she and her colleagues marched from Laidley Field to the state Capitol Complex and rallied with other teachers at the Capitol Theater, as part of West Virginia's first -- and, so far, only -- statewide teachers' strike.
"Everyone stuck together," said Hark, now retired. "It was really great that way. I just remember all of the marches."
People immersed in the 11-day strike recalled frustration, tension and arguments on all sides of the debate. Many also said it led to lasting and positive changes in education.
Teachers in nine southern counties walked out on March 7, 1990, after negotiations between Caperton and the unions failed. Teachers in Boone, Fayette, Logan, Mingo and Raleigh counties were among the first to walk out.
Within two days, teachers in 40 of the state's 55 counties had joined the strike, including Kanawha.
"Teachers had never been on strike in West Virginia," Meadows said. "So this was a new experience for them."
Critics blasted teachers for several weeks. Caperton warned that the law did not allow them to strike, and said on March 9 that striking teachers who returned to work the following Monday would not lose pay or benefits for days off work.
"We didn't feel that we were doing anything illegal," Meadows said. "This was freedom of speech."
Darrell McGraw, who then was a former Supreme Court justice and now is attorney general, said at the time that strike-related activities, such as picketing, were protected under the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Contracts signed as a condition of gaining employment were not really lawful contracts, he said at the time.
Some parents also protested the strike. In schools that were open, many students attended with little work to do. One newspaper photo showed bored children watching cartoons in a school cafeteria.
Meadows, who has since retired and lives in Simpsonville, S.C., said the teachers weathered the criticism.
"They had a tough skin," she said. "This was our livelihood."
The strike forced Caperton to "act on some of his passions," Randolph said.
"My admiration for Gaston is really unsurpassed," Brown said, adding that Caperton did a remarkable job of empowering school employees.
During Caperton's eight years in office, teacher salaries improved from 48th in the country to 30th, Haney said. Teachers saw multi-year pay increases that totaled about $5,000 in just a few years.
For the first time in many years, West Virginia was able to compete with teacher salaries in nearby states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Many teachers lost pay for the days missed during the strike, but felt it was worth it because teachers had never received a multi-year pay increase, Meadows said.
http://www.wvea.org/news/20str...
I hear people in Wisconsin saying that if they strike they will lose public support. I don't think the WV teachers had a lot of public support. What enabled them to reach their goals was they stuck together and if the governor had of fired them all he would have had to close school because so many were out that they couldn't replace that number. Especially at the low salary they made.
With what teachers had gained in the strike they moved up to 30th in pay in the US. I think currently they have slipped to 46th. However WV other public employees who did not engage in the illegal strike have remained 49th or 50th in the nation still.
A lesson learned |
