The West Virginia teachers’ strike, which ended last week, lasted nine days and closed every school in the state. Teachers returned to work after having secured a 5 percent pay raise, among other concessions. West Virginia is hardly a union-friendly state—a right-to-work law went into effect in 2017, and strikes are illegal. Still, some say that the West Virginia teachers’ strike was a harbinger of things to come, with increased labor activism on the horizon. In a blog post for EdNext, however, Leslie Finger contends that the opposite is true, and that “new labor actions will come from employees who have lost their allies in power.” To learn more about how collective bargaining impacts students, read “A Bad Bargain” by Michael F. Lovenheim and Alexander Willén, or view our interactive to see how collective bargaining works throughout the U.S.
—Education Next
