Rank-and-File Rebels: Theories of Power and Change in the 2018 K–12 Education Strikes

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Twelve
  In Roundtable Session: The Work of Teachers: Unionization, Labor, and Retention (Table 16)

Abstract

In spring 2018, a wave of rank-and-file rebellion swept schools across the south and southwest US, among other places. Educators in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona pushed their trade unions, school boards, and school administrations to shut schools down to increase wages and restore education funding. Despite stringent anti-union labor laws, rank-and-file educators organized on the periphery and sometimes beyond their reticent state unions to take direct action. The paper draws from a longer book-length project examining the spring 2018 “red” state strikes and offers insight into the racial and gendered contexts of and tensions in educators’ rank-and-file organizing. Grappling with these tensions is important for realizing shared visions of just and liberatory education in labor movement spaces.

Authors

• Erin Lee Dyke, Oklahoma State University
  Presenting Author

• Brendan Muckian-Bates, West Virginia University
  Non-Presenting Author