The Governor promised a wage increase of 5% and teachers agreed to end the statewide strike.
Teachers will return to work Thursday.
Governor agrees to pay raise ending West Virginia teacher strike
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/us/west-virginia-teachers-strike/index.html
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think it is important to highlight, once again, a young student at the center of creating change for a major issue affecting thousands. A sixth grade student at the table, changing the governor’s mind about salary increase which he adamantly opposed. Thinking of the words championed by Dixie Goswami, “Young students are resources to be developed, not problems to be solves.” This is a wonderful example for the promotion of students to be in positions as agents of change.
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“Young students are resources to be developed, not problems to be solves.”
NO!!! NO!!! NO!!!
Students are not “resources to be developed”. That is an outrageous thought that views humans as something (notice I didn’t say someone) to be exploited. And that thought is dead wrong in all senses of the word wrong. Neither are they “problems to be solves(sic)”. Again, viewing children as objects (problems) is dead wrong.
Students should be viewed as the individual human beings that they are with all the human rights as espoused in the various rights documents of Western societies. Anything less is an abomination.
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This is good news as it affirms the value of collective bargaining. If unions lose the Janus case, we will all be worse off. If unions cannot represent workers, then lobbyists should not be able to represent companies.
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retired teacher,
You wrote, “f unions cannot represent workers, then lobbyists should not be able to represent companies.”
BINGO. You are so right. Thank you.
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The teachers settled without winning concessions on high health plan costs which brought out so many teachers in the first place. For teachers to shut down a whole state school system is historic and marvelous, so why did they go back leaving such a big item on the table? Gov. promised a study team to look into it—big deal. The muscle of an organized massive strike is a goal abandoned by leaders of AFT/NEA Weingarten and Garcia. The decimation of public schools is very far along. A walkout cannot be easily produced but when it erupts, teachers have to push far to recover ground lost to years of privatization and weak union leadership. WV teachers in this case had the initiative and were on the offensive. There is a warning here about settling for too little when you occupy the moral high ground and have solidarity.
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Agreed. It is rare to get the entire state to walk out and strike.
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The union executives hailed a worthless agreement with the state officials for an inadequate pay increase that may never be adopted and leaves untouched soaring health care costs that have meant a continual decline in the real income of educators.
The attempt to shut down the strike on this basis, even as it is winning growing support from teachers and other workers throughout the country, is the latest in a long line of such betrayals. It confirms the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site throughout the strike that teachers confront as bitter enemies not only the Republican and Democratic officials, but also the organizations that take workers’ dues money and claim to represent their interests.
Yesterday in Janus, David Frederick, the lawyer for AFSCME, made the statement that If agency fees were eliminated, “you can raise an untold specter of labor unrest throughout the country.” This position, unions as political police, was echoed by the Illinois Solicitor General David Franklin who also argued that the state has “an interest… in being able to work with a stable, responsible, independent counterparty that’s well-resourced enough that it can be a partner with us.” Illinois has been at the forefront of slashing public education.
The strike by West Virginia teachers is an expression of a much broader development. There is deep anger in all sections of the working class over social inequality, declining wages, soaring health care costs and all of the manifold manifestations of social crisis. The “specter of labor unrest” that terrifies the unions no less than it terrifies the ruling class is beginning to materialize.
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What if he lied to get the teachers back to work? This won’t be the first time a leader in the GOP lied to make it look like they were getting something done.
Will the teachers go out on strike again if that GOP governor doesn’t deliver on his promise?
Who is Jim Justice? I’ll tell you, he has a history that reveals a corrupt person who is more than capable of lying.
For instance, Justice’s mining companies have a history of safety violation and unpaid taxes; in 2016, NPR called him the “top mine safety delinquent” in the United States.[9]
Justice owes millions of dollars to the government in back taxes, and unpaid coal mining fees and fines: “His mining companies owe $15 million in six states, including property and minerals taxes, state coal severance and withholding taxes, and federal income, excise and unemployment taxes, as well as mine safety penalties, according to county, state and federal records.”[10]
And he sold some of his coal businesses to the Russian company Mechel for $568 million in 2009 and in 2015 bought them back for just $5 million.
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Striking works! (Alas, West Virginia’s teachers deserve even more than they’re looking forward to gaining.)
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