California’s teachers’ strikes conceal a conflict of generations
Teachers are striking over pay as pensions and health-care costs are eating up budgets
“I LIKE CATS, unicorns and peace, but I love my teacher!” declares one sign, with two rainbows, held by a young pupil at Crocker Highlands Elementary School in Oakland on a weekday morning. She should have been at school, but instead she joined her mother and thousands of Oakland’s teachers outside City Hall. Oakland’s teachers are asking for higher salaries, support staff and more. Teachers in nearby Sacramento may be next to put down chalk and pick up placards.
Such strikes have become a national phenomenon. Teachers in Los Angeles, Denver and West Virginia have gone on strike this year, after action in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma in 2018. Last year around 375,000 teachers and staff went on strike. They accounted for about three-quarters of the total number of American workers who downed tools. As a result, 2018 saw the highest number of workers involved in strikes since 1986.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Civics 101"
United States March 2nd 2019
- The Pentagon changes its focus to Russia and China
- Michael Cohen’s turn in the barrel
- America’s porous wall between church and state
- Congress is trying to create a federal privacy law
- California’s teachers’ strikes conceal a conflict of generations
- The politicisation of white evangelical Christianity is hurting it
- Imagine there’s no politics
From the March 2nd 2019 edition
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