Build rank-and-file committees! Prepare a nationwide strike to defend public education!
North Carolina and the next stage of the teachers’ revolt
By
the WSWS Teacher Newsletter
16 May 2018
Thousands of teachers and their supporters are marching in Raleigh, North Carolina today to demand decent wages and benefits and increased school funding. The protest, along with one by South Carolina teachers on Saturday, is part of a nationwide revolt by educators against the bipartisan war on public education and school workers.
Over the past several months, hundreds of thousands of teachers and support staff have engaged in statewide walkouts in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, and other strikes and protests in Kentucky, Colorado, New Jersey and many other states, plus the US territory of Puerto Rico.
This is part of an international struggle. Last week, 270,000 teachers carried out a nationwide strike in the South American country of Colombia to demand improved pay and health benefits. On Tuesday, 2,100 school bus drivers walked out in Montreal and across the Canadian province of Quebec because they earn less than $15,000 a year.
Now teachers in North Carolina—which ranks 39th in the country in teacher pay and per-pupil funding—are demanding the restoration of a decade of funding cuts, pay raises for all school workers, the hiring of new nurses and social workers, and a plan to repair crumbling schools and reduce class sizes. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper has proposed to allocate less than $100 million to increase teachers’ salaries this year, promising only that their pay might reach parity with the national average over the next four years.
There is enormous support for a united struggle that will link up teachers with all sections of the working class. Serving…