The time is right for unions to organize and rebuild unions that will take the fight to the GOP anti-union/anti-worker machines. We should just look at how the West Virginia teachers won their fight for a wage increase. The teachers were organized, they planned every detail of their walkout in advanced to ensure the success of the walkout. The organizers worked with students’ parents and local businesses to ensure the walkout would not harm those in need. Daycare centers and meals were organized in advanced so the students who were dependent on the school lunches would not go without.
This walkout was not just a single school, but the entire state. Had the organizer organized one school, the board of trustees would have beat the school employees back, but organizing the entire state, the sheer number of employees standing together against a single state entity, allowed the employees to win.
If union workers follow the example of the West Virginia workers’ wildcat strike or what the old International Workers of the World (IWW) called a Wobble. The wildcat or Wobble takes the pressure off unions and keeps the unions from being sued.
How did these West Virginia teachers win when so many walkout strikes have failed throughout the years? It was well planned, like a battle, as outlined in the book “Art of War.” To build support for a long strike there must be a good public relations program set up to take care of the workers and those effected by the strike, in this case the students, who depended on the school lunches.
The organizers contacted churches, specially the Church of Nazarene, which gathered donations from stores, farmers, restaurants, strikers and other workers and dozens of volunteers. This kind of operation was organized in every county across the state of WV. It was a class of people with the courage to rise up, fight for what’s right and they won.
It looks like Oklahoma is next up with its 41,000 teachers, and 36,000 have already signed up to do a wildcat strike. Oklahoma state workers and teachers will stand together. The entire state could someday turn into a countrywide walkout over inequity and inequality.
If other workers are thinking about something like what WV did and Oklahoma is preparing to do, a good book to read and study is “Bread Upon the Waters” by Rose Pesotta. Other books worth reading and studying is “The Iron Heel” and “The Dream of Debs” by Jack London.
Labor is back.
In 2026 unions worldwide must educate and expand their memberships or face certain death. We need to educate our workers to understand that the republican party does not care about, does not deserve their support or votes and only cares about the billionaires. The GOP is their enemy and not their friends. The GOP and billionaires are the workers’ enemy. They want the workers’ sweat and blood for as cheap as they can get it. These greedy people and their insatiable appetite for more leaving us with much less will not stop until we’re forced to work for scraps and fighting each other for the pittance. They will not invite you to golf with them or go hunting or to dinner with them. In fact, they are always in pursuit of ways to destroy our unions and the way of life we’ve obtain by being union. One way they are doing this is to use the court system, especially the lop-sided Supreme Court, to take away our union rights and to get more states to vote for The Right to Work, which leaves work...
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