The teachers are the 48th lowest paid in the US, and many make less than $15 an hour after deducting for healthcare, union leaders say

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

“We gotta keep the blood moving,” said union leader Kim Martin as she revved up a picket line of 50 teachers dancing in the freezing rain to Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough.

Teachers in West Virginia, who are the 48th lowest paid in the nation, quit school for a two-day illegal wildcat strike on Thursday, the first time they have taken such action since 1990.

They are demanding that state legislature vote to increase their wages, health care, and stop the proposed elimination of traditional teachers seniority.

With starting salaries set at $31,000 a year, union leaders say that after deducting for health care costs, many teachers in the state make less than $15 an hour.

Now, the Republican lead state legislature is proposing to give teachers only a 2% raise while drastically increasing healthcare costs so high that some teacher’s deductibles would more than triple.



“It’s scary. I worry constantly about how I am going to afford my medicine” says 20-year teaching veteran Jackie Shriner who already pays $500 a month just to afford her insulin.

Despite the state enacting anti-union “right-to-work” legislation in 2016, support for the teachers among the public remains strong in the once union stronghold of West Virginia.

On the picket line outside of Bridge Street Elementary, cars drove by honking and yelling in support of the striking teachers.



“Out of the last three hours, we have only gotten one middle finger,” said Bridge Street Elementary teacher Lindsay Armmirante. “The rest has been all honks, thumbs up, fist bumps, smiles, it’s actually been a lot of fun”



Horns blared as Sub Express shop owner Perry Wade stopped his car to get out and thank the teachers. “It’s not much, but it’s more than they are giving you in Charleston,” joked Wade as he hands them cards for free six-inch subs.

However, support for the teachers isn’t nearly as strong with the area’s State senator Ryan Ferns, the Republican majority leader in the state Senate.



“The teachers and their unions are threatening to strike and are making a threat to lock schools down and leave students in the cold,” Ferns told the Wheeling News-Register last Friday. “As a Legislature, we are not willing to respond to that,”



The comment outraged many of Wheeling’s teachers.



“I have taught girls that were pregnant that were raped by their fathers,” said Lindsay Armmirante. “We have paid electric bills, we have paid water bills, we have taken kids shopping for clothes. There is nothing that we don’t do for our kids here if they need. So to insult us that we don’t care about our kids its way over the line”.

As the state’s board of education weighs bringing legal charges against the state’s teachers unions for engaging in an illegal strike, teachers out on the picket line at Bridge Street Elementary said they were undeterred as the public rallies to support them.

“It’s been really neat to see a state come together with the way like we have because there are so many areas that we are divided as a state, but this seems like one thing where we have a lot of support,” says Armmirante.

