School’s out in West Virginia. For the fourth workday in a row, public school teachers have walked out of class and into rallies at the state capitol. They’re protesting low pay and the years-long decimation of the state’s Public Employees Insurance Agency, which is meant to provide all public employees with affordable health insurance. Their demands are simple: They want a living wage and insurance they can actually use. Instead, the state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, initially proposed a paltry raise of 1 percent a year for the next five years. Though he later signed a bill doubling that figure, teachers say it still isn’t enough to make ends meet. And the state legislature’s refusal to increase PEIA funding commensurate with inflation and increases in pharmaceutical prices means that it essentially cuts funding every single year.

Many teachers have already left the state for better jobs elsewhere; teachers who stay often face dire financial straits. The walkouts aren’t whims, but carefully considered, collectively agreed upon responses to longstanding injustice. West Virginia legislators have responded with temporary, piecemeal solutions, and the Justice administration has responded with threats. The state schools superintendent has called the work stoppage “illegal.” State Attorney General Patrick Morrissey has threatened to issue an injunction to force teachers back to work.

I think you need to be back in the classroom tomorrow. #wvgov — Governor Jim Justice (@WVGovernor) February 26, 2018

These aren’t idle threats. Public employees have no collective bargaining rights in West Virginia, a so-called right-to-work state, so teachers have accepted serious risk by launching the work stoppage. But so far the threats aren’t working. If anything, they’ve backfired: West Virginia’s teachers are still walking out in a real show of populist politics, one with implications for embattled workers across the country.



Organizing reportedly began back in November, in a private Facebook group for public school teachers. West Virginia teachers don’t have to join a union, and since a union’s political leverage depends partly on its sector density, the state effectively pits unions against each other for support. The Facebook group, then, created an alternative, grassroots path to direct action.

Originally, teachers planned a lobby day, but as grievances mounted, so did support for more drastic action. “All school personnel, even those not in a union, had to vote to approve the work stoppage,” said Audra Slocum, an education professor at West Virginia University who’s been involved with the protests. “That meant that even those teachers and personnel absent for the in-person vote on that particular afternoon were counted as a ‘NO’ vote—actively counted against the work stoppage. All the same, the Monongalia County rate was 89 percent in favor.” (Monongalia is the third-largest county in the state.)