Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/990701
13 Q2 2018 / CINEMONTAGE criminally underfunded schools for nine days. For a portion of that period, the work stoppage was effectively a wildcat strike — one in which militant rank-and-file teachers held the line despite calls from union officials to stand down. Over the course of their struggle, the educators built broad community support and brought intense pressure to bear upon West Virginian politicians. Their solidarity paid off; the teachers returned to work in early March having won a sizeable raise (five times the increase legislators had initially offered) and beaten back proposed changes to their health-care coverage. Moreover, they made a political priority of state reinvestment in public education. That victory has inspired a wave of teacher unrest in other states (Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina), one that continues to play out as this issue of CineMontage goes to press. Each state's struggle is its own unique story and has unfolded according to the particularities of its characters and setting, but it's clear that teachers are taking lessons from their colleagues around the country and are transforming that inspiration into the power to score material gains. It is worth noting that most of these states lack strong public-sector unions. In fact, all but Colorado are so-called "right to work" states, meaning that public employees there already effectively live in a post-Janus world. For those of us rightly worried about the damage the Supreme Court will likely do, these teachers offer examples of how rank-and-file organizing can advance workers' interests even in the most hostile of legal environments. If this unlikely eruption of teacher militancy represents the most obvious sign of potential life in an ailing labor movement, it's not the only evidence that unions aren't dead yet. This spring has also seen a remarkable flurry of new private-sector organizing. In the course of a single week in mid-April, over 10,000 employees across a variety of industries won union representation nationwide — a dramatic uptick from the usual pace of organizing. April's notable victories included flight attendants at JetBlue, graduate employees at Harvard, dining hall workers at Tufts, casino employees in Connecticut, journalists at The New Republic, satirists at The Onion and fast-food workers in Portland, among others. Our own union scored a significant win in April, too, by organizing editorial employees at Nickelodeon Animation Studios. Nick's editors had overwhelmingly signed union authorization cards, indicating they sought Editors Guild representation. A week after the union notified management, we had an agreement for recognition of the employees' decision to unionize. Unlike many employers that actively resist their employees' efforts to organize — aggressively campaigning against unionization and insisting upon the intervention of the National Labor Relations Board — Nickelodeon opted not to contest its editorial crew's decision to go union. GET TING ORGANIZED CONTINUED ON PAGE 20 Members of the Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, pictured holding their Animation Guild cards, stood in solidarity with their Editors Guild colleagues during Local 700's successful organizing effort at Nickelodeon Animation Studios. Courtesy of the Animation Guild. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11