EXCERPT - Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard
Written by SP Editor
by Ellen David Friedman
School Sickouts Build the Union
When the school district in Durham, North Carolina, decided to claw back a long-overdue raise from 1,500 of its lowest-paid “classified staff” workers, wildcat strikes broke out.
The actions were scattered but bold. “In one school the entire cafeteria staff didn’t show up,” said social studies teacher Carlos Perez. A handful of custodians and front office staff stayed home too.
At the time, the Durham Association of Educators (DAE)was in the middle of a year-long campaign to get a majority of the district’s 5,000 teachers and classified staff to join the union. Members were tabling in school parking lots and visiting bus barns, asking people to join. By the time the “Classified Staff Pay Debacle” hit, 800 workers had signed up.
When the wildcat actions started, the union “rose to the occasion,” Perez said. Members decided to see if they could fan the flames of spontaneous action into an organized campaign that could move the school board.
On short notice, 100 workers showed up to a mass meeting and settled on demands. “We organized a rally thinking we would get 500 people,” Perez said, “and 1,000 showed up. Organizing committees started up in different schools and grew rapidly.”
The union decided to escalate to rolling sickouts. But even though the anger was widespread, “not all schools were immediately able to pull off an organized work stoppage,” Perez said. “So, we started to build capacity.” The union asked workers to sign “action cards” that committed them to specific actions they’d take if the district didn’t respond to the union’s demands.
Members in each school talked about what percentage of workers would need to commit before they took action: 90 percent? 75 percent? “We agreed you needed to talk to every worker in the building,” Perez said. At Jordan High School, where he works, 85 percent committed.
It helped that Jordan already had a workplace committee that for years had emphasized building relationships with all workers in the school, not just teachers. In Durham, the classified staff are disproportionately Black or Latino, while many of the teachers are white. The union battles a perception that it is just a “teachers union.”
“We have tried to be consistent, follow through and really throw down,” Perez said. Organizers have been thoughtful about when meetings are scheduled, and offer food and childcare so it’s easier to participate. “And we had classified staff in leadership positions,” Perez said. “This makes a difference. We bring you in, share information, and help you become involved.” Over time, workers see that getting active can make a difference in their lives.
“I remember the night we were trying to get commitments for the sickout the next day,” said Perez. “I called someone on the front office staff, a middle-aged Black woman, and she said, ‘A lot of people are saying DAE is the bomb.’ This told me people knew we were really taking it seriously.”
The first sickout was on a Thursday and included 12 of the district’s 56 schools. Among them were some of the biggest schools, including Jordan, with 180 workers and 2,000 students. “The district feels that,” Perez said. “We agreed that after the initial pickets at our own schools, we’d send a team to another school at the end of the day to talk to workers as they were leaving, explaining why we were doing it and what the issues were.”
The school board met that Friday and agreed to some of the union’s demands. On Saturday, the campaign’s district-wide coordinating committee met and debated whether to stop the rolling sickouts or keep going. Another round of schools was already preparing to go out on Monday.
At first the committee members proposed to halt the action. But “there was grumbling,” Perez said. “A number of classified staff walked out in opposition.”
At the meeting, everyone was sitting at tables with others from their own school. “I started walking around to those tables, asking what people were thinking,” Perez said. Those who were dissatisfied felt the union needed to send a clearer message to the school board --“This is what you need to do to stop the sickouts”—and hold out for a commitment on the budget.
“It was a moment when we really could have lost trust” with the classified workers, Perez said. “It had been years of disrespect from the union. Then they finally got a big raise, then it was taken back. They finally took militant action, and now it was being stopped. I said, ‘If it comes down to maintaining a good relationship with the school board or standing with our co-workers, we’ll do that every time.’”
Seven more schools struck on Monday. Then the school board met all the union’s demands.
It was, said Perez, “the biggest budget increase they’d ever made.” And the cherry on top: The union reached majority membership, too.
“Standing in solidarity with classified staff really helped,” Perez said. “At a certain point, we realized we needed a lot more cards to meet the deadline” and that “we had lots more people who had developed during the campaign, who were excited to be part of a movement, and were eager to get those last cards.”
Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It's Hard by Ellen David Friedman is published by Labor Notes/PM Press ISBN: 9798887440996 and available at labornotes.org or pmpress.org
Ellen David Friedman is a longtime organizer with the National Education Association in Vermont, a founding member of Vermont's Progressive Party.
