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What can the teacher strikes tell us about the ongoing COVID-related retail and grocery worker walkouts and strikes? @snaidunl, Adam Reich, @pnyoungblood, and I are in the @monkeycageblog with a new post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/06/facing-covid-19-low-wage-service-workers-are-striking-across-country-heres-why-why-it-matters/ 1/
We acknowledge how remarkable (and courageous) it is for workers at Instacart, Amazon, Whole Foods, and other stores to be striking and protesting. These are precariously-employed workers making minimum wage (or even less). It's even more unusual in the middle of a pandemic. 2/
But like the teachers in red states, they had some labor market power. We need a lot more retail delivered to us right now! Similarly, the teacher strikes happened in states where pay had gotten so low that there were teacher shortages. 3/
Teachers and Instacart workers are both service workers, drawing strength from relationships to clients: students and their families for teachers and customers for Instacart deliverers. They're framing their demands to show how they help both themselves and their communities. 4/
Last, our research showed strikes teach other workers about the power of labor action. They can make other workers more interested in strikes themselves. We speculate there will be even more labor interest in the coming weeks. 5/
Sustaining that interest and translating it into durable economic and political power will require support from unions and labor leaders. More on our research here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5vqd7zk0soyn2pn/TeacherStrikes_22520.pdf
