“We Have Just Had Enough” 米国ウェストバージニア州教師の山猫スト 8日目に突入

　ウェストバージニア州全州に広がった学校の閉鎖は5日で、8日目。2万人以上の教師と1万3千人以上の職員が5％の賃上げと高騰し続ける医療保険料抑制を求めてストライキ中。ストは2月22日から始まり、州内公立学校は閉鎖。この教員ストの熱気は、他の州にも広がり始めている。支援の輪は影響力の強い鉱山労組など他産業にも、世界各地にも及んでいる。
　ウェストバージニア州は貧困率の高い地域で、小中学生の多くが朝食も学校で取る有様だ。その世話も教師がになっていた。
　the world socialist web siteは、

　The West Virginia teachers strike and the rebellion against the trade unions.

と報じている。まさに堪りかねての反乱山猫ストである。

組合活動家のJAY O’NEAL氏は、動画でこう発言している。　 We’ve been on strike for eight days. This goes back years. Starting salaries for teachers here with a bachelor’s is about $33,000. And the biggest root issue of everything is our insurance. The acronym is PEIA. It stands for Public Employees Insurance Agency. And basically, our state government has not been funding it adequately for years. And so, every year there are new cuts. There’s public hearings every November, and they basically tell you how much worse the insurance is going to get. This year they proposed moving to something called Total Family Income, and so basing our premiums on the income of everyone in our family. So, for instance, my spouse has another job and works, and so they would base not just on my income, but on her income, as well, which meant my premium was going to double. And there’s a lot of teachers who both of them, you know, work in the school system, and they were going to see their premiums double, too. And I think people have just had enough, and they’ve decided they’re not listening to us when we try to lobby, when we try to call, and so we’ve got to do something big. We’ve got to walk out to get them to listen. 

　記者の質問。 Now, Jay O’Neal, this is a wildcat strike. Could you talk about the laws in terms of striking in West Virginia and the role of the union leaders, because, as I understand it, there are two teachers’ unions that represent different portions of the workforce in West Virginia?

JAY O’NEAL氏 　Sure. We don’t have collective bargaining here for teachers, and so teachers don’t have to join a union. We have two unions: the West Virginia Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers in West Virginia. But at any given school, you might have teachers who are a member of one or the other or neither. And so, without having collective bargaining, we actually don’t have the right to strike as public employees. But people just felt like they didn’t have any other option. In West Virginia right now, we have over 700 unfilled vacancies, as far as teaching positions. And so, I think we thought, “I mean, really, who are they going to replace us with?” At this point, we don’t feel like we have a lot of other options.

　掲げているプラカードに「I need living wage」の文字が読み取れる。2001年春、ハーバード大学から全国の大学に広がった言葉である。日本のメディアは、全く報道しようとしない。  Democracy Now!のリンク  ←クリック                 


  教育関係をもう一つ、
　英国で大学ストライキが3週目に突入　年金カットと高等教育の「市場化」に抵抗←クリック
                      
　英国で、数万人にのぼる講師や図書館司書、研究者、その他の大学の労働者らが、年金への攻撃や学生の学費上昇に抗議してストライキに入っている。ケンブリッジ大学英文学科のPRIYA GOPAL先生はこう言う　。

   First of all, I’d like to send solidarity on behalf of the university teachers in Britain who are striking to our colleagues and co-workers in West Virginia.
We’ve been on strike, as well, since the 22nd of this month. Academics in Britain are not hugely well paid, but what we have been able to expect in recent decades is a modest guaranteed pension. In recent years, this has been subjected to erosion. But the newest proposal, which has come to us from the employers’ body Universities UK, or UUK, actually offer a very damaging scenario in which many of us stand to lose as much as half of our expected pensions. In other words, we would be facing quite serious poverty in our old age.
Just to give you a sense of the numbers, a young lecturer starting out now, who would retire, say, 35 years from now, could have expected to get about $30,000 equivalent in pensions after paying into her or his pensions for a lifetime. If the new proposals go through, they would earn as little as $14,000 to $15,000 a year, and this would be after paying into a pensions fund 35 years into service. And this is, of course, not—in many cases, would be well below a living wage.

  日本の教師は、米英の教師に比べて少しも恵まれてはいない。飛び抜けて長い勤務時間、信じられないほどの不払い労働、増え続ける過労死と病気退職。削減される年金、強化される教師への言論統制、奪われたままの労働基本権・・・。
　日本の教師こそ“We Have Just Had Enough”と叫ぶ時が既に来ている。必ずや､世界の支援が集まる。

追記　あらゆるmediaに弱点・盲点がある。democracy now は、米国の帝国主義的振る舞いについて、眼を閉ざす傾向がある。日本の多くの「良心的」媒体にもある。複数のmedia を常時併用したい。