Less than a week after it began, the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) strike has concluded with teachers winning raises, immediate improvements in working conditions for special education teachers, and their central demand of fully funded healthcare for teachers and their families.

The four-day strike was concentrated with energy and solidarity. Each day, thousands of people — teachers, students and their families, and workers on sympathy strike rallied from Dolores Park to Ocean Beach. Indeed, throughout the strike days, the forces showing up for teachers exceeded the 6,000 union members on strike by thousands of people. And the sympathy strikes held by SEIU Local 1021 and the administrators’ union ensured the totality of the stoppage, and prevented the district from finding scabs in those unions.

The tentative agreement is for a two-year contract with raises of 5 percent for teachers, while other workers, like paraeducators, locked in raises of 8.5 percent. These increases weren’t as high as the union originally demanded, but they also won their central demand of fully funded healthcare, saving some teachers as much as $1,500 per month. Throughout the process, the union insisted that the district meet their demands without making cuts in other areas, like taking away teacher prep time, that would negatively impact them and their students.

Teachers also negotiated for months prior to the strike to ensure that the new contract language would designate the district’s schools as immigration sanctuaries. Codifying sanctuary protections into the contract means that ICE agents will be barred from schools without a criminal warrant and teachers will receive training to enforce sanctuary policies.

As discussed in our previous article, this is an important win in the context of President Trump’s continued attacks on immigrants all over the country. It shows the role that organized labor can play in the grassroots movement in defense of immigrants and activists who oppose Trump’s attacks.

The teachers also fought for and won the retention of the Stay Over Program, which uses school facilities to provide shelter for students and families facing housing insecurity. Their demands combine the bread-and-butter needs of workers with the social inequality and injustices faced by students and entire communities — again, showing the way for educators and workers all over the country who want to connect these struggles in our own workplaces and movements.

In the wake of a successful strike like this one, it’s clearer than ever that workers and our unions need to use our immense power to strategically fight against ICE and all other forms of violence that Trump tries to unleash on our communities. After all, if teachers can bring their school district to a halt until they win demands that were once said to be impossible, imagine what all the public sector workers in the city could do — or even all unions in the country on general strike.

The strike made major gains for teachers with relatively minor concessions: the raises they won weren’t as high as they demanded, and there will be a one-year pause on teacher sabbaticals. Ultimately, workers shouldn’t have to concede anything since we power all of society, and the teachers deserved everything they demanded. But the wins teachers made this time around will inspire teachers and workers in the struggles to come.

The Way Forward for Teachers and Unions

With the conclusion of the strike, the teachers walked away proud of their wins and empowered by their united display of strength and solidarity.

The point that teachers made throughout negotiations and the strike is important: under no circumstances should these increases lead to scarcity and budget cuts in other areas that would still damage the working conditions for teachers and the learning environment for students. In their announcement to the full membership and community, the union wrote,

It was our enduring collective power over 11 months that forced SFUSD to prioritize students and educators, and it is our enduring collective power that will ensure that they continue to do so. In a city with historic wealth disparities, our wins tonight have reverberations beyond our classrooms, schools and city.

Indeed, in the United States, public sector workers like teachers and nurses are told that there simply isn’t enough to go around; that they need to tighten their belts and make sacrifices to keep showing up to work; and if they don’t, they’re selfish. Meanwhile, police salaries are thousands of dollars higher (not even counting the overtime they take on top of their base pay) and the military gets billions more each year.

When teachers unite to fight for what they deserve, they are not only taking on their penny-pinching bosses in the district, they are questioning the entire absurd capitalist logic that places profit and power for the few over education and housing for all.

In this struggle and those that are yet to come, we should continue to support educators and all striking workers.

The post San Francisco Teachers’ Strike Ends with Major Gains appeared first on Left Voice.

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