Combustible Convergence: Bargaining for the Common Good and the #RedforEd Uprisings of 2018

Abstract

This article examines both the Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG) contract campaigns that have emerged among teachers unions in the years since the Great Recession and the #RedforEd strikes and mobilizations of 2018. It finds that although these efforts emerged in very different contexts and with quite different levels of planning and organization, they nonetheless evolved in similar directions. Both BCG campaigns and the #RedforEd mobilizations framed their efforts in broad terms as defenses of the common good; both were grounded in and dependent upon strong community alliances; and both achieved a significant increase in teacher militancy in large part because of these factors. Taken together, the BCG campaigns and #RedforEd mobilizations help illustrate our need to rethink collective bargaining in ways that allow us to confront the structural inequalities that are steadily undermining both our schools and our democracy.