A wildly successful, illegal three-day strike by the Andover Education Association in November has reverberated statewide for educators in Massachusetts.
The lowest-paid instructional assistants got a 60 percent wage jump immediately. Classroom aides on the higher end of the scale got a 37 percent increase.
Members won paid family medical leave, an extra personal day, fewer staff meetings, and the extension of lunch and recess times for elementary students.
Andover is 20 miles north of Boston, and the strike involved 10 schools.
For 10 months and 27 bargaining sessions, the Andover School Committee had insisted that none of these demands were possible. But by the end of the first day of the strike, they had ceded many items. By day three, they agreed to almost all of the union’s demands.
fuck America.