FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 19, 2019
[CHARLESTON, W.VA.] United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) International President Cecil E. Roberts issued the following statement today:
“It is unbelievable that the West Virginia Senate leadership has once again forced our state’s teachers and school support personnel to the picket lines, but that is what our students and their families are facing this morning.
“Senate leadership is viciously attacking our school professionals in retribution for their courageous and victorious stand last year. After winning better resources for West Virginia public school students, our teachers and support personnel are now under direct attack from those in the State Senate who are little more than mouthpieces for out-of-state radicals who want to end public education in America – and who want to use West Virginia as yet another test case.
“Diverting resources away from public schools and spending it on charter schools and education savings accounts has been tried and failed in state after state. But these facts aren’t enough to keep Senate leadership from putting West Virginia’s kids at a generational risk from falling behind the rest of the country and the world.
“The truth is that they want a population that is less educated, not more. They want a future workforce that will not question management decisions even if it puts workers’ lives in danger.
“That is not the West Virginia our ancestors fought to create, and we will not stand by and allow it to happen. The UMWA stands with our teachers and school support personnel today and every day.
“We will be on their picket lines, we will rally with them, we will march with them, we will do whatever needs to be done to send a clear message to those who threaten our children’s future: Take your anti-education, anti-family, anti-worker schemes and get the hell out of West Virginia.”
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