Assessment of The Strike
The strike was the nation’s first statewide strike keeping more than 40 percent of Florida teachers at home. Although it did not achieve all the goals FEA had set education funding rose significantly, but the organization felt that it did not rise enough to meet the needs identified by the teachers. In this regard, the strike is not considered a success. However, FEA did obtain much higher funding for education and convinced Gov. Kirk to break his no-new-taxes pledge.
The strike had a profound effect on the national NEA. Following the 1968 Florida strike, delegates to the NEA Representative Assembly (the organization's national governing body) approved a resolution which—for the first time—sanctioned teacher strikes (calling them "withdrawal of services") and denouncing state attempts to ban them. The resolution was a direct outcome of the statewide Florida strike.
A longer-term effect of the strike was to dramatically improve the outlook for teachers' unions in Florida. FEA members were radicalized by the strike and the statewide federation later won significant court and legislative victories which legalized and promoted the formation of teacher and education unions in the state. Although the 1968 strike would lead to the fragmentation of the FEA in 1974, education unions merged back into one organization in 2000, and as of 2006 unions were recognized in school districts covering 90 percent of the state's education workers. FEA is now one of Florida's largest unions, and the second-largest in the Florida AFL-CIO.
Read more about this topic: Florida Statewide Teachers' Strike Of 1968
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