TEACHER STRIKES AND LABOR RELATIONS IN PUBLIC EDUCATION: A NARRATIVE STUDY IN MEGHALAYA

Teacher strikes in public education are frequently framed as disruptions to schooling rather than as expressions of labor-relational conflict. This paper reconceptualises teacher strikes as relational events embedded in asymmetric negotiations between educator and the state. Drawing on narrative interviews with teachers, students, parents, NGO members and administrators in Meghalaya, the study examines how strike action emerges from accumulative institutional silence, delayed remunerations and constrained grievance channels. Using narrative inquiry, the analysis demonstrates that teacher strikes function as acts of compelled visibility-efforts to render labor conditions publicly undeniable. However, such collective action simultaneously produces moral-labor tension, as teachers navigate competing expectations of economic justice and professional care. The findings further introduce the concept of aspirational fragility to explain how recurring labor conflict subtly destabilizes educational futures for students and families dependent on public schooling. By integrating labor process theory, moral economy scholarship and sociology of education, this study extends labor relational analysis into peripheral public sector governance contexts. It argues that teacher strikes must be understood not merely as industrial disputes but as structurally embedded relational phenomena with consequences that exceed the workplace and reverberate into community trust and intergenerational mobility.