CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The statewide teachers’ strike that shuttered West Virginia schools for almost two weeks appeared all but over on Tuesday when Gov. James C. Justice signed a bill to give teachers and other state employees a 5 percent pay raise.
A crowd of teachers wearing the red T-shirts that have come to symbolize their strike cheered as Mr. Justice, a Republican, signed the pay raise bill in a theater on the Capitol grounds. The bill had been passed unanimously earlier in the day by both houses of the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“We’re going to school tomorrow,” said Heather Acord, an elementary schoolteacher from Wayne County, with relief obvious on her face. “We got everything we asked for.”
Unlike a previous proposed raise that was backed by Mr. Justice and the State House of Delegates, the deal reached on Tuesday had the support of Mitch Carmichael, the president of the State Senate. Mr. Carmichael said the deal would probably lead to painful cuts in other parts of the state budget; another Republican senator, Craig Blair, said in a conference committee that Medicaid would be among the areas cut.
“These things come at a cost,” Mr. Carmichael said.
But as he signed the bill, Mr. Justice tried to dispel the suggestion that the pay raise would come at the expense of Medicaid recipients.
“There’s not a chance on this planet that’s going to be the case,” Mr. Justice said. “We have cash in the balances in Medicaid that will absolutely backstop any cuts whatsoever from Medicaid.”
The strike ground the state’s public schools to a halt for nine days, a remarkable show of defiance by the teachers in a state where the power of organized labor, once led by strong mining unions, has greatly diminished. Along the way, the teachers disregarded union leaders’ advice to return to work when the governor first promised them the raise last week, deciding in meetings at malls and union halls and in Facebook groups that they would stay out until their raise was enacted in law.
“Maybe our voices are being heard, finally,” said Danielle Harris, a third-grade teacher from Fayette County, whose eyes filled with tears after Mr. Justice announced the deal on Tuesday. “These strikes aren’t for nothing.”
Dale Lee, the president of the West Virginia Education Association, one of the teachers’ unions, said the pay raise was probably sufficient to get teachers back to the classroom. School systems in some of the state’s 55 counties, including Kanawha and Putnam, announced even before Mr. Justice signed the pay raise bill that they would reopen on Wednesday.
“It appears the strike will end,” Mr. Lee said after the deal was announced.
The pay raise was the main point of contention in the final days of the strike, but the teachers have also demanded some relief from sharply rising health insurance costs. The governor has promised to address that issue through a state task force. Both union leaders and rank-and-file teachers have welcomed that move.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” said Kerry Guerini, a teacher from Fayette County, who stood in the Capitol on Tuesday with a sign that said, “Will teach for insurance.”
“A 5 percent raise isn’t going to feel like very much when we have so much coming out for insurance,” Ms. Guerini said. Nevertheless, she added, “I’m ready to go back.”
Mr. Carmichael, whose resistance to the raises had made him a key antagonist for the striking teachers, insisted on Tuesday that he did not want to pass anything “just to appease a special-interest group.” The deal came about, he said, because lawmakers decided to offset the cost of the raises with budget cuts, rather than rely on optimistic revenue estimates the governor had offered.
The raises for state workers were expected to cost the state treasury a total of about $110 million a year. Some of the money for the raises would be redirected from amounts the governor had requested for tourism promotion and the state Department of Commerce, but lawmakers in the Senate said additional spending cuts would probably be required. Mr. Blair, the Republican who heads the Senate’s Finance Committee, said in a meeting that some of the money could be taken from Medicaid.
Mr. Carmichael told reporters that the scale of Medicaid cuts was “not absolutely determined,” because lawmakers were still “scouring the budget” for more places to cut.
The prospect nevertheless alarmed some Democratic lawmakers.
“I want to make sure there’s not a back-room deal here that’s punishing people who are too poor to go to the doctor,” Michael A. Woelfel, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor. “Don’t do this on the backs of the Medicaid recipients.”
The teachers, who do not have a labor contract with the state, are among the lowest paid in the nation, on average, and had not had an across-the-board raise in four years. They walked off the job Feb. 22, saying they had been pushed to the brink by low pay and rising costs in their health insurance plan.
“Teachers across the state came together for one goal,” said Renita Benson, 54, a remedial reading teacher from Calhoun County, who stood near the Capitol’s soaring rotunda on Thursday. “It’s not the raise, as much as it is having the respect that we deserve from the government, and I think that was proven today.”