By Richard Mellor in California
Last Saturday, me, Roger Martinez a friend and co-worker and former 1st VP of Afscme Local 444 and Jack Gerson, a retired teacher, attended what was described as a Mass Solidarity Meeting to support the Oakland teachers and their union, the Oakland Education Association (OEA). The OEA might be going on strike in January and so might the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA). The mass solidarity meeting was called by the East Bay Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
“This battle will be difficult”, said the notification for the meeting, “But if we learned anything from Chicago, West Virginia, and Arizona, it is that when teachers, students, parents, and community members stand together in solidarity, we can breathe new life into a movement of working people.”
What jumped out at me in this notification, was the attempt to link the present contract disputes here in California and the 2012 strike of teachers in Chicago with the strikes and protests earlier this year beginning with West Virginia, then in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere. The announcement talks about what was ‘learned’ through those struggles and leaves out the most important earth-shattering lesson of all. The 2018 strikes were rank-and-file led. They struck despite the leadership not supporting them and they struck in states where striking is ‘illegal’.
The way the strikes and activity were organized this year was the complete opposite to how the leadership of organized labour has conducted such actions for decades. If you have seen the videos of three of the women who played major roles in these actions in Kentucky West Virginia and Arizona we see, very clearly described in the Arizona strike, that any worker in education was included in the decision making, the actions and so on. Union, non-union, Janitors, cooks, groundskeepers, even teachers from the dreaded ‘charter’ schools were included. This is unprecedented in union battles. They pay lip-service to this sort of inclusion, but the competition between various leaderships and squabbling and fights over jurisdiction and for dues money, not to mention the egos of various leaders, always holds this back.
The other crucial lesson that we stress on our Facts for Working People blog is that the reason this uprising took place in conservative Republican states is that the union bureaucracy is weaker there or hardly present at all, so it was not powerful enough to stop or crush the movement from below. The Republicans, and to a lesser extent Democrats, have savaged education and teachers’ rights, wages and conditions. The conditions they have to teach under are disgusting, along with their pay; not only that but they end up spending a lot of their own money on supplies. The right-wing state governments have pushed too far, have overplayed their hand.
Crucial points need to be made on 2018 strikes
The trade union bureaucracy cannot ignore these strikes and so they point to them, but they never make these crucial points – and for obvious reasons. They want to push this genie of rank-and-file based actions back in to the bottle because it undermines their policy of cooperation and concessions, under what they call the ‘Team Concept’. Their position has been that ‘we cannot win’ and claim they have to make a deal.
To broadcast and make an issue of the strategy and tactics used in the 2018 struggles that followed West Virginia’s stunning victory, where the action won a 5 per cent raise for all state workers, is particularly dangerous in California, which is a strong union state. Some two million workers are affiliated to the state Federation of Labour. The LA Labour Federation has 800,000 or more workers affiliated to it. The non-AFL-CIO National Education Association, NEA, the largest union in the US with three million or so members, has around 300,000 members in California. The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) that is affiliated to the AFL-CIO’s American Federation of Teachers represents another 120,000 “education workers”, including cooks, groundskeepers, janitors and other education personnel.
That’s the dangerous aspect of the rank and file power that the bureaucracy fears, which is why they are silent on the most important details of West Virginia and the other victories in 2018.
The other side of this coin that is likely to ensure that what happened earlier this year in the Republican states doesn’t happen here, is that here the bureaucracy is much larger, more influential among the ranks and in a stronger position to stop it. It will take a significant movement from below to change that, and at this point it does not appear there, although my knowledge of the level of rank and file power in the education unions is limited. In these times we cannot say it won’t. And that points to another thing – no-one predicted the earlier events: not me, not the left, not the liberal academics and all the other smarty-pants that add intellectual legitimacy to the trade union leaderships concessionary policies.
The teachers’ meeting we attended had about 150 people at it. Individuals on the left have joined DSA and were very present. I looked at the agenda and the only scheduled speaker was an Oakland Education Association official. I was told a state NEA was also present no doubt to ensure things stayed within the confines of standard fare. But after the woman from the OEA leadership spoke – an uninspiring effort indeed – and before they were going to break out in to ‘groups’ in order to plan solidarity actions (the death knell for democratic debate and decision making) the announcer said that people who were bringing solidarity greetings could come up and say a few words.
I had thought I’d never get to speak but here was my chance. My contribution was short and I offered solidarity from my former union and I would do what I could to take the issue in to it and that the Facts For Working People blog of which I was a part was in solidarity with the teachers. I then referred in a friendly way to the bureaucrat’s 16-minute speech, and how she left out these important differences with the present approach and the West Virginia events.
I said it would be “remiss” if I did not point these out and I stressed that for 40 years I have been told we cannot do what they did, not just by the bosses, but by union staffers, officials, academics and experts. I got a good reception. I forgot to say that in these situations we are not simply cheerleaders which is what some of the left actually are and what they appeared to be in their contributions before me. I also forgot to state that everything the earlier ‘illegal’ struggles did was the complete opposite of how the trade union leadership runs strikes and has done so for decades.
It was well received, I think, and a couple young people came up and thanked me. One said we need to listen to those that have struggled before us and learn from them, which is good as normally crowds like this that are dominated by the petit-bourgeois and DSA is dominated by the petit-bourgeois, who can be an arrogant bunch that think they know more than they do. There were very few black folks there, more Latinos and a high percentage of young women. I left before the breakout in to groups.
December 18, 2018
