Principal calls cops on union rep at San Lorenzo school

The full video
Posted by Amy Bellamy on Tuesday, October 20, 2015

A friend of mine, a teacher, sent me this video. It's from a classroom in a school a few miles away in San Lorenzo. Here's what my friend had to say: "A friend just sent this to me. This happened at a duty free lunch union meeting the other day in San Lorenzo. The assistance principal of the school actually called the cops to escort a union rep off campus! Talk about police state! I'm shocked but not surprised..."

The Union rep threatens a UBL, an Unfair Labor Practice. This is standard procedure for the strategists in our unions, appeal to the bosses' courts. No one would say we should never use the courts but going to court isn't what built the unions and it won't be the courts that save them either.

We cannot rely on the lawyers and the courts to defend any of our rights or our standard of living in the last analysis. The teachers union has perhaps 300,000 members in this state. The NEA is the largest union in the country.  The AFL-CIO in California has some 2 million members affiliated to it. This is where our power lies unfortunately, the folks that lead our unions are more afraid of the members becoming conscious of that power as they will inevitably use it which throws the union officialdom in to conflict with the bosses, a relationship  that they have built over the years based on labor peace and cooperation. So what if the courts find against the teachers? What then? We have to impose our will on society.

We'll all be in camps by the time the union officials decide the courts aren't working. When the employers and their state resort to this all work should stop.  The anger in society is such that there is a mood for this but we have been savaged by so many defeats and the refusal of the union hierarchy to organize resistance that people are scared, it's not that they're not angry or willing, but such actions necessary to back this stuff off must be organized and the rank and file union member has to do it.

It is no doubt difficult when faced with a war on two fronts, the 1% and their representatives on the one hand and the passive approach of the trade union hierarchy which amounts to capitulation in the last analysis.