By Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Some weeks ago I spoke at a meeting of the West Contra Costa County School District (WCCSD) in Richmond California. Contra Costa County is a very wealthy county on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. The meeting was held in a school auditorium as there are contract talks going on and a large crowd was expected given that budget cuts were on the table.
There were maybe 300 or more people in attendance that evening no doubt concerned about the education system that is responsible for educating their children. I don’t go to these meetings as often as I used to and things haven’t changed. They go on for hours making working class parents sit through boring chatter in a stifling heat (no AC) without the slightest concern that people have to work the next day. I was sat next to a Mexican American guy with his wife and daughter. He was a construction worker and I could see it was an exhausting thing for him to have to sit there hearing nothing but bad news and having to get up for work the next morning. The chairperson of the board was an extremely arrogant individual who cut the mike off when the two minutes public speaking time was over.
At this particular meeting there was somewhat of a presence from the trade unions that represent the teachers and other workers in the school district. The union leadership would call it a mobilization but it was hardly that. At these events the union officialdom usually bring a few dozen people and staff along. Rank and file members are expected to sit quietly wearing a union tee shirt or other forms of identification as their leaders plead with the management to be included in the cost cutting decisions.
They are not to be disruptive in any way and wreck the image of labor’s leadership as a responsible and cooperative partner when negotiating cuts in their members’ wages and benefits and social services we all rely on, in this case, public education.
The teachers are represented by United Teachers of Richmond, which is affiliated to the California Teachers Association (CTA). The CTA has about 300,000 members in California and is affiliated to the National Education Association (NEA) the largest union in the US with about 3 million members. Other WCCSD workers are represented by the Teamsters, and there are also non union employees.
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| Arizona: Teachers showed the way in 2018 |
There was nothing at this meeting that would inspire union members or parents alike. The school district has a deficit of some $48 million and in a move that must have the bosses’ shaking in their boots, the United Teachers of Richmond site rep council — which includes representatives from each of the district’s 55 schools — adopted a resolution that blamed the budget problem on “gross fiscal mismanagement” according to the media.
The teachers’ union and the management met last week, February 5th, to, “……negotiate the teacher cuts, as well as alternative cost-cutting options, which are expected to save $16 million.” according to EdSource and the Teamster's leadership is also meeting with the management to negotiate $2 million in cuts that will affect their members who are mostly non teaching staff like instructional assistants.
I spoke to a UTR official who was a rank and filer, a teacher who was on the executive board. He was a nice enough person but his approach as with all of them was pleading with the board to get a seat at the table and mitigate the cuts to some degree. In other words, they start from a position of concessions and that cuts are inevitable.
The board will be voting on the cuts at a meeting on February 12th. In order to bribe the victims in to submission the school district is offering a $2000 bonus to permanent certified union members and $1,500 to all non-teaching union employees who notify the board by Feb 14 that they will resign or retire at the end of the school year. Here is economic terrorism at its best. These are people who want our votes at election time promising to defend education until they are told to cut it.
The chair of the meeting can afford to be and cocky arrogant like all the bosses' representatives because these agents of the banks, moneylenders, and other social parasites do not fear us. Or more accurately they do not fear the heads of organized labor, in fact, they don’t think it’s necessary to have them at the table at all.
I felt sorry for my brothers and sisters in the trade union movement having to watch this fiasco and in particular, the mothers, fathers and these working class families whose children will suffer. Many of these families were immigrants or people of color who are also facing vicious prejudice and racist filth coming from the Predator in Chief in the White House.
The school District’s hatchet man, Tony Wold with the revealing title of associate superintendent for business services, is “optimistic” that the “district will be able to come up with cuts collaboratively with the unions.” And why shouldn’t he be? Concessions or class collaboration, known as the Team Concept in various forms such as management labor cooperation, interest based bargaining and so on, is the dominant philosophy of the trade union hierarchy today. This translates to an acceptance of capitalism and the worship of the market and when capitalism is in crisis, their fist step is to bail it out, to shift the cost of capitalism’s failures on to the backs of their members and the entire working class. As I pointed out in previous commentaries this labor strategy goes back a long way:
“So the policy to “work with capitalism, not against it” remains the policy of the leaders of the U.S trade unions to this day. This policy was not changed with the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930's and the merging of the AFL and the CIO into the AFL-CIO in the 1950’s. Only by recognizing this, is it possible to understand why the program and strategy of the trade union leaders is one of capitulation and surrender. It is why they oppose and seek to crush or co-opt any movement from within their ranks that seeks to oppose the policies of capitalism. In this period, such a movement would mean opposing the present offensive of capitalism against the working class and against the environment. The trade union leadership of today does and will continue to move to crush any movement from within their ranks and the working class as a whole that threatens their policy of labor peace with the bosses, of "working with capitalism, not against it". (From "Work With Capitalism, Not Against It". Why the Labor Leadership Surrenders to the Bosses.)
The alternative for working people is to rely on our own strength independent of the bosses’ and either of their two political parties. Electoral politics is extremely limited. I managed to speak at this meeting though it is very difficult having only two minutes as you can see. But I wanted as I often do, to point out the potential power that organized labor has, to dismantle that “stop in the mind” of the average worker and rank and file union member, constructed by the mass media, the politicians and the trade union hierarchy that we are weak and we cannot win. There is massive social propaganda telling us that we cannot change anything, we have to just accept what is. This is strengthened by the role and failures of the trade union leadership.
In Contra Costa county the AFL-CIO labor council has over 80,000 members, The California State Labor Federation has some 2 million workers affiliated to it and the Los Angeles Labor Federation 800,000, In the case here, why are all the unions bargaining separately? Of course sometimes we have to take concessions or steps backward if the class forces are not in our favor at any point in time. But we don’t start there. A boxer doesn’t get in the ring saying to himself (or herself these days) “I’d better not hit this guy or he might hit me back”. Workers are under attack throughout this county as we are nationally, we have to link workplace and community struggles. We have the power to shake things up.
The only alternative the union leadership seems to be offering in this case is throwing their members’ eggs in to the Democratic Party basket, and endorsing Bernie sanders for president, a strategy that has been a catastrophe for working people. Vote for the party that 100 million Americans have abandoned. This strategy of the trade union leadership has been a major contributor in Trump’s rise.
Lessons of the Teachers/Educators strikes of 2018
The strikes in education in 2018 were a watershed moment for organized labor. No one predicted that a sea change in strategy and tactics would emerge in this sector of the working class. In the case of West Virginia, they increased their pay rise from 1% to 5% and won 5% for all other state workers.
The most important aspect of these strikes and protests is that they took place in Republican led states and in most cases right to work states. But in addition, they were genuinely rank and file led and occurred despite the opposition of the traditional leadership. Why was this? The answer is important for us to cement in our minds. They took place in these states because the labor bureaucracy or hierarchy was weaker and unable to prevent these actions. If they could have they would have suppressed the movement. The established leadership did play supportive roles after the fact. But the point to make is that they refused to lead and they would have not taken pace had the established leadership the power to stop them. It is crucial for fresh young labor activists to understand this.
In addition, the rank and file leadership’s organizational methods were a complete break from the stifling, isolating strategy that has failed so miserably for decades and led to declining union membership and conditions. In Arizona meetings were held and all connected to education were invited and had rights and were encouraged to participate in the movement, even charter school teachers. The use of social media also played a huge part as it did in the Arab Spring of 2011. Here is an excellent account of the work.
The teachers protest/strikes had a huge affect in other ways. In 2018, 485,000 workers participated in what the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as a “major work stoppage,” up from just 25,000 in 2017. It was the first major increase in work stoppages in three decades, and it was nearly entirely driven by 379,000 teachers and other education workers, who accounted for 78 percent of all those who went out on strike.
In Kentucky, teachers, parents and allies including Black Lives matter activists waged a year long struggle against the Republican governor since replaced by a Democrat. In Jefferson Country which includes Louisville, sickouts closed the schools for 6 days in early 2019. This was met by a public attack on the teachers and parents at a press conference, by leaders of the SEIU, the KEA (the state affiliate of the NEA,) Afscme and the Teamsters. This is not as well known as it didn’t receive much coverage from groups like Labor Notes as the approach of Labor Notes and others like them is to avoid an genuine open struggle against the politics of the trade union leadership. As far as I could see, Labor Notes completely ignored this assault on workers by these heads or organized labor. Visit this link and scroll down to watch this panel of labor leaders attack teachers and parents in the Louisville area.
The so-called left has difficulty ignoring the teachers/educators strikes and their successes including their break from the usual failed methods of organized labor’s established leadership. So folks like the DSA leadership and those elements they have contracted the DSA’s union work to, ex members of the labor hierarchy like Jane McAlvey, Bill Fletcher and also folks at Labor Notes who’s approach to the labor leadership is similar, point to these struggles but do not stress the most important aspects of them that I mention above. Labor Notes organizes some great gatherings of rank and file workers but being good organizers in the class struggle is not enough. The forces behind Labor Notes is also too closely tangled up with the present hierarchy. The methods and tactics used in the 2018 events should have been on the front of labor’s banner and built upon and in particular in the strikes in California that followed. Read: OEA Strike: Balance Sheet, Lessons, and What Next?
It is impossible to imagine
that as the movement against austerity grows and it will whether Trump is
elected or not, will not in turn engulf organized labor and we will see major
struggles within the unions ahead. In fact a Trump victory this year might well
hasten the mass movement against austerity while the Democrats could
temporarily head it off.
All organizations are affected by mass movements and organized labor will not be exempt from the coming storms. This will lead to splits, changes at the top and new leadership emerging. But any leadership that believes that capitalism can be reformed, can solve the global crises of hunger, disease, racism and sexism, environmental catastrophe and more will fall in to the same dead end. There is no escaping that global capitalism, the way society is organized, is the problem.
Myself and others have
explained many times the tasks organized labor’s rank and file are faced with.
There’s lessons in the teachers struggles and we must learn them and build on
them. We must also beware as in every developing movement there will be
different strategies and ideas put forward by different individuals and groups;
some work and some don’t. One thing to think of when we are confronted by so many
who claim they are or have had a history of fighting as a rank and file member
of the trade union movement is what I wrote back in August 2019:
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