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Title: The California Teacher Movement Author: Jack Gerson Date: May 31, 2019 Language: en Topics: California, education, The Utopian, strike Source: Retrieved on 11th August 2021 from http://utopianmag.com/archives/tag-The%20Utopian%20Vol.%2018.2%20-%202019/the-california-teacher-movement-a-report-and-assessment/ Notes: Published in The Utopian Vol. 18.2.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the teacher movement in California
is not building on, or even replicating, the most important positives of
the red state teacher strikes.
Specifically: the red state strikes cut across geographic and
demographic boundaries: they rapidly spread statewide, and they embraced
teachers and non-teachers. And, importantly, they were not deterred by
legalisms — teacher strikes were illegal in these states, but they
struck successfully anyway, embracing militant action and confrontation
rather than a narrow legalistic and “collaborative” approach.
In contrast, in California teacher locals are striking one at a time —
Los Angeles in January; Oakland in February; Union City in May (they’re
on strike now). And the main statewide teacher union, CTA, heavily
pushes a very legalistic and very cautious approach, one that relies on
appealing to Democratic party politicians on a very passive, “seat at
the table”, don’t confront — collaborate approach. This bears out what
we observed a year ago: the red state strikes were successful where the
state and national teacher unions were weakest precisely because those
unions were too weak to strangle incipient militancy. In California, CTA
has vast resources which it uses to restrain militancy.
Thus: in Los Angeles and in Oakland, the strikes were settled with less
than could have been won — in Los Angeles, the settlement was mediocre;
in Oakland, it was worse. In both cases, the union leaders invited
prominent Democrats in to help settle the strikes. And despite ongoing
rhetoric about the need to move towards statewide strikes, not only did
LA and Oakland strike at different times when they could have struck at
the same time, but their new contracts don’t expire at the same time —
the LA contract expires in June 2021, the Oakland contract in June 2022.
In other words, they’ve moved away from coordinating for a statewide
strike.
More: A week ago, on May 22^(nd), there was a statewide mobilization of
teachers to converge on Sacramento. It was initially billed as a
convergence to support Sacramento city teachers, who were going to
strike on that day. But then, CTA reversed field and leaned on the
Sacramento teachers to call off their planned strike. The reason is
obvious: CTA made May 22^(nd) into a toothless day for lobbying
legislators — and only top CTA leadership and some local presidents got
to do that lobbying. The rest of us were fed lunch on the Capitol Mall
lawn, and then marched around downtown for an hour or two (and then
there were some of those lame union chants, that are at best reminiscent
of high school cheerleading and at worst of kindergarten).
Worse: at the same time as that toothless CTA Sacramento event, Union
City teachers were (and still are) striking. But CTA is doing the
opposite of trying to spread that strike to other locals, or to even
hold partial work stoppages. And in the absence of that, what happens?
Well, what’s going on in Oakland is a good example of that.
The day after the Oakland strike ended, the school district laid off
about 150 classified school workers (mainly SEIU members), eliminated
several student programs, and closed several school libraries (laying
off librarians in the process).
About two weeks after the Oakland strike ended, state superintendent of
public instruction Tony Thurmond (an insurgent Democrat who has been
heavily supported by CTA, OEA and DSA) appointed a panel to study and
report back with recommendations on charter school regulation reform —
an eleven-member panel, seven of whom have strong ties to the charter
school industry.
About a month after the Oakland strike ended, the Alameda County Office
of Education took over full control of the Oakland school district’s
finances — the district’s deputy superintendent for business was fired
(he was somewhat honest) and the district’s Chief Financial Officer now
reports to the County superintendent of schools. This was done under
legislation — AB1840 — that also assigns the Fiscal Control and
Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) to monitor OUSD finances and,
together with the county office of education, to enforce budget cuts.
(Indeed, the layoffs and cuts that were made just after the OEA strike
ended were done at the insistence of FCMAT.) During the state takeover
of OUSD, 2003 — 2009, FCMAT, please note, were the state-imposed
auditors and, as such, gave a green light to severe downsizing (layoffs,
school closures, program cuts, library closures) and a steep increase in
outsourcing to private consultants. Then, from 2013 — 2017, FCMAT
campaigned to have City College of San Francisco’s academic
accreditation revoked (eventually defeated because of a huge pushback by
the SF community, but not before enrollment dropped significantly and
several programs were cut).
What is CTA doing about this? Nothing — they supported AB1840 when it
was adopted by the legislature last year. What is the OEA leadership
doing? They’re hoping to elect some better school board members in
November 2020 (besides that being 18 months away, there’s not much
chance of success there; first of all, pro-corporate candidates are
heavily funded by the real estate and financial interests that run the
city; and second, even when a well-intentioned “reformer” gets elected,
they change their tune almost immediately to become executors of
cutbacks and feeding private contractors.)
To end on a more positive note — it’s clear that teachers’ energy and
expectations have been lifted by the success of the red state strikes.
There are a number of rank and file teachers who are not happy with the
OEA contract and who think that the union should not have folded the
strike when and how they did. Most of them are not yet ready to
completely give up on the leadership, which after all has been in office
for less than a year, and which did mobilize well for the strike (but
ran the strike top down; relied on the Democrats to deliver; pursued an
opaque, cautious approach rather than confronting corporate power by
shutting down the port and the city center).
But the red state strikes have revived the strike as a weapon. For
years, the CTA leadership and allies in local leadership pushed back
against any talk of striking – those who advocated building for strikes
were called “strike-happy”. This year, amid the surge of expectations
generated by the red state strikes, CTA has had to change its tune.
Rather than opposing strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland, it sought to
control them, to keep them short (six school days in Los Angeles, seven
in Oakland) and non-confrontational, and to lobby for modest settlements
brokered by Democratic Party politicians.
However, strikes – even relatively short ones – are schools whose
participants learn a great deal about what it will take to win. New
leaders and increased rank and file awareness often emerge from these
struggles. For sure, some of the younger teachers are learning, and
maybe their patience with the current leaders will soon wear thin. For
some it already has: there are signs of incipient organized opposition.
That is a start — just a start, but a start nonetheless.