Victory to Los Angeles Teachers Strike!

Victory to Los Angeles Teachers Strike!

Teachers, Students, Parents, Workers – 

All Out to Defeat the Privatizers and Union-Busters!

LOS ANGELES, January 8 – Some 34,000 educators in the second-largest school district in the country are poised go on strike here for the first time since 1989. This is more than just a contract fight. It is a battle between capitalist union-busters hell-bent on privatizing schools, and the unions defending public education. The supporters of privately managed “charter schools” who run the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) are hard-lining it, to the point of forcing a walkout. But the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has the massive support of its membership, which voted 98% to authorize a strike last August, and from students, parents and unionists throughout L.A.

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On December 15, a huge crowd of 50,000 people turned out in downtown Los Angeles for the March for Public Education called by UTLA. Teachers and supporters marched through the city to make clear that they are ready to fight the privatizers, who have the overwhelmingly Latino and black parent/student population in their crosshairs. “Public education is a right – L.A. labor, join this fight – all out for the teachers strike!” chanted militants from supporting unions, including the Amalgamated Transit Union and the California Faculty Association. Supporters of Class Struggle Education Workers and the Internationalist Group joined ATU militants wearing red union-printed shirts reading “ATU 1277 Solidarity with UTLA Teachers,” and on the back, “All Out for Teachers Strike Picket Lines.”

The teacher revolt which swept across the United States last spring has reached L.A – but with a key difference. The strikes and walkouts that spread from West Virginia to Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona, and then back to North Carolina were in Republican-governed states with weak unions and abysmal funding for public schools. UTLA, in contrast, is fighting the assault on public education where all major officials are Democrats. Although California is the richest state in the nation, it is near the bottom (46 out of 50) on per pupil spending on education. And Los Angeles has more students in charter schools than any other major U.S. city.

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A strike solidarity motion of the transit workers union noted, “the bipartisan nationwide attack that has drained resources away from public education is now led at the national level by Trump’s ‘voucher vulture’ Betsy DeVos while here in Los Angeles it was spearheaded by Democratic former mayor [Antonio] Villaraigosa and continues under his successor [Eric] Garcetti.” Yet teacher unions’ leaders are wedded to the Democratic Party. American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten is a member of the Democratic Party National Committee, while UTLA endorsed Democrats Garcetti for mayor and Gavin Newsom for governor.

A key issue in the strike is the proliferation of charters, which despite their claims to the contrary are in fact private schools that massively rob funds and facilities from the L.A. public schools. They also get millions from financial operators who enjoy juicy tax breaks and hefty management fees to underwrite their union-busting assault on public education. In announcing a January 10 strike date, UTLA leaders called vaguely to “address the charter industry drain that siphons more than $600 million from our schools every year.” Yet they did not raise concrete demands even to limit charter schools. Now even their toothless call to “address” the issue has been dropped.

Los Angeles schools superintendent Austin Beutner is playing hardball. The LAUSD chief claimed on December 18 that a deal had been reached with the union on the District’s terms. The next day UTLA denounced this as a blatant lie, and said that L.A. Unified was refusing to deal with its demands for class-size limitations, and other issues directly benefitting students. The union has also pointed out that the LAUSD salary “offer” is linked to cutting health care of newly hired employees. Beutner, a financier with no experience in education, claims the school system is on the verge of bankruptcy. Yet UTLA points out that the district is sitting on unrestricted reserves of $1.86 billion, a sum that has more than tripled in the past five years.

The union has demanded the elimination of a contract clause (“1.5”) that allowed the District to unilaterally increase class sizes. Yesterday the LAUSD responded by proposing to increase high school class-size limits from 39 to 46 students, which could be breached for numerous reasons! Last fall, Beutner announced that the District would recruit up to 400 “substitute” teachers (scabs). Now local media reveal that the LAUSD has secretly signed contracts with several different scabherding outfits to supply 4,400 strikebreakers!

In explaining the decision to drop any negotiations about “unregulated growth of charters” and the financial drain by charter schools of public education funds, union president Alex Caputo-Pearl argued that “we are limited on what we can legally bargain.” The union tops used the same claim in dropping their demands against “toxic overtesting” and calls for teacher and parent involvement in running local schools. UTLA leaders are trying to limit demands to what they think can be won in a short strike. But the education bosses aren’t about to go along.

UTLA rightly wants to capitalize on the massive support for public education shown on December 15. There is also growing opposition to the scandal-ridden charter schools and their bogus claims of raising “standards.” But dropping demands on these key issues undercuts the union’s ability to mobilize the determined support it will need in this battle over public education. Saying that “we will have to deal with them outside of bargaining,” Caputo-Pearl is looking to Democratic Party politicians in Sacramento. Yet Governor Newsom and the new state schools chief Tony Thurmond have insisted they are not “anti-charters.”

To win this strike the union and its supporters must prepare to wage an all-out fight against a vicious enemy. From the very first day, UTLA should make clear that picket lines mean don’t cross, period. To build massive picket lines that no one crosses, the active support of the entire L.A.-area labor movement is needed. Motions by the statewide California Faculty Association (representing educators at California State University) and by ATU Local 1277 (representing Los Angeles transit workers) to mobilize in solidarity on the picket lines point the way. The initiative for this originated with supporters of Class Struggle Education Workers and the Internationalist Group.

In a significant development, a call has been issued by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union to join the picket lines. Appeals should be made to other key unions, including the Teamsters, who recently struck L.A. ports in defense of immigrants threatened with deportation.

To hammer out next steps each day, overcome bureaucratic resistance and ensure that the strike is run by the rank and file, a mass strike committee of representatives should be elected from every school. In addition to outreach efforts already underway, strike support committees at every school should actively enlist parents and other workers. Such committees are key to countering strikebreaking propaganda and dealing with childcare and meals for the students.

Class-conscious educators should call to oppose charter schools altogether, to turn them into public schools and to abolish the LAUSD administration. Instead, schools should be governed by councils of educators, students, parents and workers. Above all, the defense of public education must be waged politically. From Eli Broad to Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on down to Antonio Villagairosa and Austin Beutner, the key privatizers are Democrats. Beutner was picked by Clinton to oversee the plundering of enterprises that were privatized following the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Now he is looting the Los Angeles public schools.

We need a fighting leadership to mobilize the power of the working class. The entrenched bureaucracy of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association seeks to hold back rank-and-file militancy by chaining the unions to capitalist politicians who falsely pose as “friends of labor.” What’s required is a union leadership with the program and determination to wage hard class struggle to defeat the bipartisan capitalist attack on public education. Against Republicans and Democrats, the CSEW calls to build a class-struggle workers party.

ALL OUT TO WIN THE LOS ANGELES TEACHERS STRIKE!

Class Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) is part of the fight for a revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed. See the CSEW program here.