Sunday, November 30, 2008

Teachers, CUNY, City Workers Under Attack

The following leaflet by UFTers in Class Struggle Education Workers was distributed at the November 24 rally to defend teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve. For more information see the Web site of the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend ATRs

As Gov't Bails Out Bankers

Teachers, CUNY, City Workers Under Attack

Mobilize Class Struggle to Defend Our Jobs, Our Students and Our Rights

By UFTers in Class Struggle Education Workers

The United States is in the throes of what is admitted by all to be the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Already more than $1.5 trillion have been budgeted to shore up the banking system, while more than a million workers have lost their jobs this year and millions more are about to be thrown onto the unemployment lines. The predatory Wall Street moguls who set off the crisis with their unbridled speculation gave an ultimatum to Congress to come up with the ransom money (the “bailout”) while working people are shafted. Congress complied.

In New York City, billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced multi-billion-dollar cuts in the current budget and more to come. Governor David Paterson is demanding that state workers unions reopen their contracts to give up wage gains already agreed to. Public employees’ pensions are potentially at risk due to the stock market panic and finagling by the reinsurance giants. In the midst of this all-round crisis, the NYC Department of Education has illegally siphoned off millions of dollars mandated by New York State to reduce class size, and refused to give positions to more than 1,500 qualified teachers who are ready, willing and able to teach!

Activists in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) have been mobilizing to fight against this latest attack by the DOE and its boss, Mayor Bloomberg. Yet the biggest obstacle to a successful struggle against the endless assault on teachers and municipal workers is the labor bureaucracy which chains the unions to the capitalist system and the Democratic Party in particular. This is made crystal clear as Democrats are about to control the White House and both houses of Congress in Washington, as well as the state house and both branches of the New York state legislature in Albany – and the attacks on working people multiply.

During the 2008 presidential election campaign, the Democratic and Republican candidates echoed many of the same themes on education. Charter schools, “merit pay,” making it easier to fire teachers? Barack Obama and John McCain underscored their agreement. And both praised the viciously anti-labor chancellor of Washington, D.C. schools, Michelle Rhee, who has declared war on the unions and vows to eliminate teacher tenure.

Since the election of Obama, the various Democratic Party constituencies have been lobbying for their preferred policies and their favorite candidates for cabinet posts. In the middle of this wheeling and dealing, the new American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten stepped up to the plate to announce that “as a pledge of shared responsibility,” except for vouchers for private schools, “NO issue should be off the table” so long as it is “good for students and fair to teachers.” And who decides that? For Weingarten, it’s all up for grabs.

In addition to her new post as AFT chief, Weingarten continues to head up New York City’s UFT where she has presided over a steady erosion of union gains, particularly under NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg. In fact, Bloomberg introduced the union leader at her November 16 speech to the National Press Club. Weingarten returned the favor, declaring: “is there a role for differentiated pay – the kind of pay that Mayor Bloomberg and others call merit pay and still others call performance pay? Of course there is.” So much for the fundamental union principle of equal pay for equal work.

The UFT leader’s trademark is to go along with just about every anti-union educational “reform,” unless it affects her dues base, while modifying it slightly, repackaging it as the “least bad” option, and selling it as a “victory.” But each of these “victories” eliminates vital union job protections. This is the logic of “lesser evil” politics common to the labor bureaucracy as a whole, which puts them in bed with capitalist politicians (usually Democrats, but also the occasional Republican like Bloomberg). Weingarten says “collaboration” is key. What she’s talking about is class collaboration, when what’s needed is sharp class struggle to defeat the assault on unions.

The AFT supported Obama because “he said repeatedly that education reform must be done with teachers, not done to teachers.” So with a little stroking, the union misleaders will accept from supposed “allies” like Obama what they bridled at when it came from certified labor haters like Bush. Throw in a couple billion dollars and apply some make-up, and the AFT will accept a “new look” No Child Left Behind act, instead of calling to junk the anti-teacher, anti-student law outright. And when Weingarten talks of “teachers’ buy-in,” she is buying in to the bourgeois lie that teachers are responsible for the sorry state of American schools.

A perfect example of the mess created by the UFT is the current battle over the fate of some 1,400 educators in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), and another 120 first-year Teach Fellows who have not received positions. The highly qualified teachers end up in the ATR pool not because they “incompetent,” as the bourgeois press claims and NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein implies, but because they were “excessed” when their schools or programs were organized out from under them by the Education Department.

In 2005, the UFT leaders bargained away seniority transfer rights in exchange for a salary increase. Where teachers previously were guaranteed a job when schools or programs were eliminated, now they must be rehired by a principal. And under Tweed’s cynically named “Fair Student Funding” formula, school administrators can get two inexperienced teachers for the price of one experienced teacher earning higher pay. Or the principal may not like union activists, or whistle blowers inclined to question some of the shenanigans of school managers. So ATRed teachers sit in sub pools or even do the same job as before, but without the job security of an assigned position.

The bottom line is that under the “business model” education “reform” of Bloomberg/Klein, supported by Democrats from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, administrators are given total authority, until they are unceremoniously bounced by Tweed because they have run afoul of some statistical model based on “high stakes” bubble tests. As long as this is the case, and so long as the union doesn’t buckle on the “no layoffs” clause in the contract or abandon teacher tenure, the DOE’s reorganization mania will continue to produce hundreds of new ATRs every year.

The November 24 rally is demanding that the Department of Education “give assigned positions to all teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve who want assignments before any new teachers are hired.” This was approved at the October 15 UFT Delegate Assembly in an amendment put forward by a rank-and-file ad hoc committee to support the ATRs. The UFT leadership was never enthusiastic about the rally, at one point calling it a candlelight vigil, and did little to prepare for it. Then less than a week before the rally it announced that a side agreement had been signed with the DOE to facilitate placement of ATRs.

The side agreement includes complicated language and funding formulas that would somewhat counteract the present disincentive to hire experienced teachers. This may result in the placement of some present ATRs, which would take some heat off Bloomberg/Klein for refusing to give classes to 1,500 qualified teachers in the middle of an economic crisis, when classes are more overcrowded than ever. But it doesn’t alter the basic frameworks, so there will be more ATRs next year. And as shown in a revealing analysis by James Eterno, it would even create an incentive not to hire ATR teachers until November “when ATRs go on sale” (see “ATR Step Forward?” at iceuftblog.blogspot.com)

In addition, nothing is said in the side agreement about the Teaching Fellows who will be “terminated” if not given a permanent position by December 5. Also, while the new formula applies to centrally funded ATRs (whose schools were closed), it does nothing for school-funded ATRs (whose programs were closed). And in signing the agreement Klein made a point of saying that he had not abandoned his intention to “terminate” ATRs who are not hired by a principal. Far from being a victory, this is an attempt by UFT and DOE bureaucrats try to hide a problem created by abandoning a fundamental union gain.

We UFTers who are members of the Class Struggle Education Workers (CSEW), a recently formed union tendency also including members of the Professional Staff Congress at the City University of New York, defend public education against capitalist attack. We fight for all teachers to be given positions, to defend teacher tenure, to abolish disciplinary “rubber rooms” in which teachers subject to unjust accusations are penalized, to restore seniority transfers and for equal pay for equal work. But in addition to upholding basic trade-union rights and opposing corporate educational “reform,” it is necessary to transform public education in the interests of working people and the oppressed.

Bloomberg/Klein won mayoral control of the schools with the support of the UFT leaders, and seek to give dictatorial control to school managers. The CSEW calls instead for councils of teachers, students, workers and parents to control the schools. Such a genuinely democratic school system would be opposed by the capitalists and Democratic and Republican politicians alike. To fight for such demands it is necessary to prepare the UFT, PSC and all municipal and state employees unions, and win the support of students, parents and workers, to defeat the Taylor Law which outlaws strikes by public employees.

The election of the first-ever African American president signals an important social shift in this country founded on slavery, whose legacy continues today. But even as Democrats and Republicans (and most of the left) talk of a historic election, racism has hardly been overcome: U.S. schools are as segregated as ever, and there was a post-election lynch mob murder of an immigrant on Long Island. And Obama in office will defend the interests of capital – starting with the bailout of Wall Street while ripping up union contracts, starting with the United Auto Workers. He will leave tens of thousands of U.S. colonial occupation troops and mercenaries in Iraq, escalate the war on Afghanistan, expand the bombing of Pakistan and perhaps hit Iran.

The continued imperialist war, the war on working people in the U.S., the “bipartisan” lovefest over corporate “education reform” are all part of a broader capitalist consensus to solve the economic crisis by tightening the screws on the working class. To fight this, the key is a build a leadership on a program of class struggle in opposition to the class collaboration of the present union leaderships. While the labor tops keep on backing Democratic and Republican politicians, we in the CSEW call to oust the sellout bureaucrats and build a workers party to fight for a workers government!


Class Struggle Education Workers Formed

Class Struggle Education Workers was formed in September 2008 by activists in two New York City education unions: the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), representing public primary and secondary educational personnel, and the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), which represents faculty and staff at the City University of New York. We also seek to involve campus and school administrative staff and maintenance workers who are in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) as well as other unionized and non-unionized workers. Those initiating the group played leading roles in fights against merit pay and in defense of “excessed” teachers in the NYC schools, in opposition to the “two-tier” labor system at CUNY, in defense of immigrant students and in solidarity with striking teachers in Mexico and Puerto Rico. The felt need was for a grouping to help provide a clear orientation and leadership in the struggle to defend and transform public education in the interests of working people and the oppressed. This intersects almost every crucial social and political issue of the day and ultimately means bringing down the rule of capital. As this requires a thorough-going break from the entire framework of “business unionism” and the outlook of the union bureaucracy, general calls for more militancy and union democracy alone only lead to a dead end. Instead, the Class Struggle Education Workers is based on a class-struggle program, presented below.
Class Struggle Education Workers' Program
We have formed Class Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) as part of a broader fight for a revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed rather than, as it is at present, an instrument for the disciplining of labor in the interests of capital. The subservience of organized labor goes beyond the PSC, UFT and AFSCME, and we look forward to a class-struggle tendency encompassing militants in a number of unions. We support the basic positions expressed in the Internationalist pamphlets Stop CUNY's Anti-Immigrant War Purge and Marxism and the Battle Over Education. We stand for:
Free public education from kindergarten through graduate school. Abolish corporate-dominated Boards of Trustees and mayoral control of the schools: students, teachers and workers (together with parents at primary and secondary schools) should democratically control schools and universities.
Stop education privatization and making the City University of New York into “Wal-Mart U”! For militant action against deepening inequality at CUNY and throughout the school system. Abolish the two-tier academic labor system that pays adjunct and other contingent education workers poverty wages. Job security, parity and full health coverage for adjuncts and all “part-timers,” including graduate students: equal pay for equal work. Unite against the drive to gut public higher education and turn it into a “platform” for making profits.
Defend and transform public education in the interests of working people and the oppressed. Oppose capitalist corporatization. Cancel all student debt. Living stipend and free housing for students. No to “charter schools” as an opening wedge to privatization. Down with “merit pay” in any form. In UFT: Full-time positions for all teachers “excessed” or “reorganized” out of their jobs (ATRs). Defend tenure, restore seniority, abolish “rubber rooms” that penalize teachers subject to unjust accusations.
Oppose resegregation of schools: separate is not equal. Stop discrimination and racist attacks against black, Latino, Asian and immigrant students. Fight budget cuts, tuition hikes, exclusionary tests and all anti-working-class, anti-minority measures. Restore open admissions, no tuition. Down with the anti-education “No Child Left Behind” act. Stop anti-immigrant “war purges” (like the one CUNY launched in 2001) against undocumented students and workers. Full citizenship rights for all immigrants.
Mobilize the power of labor together with minorities, immigrants and students in an all-out fight to smash the Taylor Law. Keep bosses’ courts out of the unions. Police and military recruiters out of the schools. No cops, prison or security guards in the unions. For a single union of all university workers. Oust the sellout bureaucrats, for a class-struggle leadership.
Parental leave for all. Free childcare on campus, available round the clock for students and employees. Full reproductive rights, including free abortion on demand and full availability of contraceptives; no to reactionary campaigns against sex education.
Defend the rights of labor, minorities, immigrants, women, gays and lesbians. Make PSC defense of Mumia real – mobilize workers’ power for his freedom. Solidarity with teachers and all workers in Mexico, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
End union support to capitalist politicians (Democrats, Republicans, Greens, et al.). For workers’ strikes against the war – Defeat U.S. imperialism. Oppose U.S. war threats against Iran, Cuba, China, North Korea. For a class-struggle workers' party to fight for a workers' government.
– Original version presented 24 August 2008; this updated version incorporates the changes made at the founding meeting of the CSEW, 26 September 2008.
For more information, write to Class Struggle Education Workers at: cs_edworkers@hotmail.com