UFT Elections – We Need a Class-Struggle Opposition!

UFT Elections – We Need a Class-Struggle Opposition!

The campaign is well underway for the triennial election of officers and executive board members of the United Federation of Teachers. Mailed ballots will be counted on April 7. The instrument of the UFT misleaders, the Unity Caucus, has a well-oiled machine and will surely carry the day. You’ve never truly experienced a pro-capitalist union bureaucracy in all its glory until you’ve seen 600 hands go up in unison at a UFT Delegate Assembly on some obscure issue that no one in the assembly has a clue about. Historically, Unity is derived from the right-wing anti-Communist Al Shanker, whose political outfit, “Social Democrats U.S.A.” provided top staffers for the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan. Shanker supported charter schools, viewed the public school system as akin to “the communist economy” and helped Washington export counterrevolution around the world. From Shanker’s heir Sandra Feldman to Randi Weingarten to Michael Mulgrew, the Unity leadership has grown less overtly political, but no less wedded to the capitalist system.

Particularly under Weingarten, who ran the shop from 1999 to 2009, Unity has sacrificed one union gain after another, usually buying off opposition in the ranks with a wage hike. The disastrous 2005 contract gave up seniority transfers and granted principals the sole right to hire. This set the stage for the on-going crisis of the Absent Teacher Reserve, in which over 1,000 experienced teachers who have been excessed through no fault of their own are denied the right to teach because no principal will hire them, both because they are “too expensive” and because they actually know something about education and will defend their rights. Ever since, the DOE has been on the warpath to fire ATRs and eliminate seniority altogether. Weingarten introduced “school-based” bonuses, opening the door to “merit pay” that would allow administrators to reward their pets and penalize the rest. Unity’s M.O. is to grant the school bosses two-thirds of the givebacks they are demanding, then claim a “victory” for not giving it all up. By failing to fight the attacks on teachers head-on, it is gutting union power piecemeal.

Mike Mulgrew replaced Weingarten last summer when she moved to Washington to head the AFT. To build up his authority, the first issue of the UFT’s New York Teacher ran two dozen photos of Mulgrew. A Unity flier touting his leadership quotes a charter school advocate describing the UFT chief as “a bare-knuckled trench fighter – a throwback to the muscle-flexing union leaders of the distant past.” In your dreams. In reality, Mulgrew’s policies are identical to Weingarten’s. Under Mulgrew, the UFT endorsed using student test scores in teacher evaluation, which the DOE is now using as a criterion for tenure. In last fall’s mayoral election, Mulgrew adopted a posture of pro-Bloomberg neutrality. Has he brought out tens of thousands of teachers to stop school closings? No. Has he opposed mayoral control of the schools? No. His response to the DOE’s giveback demands in the current contract bargaining was to call on the state’ Public Employee Relations Board to rule. This is the body that enforces the no-strike Taylor Law.

The one-time opposition of the New Action Caucus has been bought off by Unity with executive board slots and staff positions, and is now a cog in the UFT machine. Running in opposition to Unity in this election is a joint slate of Teachers for a Just Contract (TJC) and the Independent Community of Educators (ICE). The standard-bearer for the TJC/ICE slate is James Eterno, chapter leader at Jamaica HS, one of the schools slated for closing. Among the TJC/ICE activists and candidates there are many dedicated activists who oppose school closings, merit pay, abolition of tenure, militarization of the schools, etc. But politically they are not qualitatively different from the “Unity team.”

Last year, ICE put out a position paper on mayoral control that just asked for a few more “checks and balances” than Unity wanted, rather than demanding that the capitalist pols get their hands off and calling for teacher-student-parent-worker control of the schools. Instead of opposing both Democratic and Republican parties of big business, an ICE statement (22 October 2009) on the mayoral elections called to “vote against Bloomberg,” which amounted to backhanded support for the Democrat Bill Thompson. To show his subservience to capital, Thompson declared that he would not grant teachers a 4 percent wage such as other New York City workers had received.

On a range of issues, the TJC/ICE opposition adopts a liberal/reformist position, instead of taking on the capitalist system itself. Rather than calling for cops out of the schools and out of the labor movement, it refers to the police as one of “us.” These professional strikebreakers are the enforcers of racist “law and order” who last year arbitrarily stopped and frisked half a million people, nine-tenths of them black and Latino. ICE supporters have defended taking the union into the bosses’ courts – a violation of elementary class principle. While occasionally criticizing the no-strike Taylor Law, the reformist opposition does not call upon the union to prepare to rip up this union-busting law. During the 2005 MTA strike, while Weingarten pressured TWU leader Roger Toussaint to settle, the opposition did not mobilize to back our brothers and sisters in transit. Class-struggle militants, on the other hand, called on the UFT and other teachers unions to demonstrate in support of the strikers. The bottom line is that the opposition is not prepared to wage a class opposition to the bipartisan war on teachers unions and public education, and thus if elected, it won’t be any more effective in opposing the union-busting onslaught than the Unity hacks.

In today’s world of cutbacks and givebacks, of imperialist war and wholesale destruction of union gains, there is no room for the reformist unionism of old – it is doomed to failure. This was amply demonstrated by the debacle in the TWU, where an opposition caucus (New Directions) was elected to kick out the old piecards, but then quickly fell apart. The “reform” union leader ended up betraying the strike he called under pressure from the militant ranks. To “vote for progressive change,” as TJC/ICE advocates, is no solution – we need a leadership with the program to wage the class struggle needed to win.

The only opposition that can actually defeat the teacher-bashers and union-busters is one that doesn’t play by the bosses’ rules, one that breaks with all the capitalist parties and politicians and seeks to build a workers party to fight for a workers government. A class-struggle opposition would not only defend seniority but oppose all layoffs, defending younger teachers and school staff. It would actively defend the most oppressed, allying with black and Latino students and parents, fighting to bring in many more educators of color, opposing the resegregation of education through elite schools and programs, and defending students against racist police attacks. As the reformist opposition does not present such a program, we cannot support the TJC/ICE slate. Class Struggle Education Workers is active in the UFT and the Professional Staff Congres (representing CUNY faculty and staff) seeking to build a hard-core opposition that would turn the unions into fighting instruments to defend the interests of workers and all the oppressed. We urge you to contact the CSEW (see below), examine our program and join our activities of study and struggle.