Rank-&-File Battles NJ School Privatization

NEWARK, NJ, January 26 — Education workers are angry.  The Newark Teachers Union (NTU) has let teachers and support staff go two years without a contract with no end in sight.  Most schools are falling apart and some are hazardous.  Students are forced to suffer through state testing every year only to be told their improvement is still insufficient.  The NTU addresses neither issue with members or the Newark community.

This is hardly surprising given the lack of resistance from NTU leaders against ruling-class unity on education reform.  The recently passed Urban Hope Act is a prime example. It allows private companies to build and manage public schools using public funds. Up to 12 schools in the mainly black and Latino districts of Newark, Camden, and Trenton will be affected. The largest teacher’s union in the state, the New Jersey Educators Association (NJEA), supported this pro-corporate, for-profit legislation.

The NTU leadership did nothing to inform the rank-and-filers about this law, much less organize against it.  Further, liberals and conservatives in the privatization debate want teachers to churn out pro-capitalist ideas to maintain this crisis-ridden system. Under capitalism, education is a private industry for the accumulation of profit.

Workers’ Response

Some education workers in the NTU are responding to the union misleadership by forming a caucus.  To align the caucus with the class nature of Newark, it was named Newark Education Workers (NEW) Caucus. The NEW Caucus held three steering committee meetings and two general membership meetings. PL’ers participated to push the struggle to the left.

Three main ideological struggles took place. The first was winning workers to understand the importance of developing a working-class consciousness. The second was to recognize that alienation — the commodification and separation of workers from their labor and from themselves as producers — is a product of capitalism. Alienation makes workers feel like a cog in a wheel. Overlooking this is the primary issue preventing more education workers from fighting back, not apathy. Apathy is a bourgeois myth that functions to blame workers for their inaction, not the misery-inducing capitalist system. The third was to increase the fight against oppression, especially racism, both inside and outside the NTU.

When working on the mission statement for the caucus, it did not take much struggle to persuade education workers that alienation was the primary barrier to more workers participating in the union.  Members of the NEW Caucus are also working toward building unity with all workers and students in Newark, the source of proletarian strength.

Fighting Against Racism is Primary 

Much to the surprise of a PL’er, the issue of fighting racism took much struggle. A caucus member said union leaders were not defending black and Latino workers in the NTU. Another person then brought up the need to defend students by fighting racist attacks within and outside of the school system.  

For some, racism was seen as a personal thing that individuals use against one another and thus no longer a primary problem in society. PL’ers must point out that racism is a class issue and source of immense super profits. Some workers believe we live in a “post-racial” society, a myth the ruling class has worked hard to spread. Another member added that if the mission statement opposed racism then it would have to include all the other “-isms” like ageism.  

After much struggle, caucus members acknowledged racism as a major social problem necessary to fight back against. It is one of the ruling class’s main weapons in dividing and conquering workers. Anti-racist language was included in the mission statement. 

The next step is another mass meeting in two weeks with rank-and-file education workers. Committees will be formed, direct actions will be proposed, and discussion will ensue over how best to introduce the caucus to NTU (mis)leaders.  Be assured that the essence of the NEW Caucus will be reformist, even if militant at times.  But with struggle and CHALLENGE, PLP can build a base with fellow education workers by consistently pushing anti-racist class struggle towards communism.  PLP hopes to win these workers to fight for a communist world where education is for the benefit of all workers, not for the profit of the ruling class.