Workers and students on our campus had not shared each other’s problems in a long while, but on the Day of Action against cuts to public education this would change.
“Hi everybody,” began one worker. “My co-workers and I are here to begin organizing with students. We face the same enemies. The university bosses who raise your tuition attack us too. Our contract is almost up and we have zero faith in the union’s leadership. Worker-student organizing has succeeded in the past and it can work again.”
Students enthusiastically and overwhelmingly supported the call to build tangible solidarity with rank-and file-workers. As anxiety gave way to excitement, an energetic exchange of ideas followed. The group discussed future organizing possibilities while bearing in mind workers’ concerns about their union. They would meet again in a week.
Meanwhile, union officials monitored the group and reported the workers and to their higher-ups and fired the organizer who facilitated the initial meeting. Then workers were harassed for criticizing the union leaders.
A week later the Worker/Student Alliance met again. The union hacks crashed the meeting and began making excuses for their errors.
But the decision of union officials to target and fire organizers, along with their lack of transparency, and the resulting instability they’ve triggered are deliberate. These things are happening just months before contract negotiations begin but due to the officials’ unwillingness to listen to workers, the union is in shambles. With the union leaders’ lies exposed, the workers repeatedly asked them to leave and students supported the call.
Once the hacks left, the group discussed the struggles ahead. Cuts to public education may lead to layoffs and benefit reductions for workers as well as course cutbacks, tuition hikes and mounting debt for students. The cuts are racist as they will disproportionately harm working-class, immigrant, Latino and black communities. Students and workers on and off campuses are fighting these attacks but have a long way to go.
Recognizing that workers and students have collective power and common cause is only the beginning of a process that can possibly intensify on May Day 2012 by supporting the call for a general strike. Ultimately the struggle all students and workers face is against capitalism. Militant reformism cannot change the essence of capitalism, but struggles against the cuts, with communist leadership, can help educate workers and students to fight for a different world, a communist world.
While the cuts ravage social services across the board, the ruling class allocates billions for imperialist wars and prisons. Confronting and fighting imperialism and the state is eventually where the fight against the cuts will have to focus if we’re to build a new world. To fight the cuts we must fight imperialism.
Locally, it’s likely the university will pit workers against students. The union bosses may even facilitate that process by settling a contract at the expense of student grievances. For them, “solidarity” means securing their bottom line — “The union’s interest uber alles”(above everything else), even workers and students.
Furthermore, expect racism from the university whose service workers are approximately 70% Latino, and from the union who readily disregards worker input.
“What are we fighting for? Who are our targets? What do we hope to accomplish?” Group action will answer these questions. One thing, however, is already clear; this is an alliance of rank-and-file workers and students determined to remain autonomous from the union and its lies, limitations, opportunism, and weaknesses. Onward comrades!