Teachers Unite vs. Attacks on Schools

Los Angeles, October 17 — This week the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) House of Representatives passed a teacher’s motion to support healthcare workers fighting for union recognition at local clinics (see page 4). This effort is part of an ongoing struggle on a local high school campus to mobilize teachers, parents and students to fight against attacks on public education. These attacks represent some of the sharpest attacks on the working class as the ruling class continues to shove the crisis of capitalism onto workers who need education and healthcare.
Responding to these attacks is also an opportunity for our class to learn to fight collectively and to build class consciousness. Seeing how all workers are going through the same struggle is the first step to realizing that it’s the whole system of capitalism that’s the problem. Even though some bosses make things
particularly harder for workers, all bosses must exploit us to make profit.
For example, a new principal was recently hired at the local high school campus. Her immediate actions focused on escalating attacks on teachers and students at the behest of the school district. She is forcing the counselors to push students into the classes at exactly the class size limit set by the union contract. This means, when a student wants to change class there are no spots available because they are at their limit. They are eliminating Advance Placement classes or combining classes, effectively making teachers teach an extra class for no extra pay. The principal is doing exactly what the district wants because this is the best way to exploit education workers.
On a broader scale, the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) has spent an estimated one billion dollars on iPads for every student, which they are now in the process of taking back because students were able to crack their security codes.
Meanwhile, teachers and staff in the district haven’t gotten even a cost-of-living raise for more than six years. Thousands of teachers were laid off and displaced in the last few years, and very few are being hired back. Most are working as substitutes in the same position they previously filled as a full-time teacher! This is more of the same exploitation for maximum profit. The teachers and staff are fed up. A strike seems very probable this school year, but the district and union hacks are doing everything in their power to stall.
Union leadership has largely cooperated with the school district in facilitating the attacks on teachers and students.  PLP is stepping up attempts to mobilize students and teachers to fight back. At the school, a few teachers have begun distributing a newsletter highlighting the attacks and pointing out that all of this is exploitation. In the process, there has also been talk among the faculty about asking all teachers to participate in some form of civil disobedience, such as calling in sick all at once, or refusing to follow a fascistic “no-pass” policy. There are some attempts to get parents and students involved in the fightback, but all of this has been slow going.
Right now, students, faculty and alumni are working together to gather letters of support for a teacher who was unfairly dismissed. These are all just small steps in the process of building class consciousness and leading class struggle. Workers of all types, including healthcare workers, education workers and others, must learn how to work together to build working class power. Only then can we take on our true enemy — capitalism.