NEW YORK CITY, April 6 — Thirty-five thousand education workers have been laid off in NY State since the economic crisis of 2008. Furthermore, millions of dollars in Governor Cuomo’s new budget is slated for Charter Schools, leading to even more layoffs. And the response from our statewide union leadership? Silence.
At a statewide convention this weekend of 2,400 representatives of union locals in the NY State United Teachers (NYSUT), the mis-leadership settled for meaningless resolutions calling for the removal of NYS education commissioner John King and only critiqued the timing, but not the essence, of Common Core implementation. Under the guise of “raising standards for all,” the Common Core will further legitimize the main function of capitalist education: to sort future workers into the few slots at the high end of the labor market, the many slots at the low end, along with unemployment, incarceration and military enlistment.
Unions which facilitate implementation of such regimes, while keeping workers from fighting back, are useful to the ruling class. NYSUT, though composed of workers, is an arm of the bosses’ state apparatus as it tries to pacify workers whom the ruling class is directly attacking.
It was also useful for the rulers to have Randi Weingarten — head of the national American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — visit the Ukraine to offer “solidarity” and “encouragement” to its distinctly fascist-led “democratic” movement which is aimed at undermining one of the U.S. bosses’ main imperialist rivals, Russia.
A willing puppet of U.S. bosses, Weingarten has been at the helm of major unions for over 17 years and has midwifed the birth of every major attack on education workers — as well as their students and families — that today’s misleaders pretend to oppose: merit pay, Common Core, charter schools, and more. Signs that these mis-leaders’ thin veneer of legitimacy is wearing off were on display this weekend. Opposition rank-and-file forces exposed the fascist-style repression of dissent the UFT’s ruling Unity caucus imposes within its ranks in order to effectively fulfill its role as junior partner to the ruling class in controlling teacher labor.  
Education workers responded well to PL literature with its communist analysis of education under capitalism, in general, and the current union elections at the convention in particular. Rotten union leadership can’t prevent workers from wanting a better system, though that’s the major role these mis-leaders play as the “labor lieutenants of capital.”
As we head to May Day and the next school year, communist educators must be bolder and more determined to win the many teachers closer to PLP and the fight for communism.