LOS ANGELES, January 9—Thousands of education workers are preparing for a strike! Progressive Labor Party is preparing to bring communist solidarity to the picket lines. These strikes can be schools for class-conscious ideas and practices.As CHALLENGE goes to press, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union has postponed the strike from tomorrow to Monday because of “uncertainty over whether a judge could order the union to wait” (Los Angeles Times, 1/9). The union was hoping for a negotiated settlement, making the legal jockeying and courtroom glitches irrelevant.   
 While the union, courts, and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) battles out its paperwork, it’s in every worker’s interest to go on strike! The workers want higher pay, smaller class sizes, and more nurses, counselors, and librarians to create fully staffed schools (LA Times, 1/9). They also want more of a say in how charter schools share campuses, a demand the UTLA has abandoned.
To prepare, 50,000 teachers, school workers, students, parents and community groups marched “to defend public education” in mid December. The march came after 18 months of failed contract negotiations for the teachers of LAUSD, the second largest school district in the country. Teachers are fed up with the working conditions they are facing and students are fed up with their learning conditions: overcrowded class sizes, lack of resources, unnecessary testing, public funds being siphoned into private charter companies, and low pay. Many believe a strike is imminent.
Student-worker unity
One student spoke, “Let me start by saying how angry I am with Superintendent Beutner. He hasn’t done anything to reduce our overcrowded class sizes…He hasn’t done anything to end the racist random search policy of taking me and my friends out of class to search us every day. Just to be clear, he takes kids out of class starting in the 6th grade to search them for weapons…  He doesn’t have any of our interests at heart…If you all have to go on strike for these issues, students will be with you!”When the students are on the side of workers, that level of unity cannot be underestimated.
Superintendent  Beutner, a classic capitalist criminal. The Superintendent of LAUSD, Austin Beutner, is certainly a politician with ties to the charter school companies. He’s been a donor to local charter schools and has touted their successes (LA Times 10/18/18). He’s recently hired private consultants with shady backgrounds, such as the lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs, which represented former Trump adviser (and convicted felon) Paul Manafort, helped Flint, Michigan spin its poisoned water crisis, and advised Walmart on anti-union campaigns (Reclaim Our Schools, LA 11/18/18).
Billionaire charter-school advocate Eli Broad was once a business associate of Austin Beutner and contributed $3 million dollars to LAUSD as a “vote of confidence” in him when he was hired. Their connection includes Broad’s failed attempt to take over both the LA Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2016, after which Beutner was let go as publisher and CEO of both newspapers (San Diego Reader, 2/16/18).
Main problem: racist learning conditions
The main problem in the schools remains the racist learning conditions of students. Overcrowded classrooms and racist policies have plagued public education for generations. Getting rid of one superintendent, politician or CEO will not change that. Though a strike does not change the nature of capitalism, it builds our working-class muscles to smash this system and build a worker-run society.  
Education under capitalism is determined by the needs of the ruling class. They also train the next generation of workers with a prison-like environment and work-like conditions: long hours, discipline, reprimanding, and a hierarchical structure.Only by changing the system itself can we create proper learning environments that serve the interests of the working class and our children.
Strike for workers’ power
Strikes, however, can teach very useful lessons to our class. Strikes show the bosses and show us the power we have as a united working class. Strikes show us that the bosses need us, but we do not need the bosses. When the teachers of Los Angeles strike, they will join many courageous education workers throughout the country who have done the same in recent years. About five percent of all teachers in K-12 schools in the United States have walked off the job so far in 2018, the most since 1992. The stoppages include walkouts in Washington state, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kentucky (Washington Examiner 10/18/18). This is a sign of an upsurge in working class fight back throughout the country, not to mention similar fight backs throughout the world.
Strikes are the first step in the long battle for working class power and a system that truly meets our needs. However, they alone are not enough. We must eventually use the lessons we’ve learned about the strength of a united working class to overthrow this system.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) believes that changing the system from capitalism to communism would give the working class control over their own lives. Under communism, decisions will be made collectively. There will be no bosses, politicians, or competition. There will be no racist or sexist exploitation. Join us on our long road to communism and learn how to make this happen!  Join PLP!