The deal for classified staff in the Northern Californian school district is almost identical to one which workers overwhelmingly rejected only two weeks ago, and isolates 1,500 striking teachers in the district.
The pay cuts imposed by the PPTA on 20,000 teachers reinforces the need for workers to rebel against the union bureaucracy by forming independent rank-and-file committees to fight against austerity and militarism.
A reporting team from the World Socialist Web Site spoke with teaching staff about their concerns and why they have decided that strike action was necessary.
The strike by 3,000 educators and support staff has shut down normal operations in one of the San Francisco Bay Area's largest school districts.
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“The only way we will see justice is if we reveal the truth, hold accountable those responsible for the conditions that put us in harm’s way, and set up our own shop floor organizations to take control.”
An inquiry, organized by workers and not corrupt union bureaucrats, is needed to arm workers with the knowledge they need to defend themselves and go on the offensive against the regime of corporate dictatorship in the workplaces which makes these deaths inevitable.
Workers must fight for workers’ power and workers’ control over production, harnessing the surplus created by new technologies to improve, not lower, the standard of living for the masses.
“The path forward lies in organizing independently—through the creation of rank-and-file committees democratically controlled by nurses themselves—to wage a genuine fight for your demands.”
All over the world the trade unions, including those which were founded through bitter struggles led by socialist-minded workers, now play the leading role in enforcing the dictates of management.
In this lecture, delivered in Sydney, Australia in January, 1998, WSWS international editorial board chairman David North explains this profound transformation through an historical examination of the trade unions themselves.
The Soviet literacy campaign remains the largest and most successful in world history. It serves as an enduring demonstration of the extraordinary possibilities for reorganizing society in the interests of the working class on a planned, socialist basis.
This two-part article is a critique of the Democratic Socialists of America’s narrative of the teachers strike wave in 2018-19. It reviews the role of the teachers unions from West Virginia to Arizona, exposing the claims of “victory” by the unions and the DSA. It also assesses the DSA’s opportunistic “dirty break” with the Democratic Party and their role in collaborating with the unions to divert teachers by pressuring the powers-that-be.
This article reviews the significance of the Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court case. As an AFSCME’s lawyer warned the ruling elites during oral arguments, the collection of “agency fees” is routinely traded for a no-strike clause in union contracts. He warned, “Should those clauses disappear, employers will have chaos and discord on their hands.”
In line with the identity politics promoted by the Democratic Party and the pseudo-left, “abolitionist teaching” foments divisions among teachers and students based on race.
The origin of the term ethnomathematics is attributed to Brazilian postmodernist Ubiratan D’Ambrosio (1932-). It emphasizes “power relationships” and cultural relativism, downplaying “objective knowledge.”
After Trump provocatively called educators “loser teachers preaching socialism,” the AFT made no comment. Far from defending teachers against red-baiting, union president Randi Weingarten (annual salary above $500,000) agrees that “socialist” teachers have no business in the classroom. This report looks at some of the long and ugly history of the union’s anticommunism.
