Chicago Teachers Under the Gun, Again

Democrats, Bureaucrats and the ISO

The following leaflet was issued by the Chicago Spartacist League on April 26.

Last October, the 26,000-strong membership of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) was sold out by the union bureaucracy, which called off a widely anticipated strike and rammed through a concessionary contract. Since that defeat, Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel has only been emboldened, launching a barrage of attacks on the union and schools: imposing four unpaid furlough days on union members; threatening to shorten the school year to save money; preparing to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of unionized school clerks; and warning of school closings and more layoffs. The CTU tops’ sellout has left the union ranks angry, frustrated and demoralized. The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) of President Karen Lewis and Vice President Jesse Sharkey did all they could to avoid a walkout despite the fact that union members twice voted by 95 percent or more to authorize a strike. But responsibility also lies with the reformist International Socialist Organization (ISO) that for years has been among the most active cheerleaders of Lewis and Sharkey, with its supporters playing a central role in CORE.

When CORE won the CTU elections in 2010, its leadership promised more democracy and social-justice unionism. But no less than the rest of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, the leaders of CORE push the same dead-end politics of support to the class enemy through the capitalist Democratic Party. For seven years, CORE has endorsed hundreds of Democrats and funneled millions of dollars to their campaigns. Instead of class struggle, the strategy of Lewis, Sharkey and CORE is to seek capitalist politicians as allies to pass “progressive” legislation like impotent “tax the rich” schemes and to get a few more crumbs for public education from the budget.

While often posturing as “friends of labor” against the overtly racist and anti-union Republicans, the Democrats are a party of the bosses. Preaching reliance on bourgeois politicians, trade-union tops disarm their members by falsely portraying the capitalist rulers and the working class as sharing common interests. For example, speaking for the CTU leadership last spring, Jesse Sharkey openly pushed class collaboration calling for “public pressure” so that “CPS [Chicago Public Schools] and CTU can come together with some joint solutions down at the capital.” Then last fall, the CTU tops scuttled the strike, which served to avoid an embarrassing walkout in this Democratic Party stronghold just weeks before the presidential election. What is needed is a class-struggle leadership dedicated to the principle of complete political independence of the working class from the bosses, their parties and political representatives.

The class betrayal of backing the capitalist Democrats was the price of admission to CORE, a price the ISO and its supporters were all too happy to pay. For the reformist “socialists” of the ISO, the question of supporting bourgeois candidates and parties has always been a question of tactics as opposed to one of principle. The ISO has promoted the small-time capitalist Green Party in its many incarnations, from Ralph Nader in 2000 to Jill Stein in 2016. After Obama’s election in 2008, the ISO organized a party celebrating his victory.

In ISO bulletins of late 2014 (posted online), one member protested the “de facto ISO endorsement (at least in Southern California) of Tom Torlakson, the Democratic Party candidate for Superintendent of California,” noting that “our leading teacher comrades in LA phone banked for and publicly supported Torlakson.” The ISOer also noted that a leading, high-profile supporter had endorsed a Democratic candidate for mayor in Chicago, i.e., Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. In fact it was Sharkey himself, who has been a long-time contributor to the ISO’s Socialist Worker newspaper, who led the charge for Garcia, stumping for his campaign in the streets and bragging about hugging him. In response to members’ criticism, “SS,” writing for the ISO’s leading body, blamed the teachers union membership. Alibiing the ISO-supported trade-union bureaucrats, “SS” complained that: “CTU members voted for these endorsements. In this situation, revolutionaries in union leadership face an inherent contradiction: standing in principle BOTH for the democratic decisions of the rank and file membership AND in opposition to the Democratic Party” (emphasis in original; from Pre-convention bulletin #5, 18 January 2015).

A more disingenuous response can hardly be found. “SS” would have ISO members believe that it was pressure from the rank and file that forced the CORE leadership to back Democrats like Mike Madigan, Pat Quinn, or “Chuy” Garcia. The truth is that the union leadership, supported by the ISO, pushed these endorsements on the CTU members. While a few ISO members felt betrayed by such open pimping for the Democrats, Sharkey’s embrace of Garcia was not an aberration but the logical conclusion of organizing and joining a pro-Democratic Party union caucus.

In September 2012, the CTU waged a solid nine-day strike and beat back some of the most onerous concessions demanded by Rahm Emanuel and CPS (see “Chicago Teachers: Solid Strike, But Key Issues Unresolved,” WV No. 1013, 23 November 2012). This was a necessary, defensive strike, forced on a leadership that refused to go out until after the August 2012 Democratic Party convention was over. The CTU House of Delegates defeated an initial attempt by the Lewis/Sharkey leadership to end the strike. The final settlement days later still left key issues unresolved to the disadvantage of union members. The ISO hailed the 2012 strike as an outstanding example of “class-struggle unionism.” By those lights, every trade-union official who is compelled to call a strike when caught between an outraged membership and intransigent bosses is transformed into a paragon of “class-struggle unionism.”

The 2012 strike was broadly popular in Chicago, especially among other public unions and with the black and Latino populations that the city’s public schools serve. A teachers’ strike this time around would have been a chance to achieve a better contract and to defend against the ongoing onslaught. It certainly would have galvanized the Chicago labor movement where eight thousand heavily black and Latino Amalgamated Transit Union members have been working without a contract since January 2016. Struggle by city labor could also spark social struggle against the hellish conditions of ghetto and barrio life in “Segregation City,” where there is racist cop terror, high unemployment, and continual cuts in education, transportation, and healthcare.

The Democrats, who have run Chicago for 80 years, work to ensure class peace, i.e., no strikes, while they attack the working class and oppressed. In this, they count on the cooperation of the trade-union bureaucrats, who in turn have their loyal servants in reformist waterboys like the ISO. In contrast, we say: The working class needs to rely on its own strength, not on the bosses’ courts nor arbitrators nor capitalist legislators. Break with the Democrats! Decades-long political subservience to the Democrats has gutted the power of the unions. What is needed is a class-struggle labor leadership—one based on complete independence from the bosses and their political operatives. The money and resources exist to provide quality, integrated education for all, but to seize that wealth requires breaking the bourgeoisie’s hold on power. To that end, a workers party must be forged to lead the struggle to overturn this decaying capitalist order through socialist revolution. That is the purpose of the Spartacist League. A necessary part of our struggle is to unmask reformists like the ISO who drag the name of socialism through the mud by aiding, abetting and lawyering for the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy and by their support to bourgeois politicians.