Union Tops Bow to Democrats

Popular L.A. Teachers Strike Sold Short

For Quality, Integrated Public Education! No to Charters!

For six days last month, Los Angeles teachers engaged in determined strike action in defense of public education. United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) members were up against a cabal of Democratic Party officials, not least billionaire Austin Beutner, the hated superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The walkout over better working conditions and learning conditions in the schools was widely popular, as many parents and students joined the picket lines along with sections of organized labor. Tens of thousands rallied with placards reading, “We Stand with LA Teachers” and “Estamos con los Maestros de Los Angeles,” a testament to the strike’s resonance among the city’s heavily Latino population.

The mood of many union members was captured by one first grade teacher, who declared: “We’re a lot stronger than we thought we were” (Los Angeles Times, 22 January). In the end, the UTLA successfully staved off an attack on union health benefits for new hires and won some modest concessions from the LAUSD, such as more nurses, librarians and counselors and minimal class-size reductions. However, the union leadership called a halt to the strike with a settlement that on the core issues of school funding and charter schools undercuts the teachers’ future struggles by further binding the union to the district and city bosses in the capitalist Democratic Party. The longstanding reliance on the Democrats by labor officialdom has paved the way for the decimation of union jobs nationwide. In fact, the union’s strength is brought to bear when it mobilizes under its own banner, independently of the capitalists and their political representatives.

As one UTLA teacher put it, “The Democrats and Republicans are like a double-headed snake.” Indeed, so-called “friend of labor” Democrats have helped spearhead the decades-long ruling-class offensive to gut public-sector unions, starve education of funding and promote “free market” education schemes, such as privately run charter schools. The same capitalist rulers who are devastating public education also ratchet up the exploitation of workers and subject the black, Latino and poor masses to misery and repression. The fight for quality, integrated and secular public education for all, including bilingual education, is part of a broader struggle to address the felt needs of millions—for decent jobs, housing and health care.

Educators across the country, many themselves preparing to hit the picket lines as in Denver and Oakland, viewed the UTLA strike as a crucial battle. Although the L.A. teachers were not defeated, they also did not win. The settlement, brokered by Democratic mayor Eric Garcetti, who praised a “new culture of collaboration,” was hailed as a “historic victory” by UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl, who rammed it through in a few hours. In fact, the contract will barely make a dent in the wretched conditions that teachers endure to educate hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class students. The minimal pay raise is hardly different from the LAUSD’s last pre-strike offer, as several angry teachers told Workers Vanguard. Even the scrapping of the previous contract’s hated Section 1.5, which had allowed the district to keep increasing class sizes, could be reversed in the event of any purported budget crisis.

One week after the strike was over, the cries of impending bankruptcy were renewed by the Los Angeles County Office of Education that oversees district finances. Claiming that the agreement is not “sustainable” due to “financial insolvency,” the agency threatened to put the LAUSD under its authority if it does not come up with adequate spending cuts. Meanwhile, with powerful financial forces ominously bemoaning the high pension costs of K-12 and community college educators, teachers’ health care and retirement benefits could be next on the chopping block.

Down With the Charter Industry!

On the question of charter schools, which pose a mortal danger to public education and the teachers unions, the UTLA bureaucrats have patted themselves on the back for getting a toothless resolution passed by the school board as part of the strike settlement. The resolution requests that Democratic governor Gavin Newsom implement a moratorium of eight to ten months on new charter authorizations to allow for a study of their “financial implications.” Paying lip service to charter “accountability” is cheap for Democrats and hardly coincidental in the era of Trump and his “privatize at all costs” education secretary Betsy DeVos, especially with the 2020 elections on the horizon.

Pushing charter schools has always been a bipartisan project. The industry massively expanded under Barack Obama and his education secretary Arne Duncan, who replaced so-called “failing” schools with charters in cities like Chicago. As San Francisco mayor, Newsom was backed by charter proponents and lauded charter schools. Yet the labor tops continue to promote Democrats like Newsom as partisans of public education. The UTLA leadership is currently backing the school board campaign of longtime Democrat Jackie Goldberg, who, having supported charters time and again, calls for more “transparency.”

The union bureaucrats, working within the framework of what is acceptable to their Democratic masters, seek to regulate, not eliminate, charter schools, including through a cap. Obscenely, the new contract makes the union complicit in the setup of colocated charters, which take facilities away from public schools. A UTLA coordinator will now be part of the decision-making process on the sharing of space, that is, will give a union stamp of approval to the charter takeover.

In L.A. alone, charters have stripped nearly $600 million annually from state education funds over the last decade. From coast to coast, charters increase racial segregation and class inequality in schools. The goal must be to smash the charter industry and bring charter teachers and staff into the public school system. A major step in that direction would be to wage an uncompromising fight to unionize the charter schools and win full union protections and compensation, undercutting their main selling point to the anti-union privatizers.

During the LAUSD strike, three UTLA-organized charter schools operated by the Accelerated Schools network also walked off the job. The first charter strike ever in California presented a unique opening to cement unity in action between charter school and public school teachers, but the UTLA leadership kept the struggles separate. District teachers were sent back to work before the charter teachers settled, as the union tops left them to fend for themselves. What was necessary was an all-out fight for equal wages and benefits at the highest level, which would have gone a long way toward fueling enthusiasm for a drive to organize all charter schools.

Break with the Democrats!

Universal public education is a historic gain of the working class issuing out of the Civil War that smashed black chattel slavery. A century later, in the 1950s and ’60s, the struggles of the civil rights movement took aim against segregated and inferior schools. But its liberal, pro-Democratic Party leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. could not end the de facto segregation of black people that is materially rooted in the capitalist system. In the decades since, America’s racist capitalist rulers have deemed there to be little value in educating black, Latino and working-class youth.

Amid a racist backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement, California’s Proposition 13, which capped property taxes, was signed into law in 1978. At the time, a section of the bourgeoisie had fanned the flames of a white, middle-class tax revolt against government programs viewed as benefiting poor blacks and Latinos. This social reaction was linked to a racist opposition to busing, a modest effort to achieve some measure of school integration. After Prop. 13’s approval, funding for public schools was massively depleted, welfare was slashed, and libraries and hospitals devastated, while big businesses reaped huge tax windfalls. California, once known as the education state, today ranks 44th in school funding.

The UTLA leadership is now pushing a 2020 tax reform ballot initiative that would abolish Prop. 13’s tax cap for commercial and industrial properties. This initiative, the California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act, is being promoted as the way to restore billions of dollars to education across the state. As opponents of Prop. 13, we would support measures that curtail or reverse it.

However, the union bureaucrats push such legislative measures as a diversion from the necessary militant class struggle against the capitalists and their state. Indeed, in the new contract, the UTLA tops commit the union to acting as a lobbying arm of the LAUSD for the initiative. It’s not the union’s job to help the bosses figure out how to divvy up their funds. At the end of the day, the amount allocated to education and other vital social services is determined by the relationship of forces in the class struggle.

Caputo-Pearl’s Union Power caucus is cheered on by supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO). In the article “We Won a Historic Victory for LA Schools” on the ISO’s website (socialistworker.org, 23 January), Gillian Russom, a member of the UTLA Board of Directors, bends over backward to sell teachers on the contract. Russom is a typical union bureaucrat, accepting the premise that there is only so much money to go around: “If you were to reduce one student in every classroom in LAUSD, that’s the equivalent cost of a 5 percent raise. So you’re talking about a very expensive item in terms of hiring new people.”

The ISO’s enthusiastic support of the UTLA leadership, which is ever-loyal to the capitalist profit system, parallels its backing of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) that heads the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and has longstanding ties with the UTLA’s Union Power. During the 2012 Chicago teachers strike, CORE bowed to the city’s Democratic mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who refused to negotiate about such issues as school closings, layoffs and charters. As in L.A., the CORE misleaders abided by the parameters laid out by the Democratic bosses, and the CTU has since been battered.

The reformist ISO hitches its wagon to those Democrats being touted as “progressive” instead of “corporate,” selling the myth that capitalist politicians can be convinced to provide for the well-being of the masses. To this end, the ISO is working together with the DSA, which from its inception has been an organic component of the Democratic Party. A joint statement issued on January 22 by the L.A. chapters of the ISO and DSA claims: “Building a socialist alternative to capitalism means holding these Democrats to account and breaking with their pro-business agenda.”

No! As Workers Vanguard supporters emphasized on the picket lines, the starting point must be breaking with the Democratic Party as a whole. The situation cries out for a new class-struggle leadership of the unions, one based on the understanding that working people have nothing in common with the bosses and their parties. Key to unlocking the social power of the multiracial working class is severing the ties between labor and its class enemy.

The corporations and banks are sitting on mountains of cash, yet to put that wealth in the service of human need rather than private profit requires breaking the power of the bourgeoisie and reorganizing the economy on a socialist basis. To do so is a question of leadership. The fight for a multiracial revolutionary workers party is crucial not only to defend the interests of workers, blacks, immigrants and others against the ravages of capitalism, but also to lead the struggle for workers revolution. Only this will open the door to an egalitarian society, in which everyone has access to housing, health care and education of the highest quality.