Today in Labor History—May 27

Communards in their Coffins

May 27, 1871 –Today marks the end of the Paris Commune and the Bloody Week that destroyed it. Communards were lined up and shot against the wall, now known as "mur des fédérés," to honor their memory. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1947 –The U.S. Fishermen and Allied Workers union merged with Harry Bridges' ILWU. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1958 – Ernest Green became the first African-American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1968 –A grand jury indicted the "L.A. 13" for conspiracy to disturb the peace for their role in the Chicano school walkouts: Sal Castro, Eliezar Risco, Patricio Sanchez, Moctezuma Esparza, David Sánchez, Carlos Montes, Ralph Ramirez, Fred Lopes, Richard Vigil, Gilberto Olmeda, Joe Razo, Henry Gomez, & Carlos Muñoz, Jr. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1968 – University and high school students went on strike in Dakar, Senegal. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1980 – 3,000 unarmed civilians were slaughtered by the South Korean military during the Kwangju Uprising, which lasted from May 18 through May 27. The victims had been protesting military rule and demanding democracy. A similar uprising and massacre occurred in 1950 in Cheju-do. However, the Cheju-do Massacre, which resulted in 60,000 civilian deaths, was backed, and then covered up, by the U.S. government. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 27

Communards in their Coffins

May 27, 1871 –Today marks the end of the Paris Commune and the Bloody Week that destroyed it. Communards were lined up and shot against the wall, now known as "mur des fédérés," to honor their memory. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1947 –The U.S. Fishermen and Allied Workers union merged with Harry Bridges' ILWU. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1958 – Ernest Green became the first African-American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1968 –A grand jury indicted the "L.A. 13" for conspiracy to disturb the peace for their role in the Chicano school walkouts: Sal Castro, Eliezar Risco, Patricio Sanchez, Moctezuma Esparza, David Sánchez, Carlos Montes, Ralph Ramirez, Fred Lopes, Richard Vigil, Gilberto Olmeda, Joe Razo, Henry Gomez, & Carlos Muñoz, Jr. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1968 – University and high school students went on strike in Dakar, Senegal. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1980 – 3,000 unarmed civilians were slaughtered by the South Korean military during the Kwangju Uprising, which lasted from May 18 through May 27. The victims had been protesting military rule and demanding democracy. A similar uprising and massacre occurred in 1950 in Cheju-do. However, the Cheju-do Massacre, which resulted in 60,000 civilian deaths, was backed, and then covered up, by the U.S. government. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—May 27

May 27, 1871 –Today marks the end of the Paris Commune and the Bloody Week that destroyed it. Communards were lined up and shot against the wall, now known as "mur des fédérés," to honor their memory. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1947 –The U.S. Fishermen and Allied Workers union merged with Harry Bridges' ILWU. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1958 – Ernest Green became the first African-American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1968 –A grand jury indicted the "L.A. 13" for conspiracy to disturb the peace for their role in the Chicano school walkouts: Sal Castro, Eliezar Risco, Patricio Sanchez, Moctezuma Esparza, David Sánchez, Carlos Montes, Ralph Ramirez, Fred Lopes, Richard Vigil, Gilberto Olmeda, Joe Razo, Henry Gomez, & Carlos Muñoz, Jr. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1968 – University and high school students went on strike in Dakar, Senegal. (From the Daily Bleed)

May 27, 1980 – 3,000 unarmed civilians were slaughtered by the South Korean military during the Kwangju Uprising, which lasted from May 18 through May 27. The victims had been protesting military rule and demanding democracy. A similar uprising and massacre occurred in 1950 in Cheju-do. However, the Cheju-do Massacre, which resulted in 60,000 civilian deaths, was backed, and then covered up, by the U.S. government. (From the Daily Bleed)

L.A. Unions Cave In to Mayor's Threats

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has struck a deal with a coalition representing about 19,000 workers that will force them to pay 4% of their income toward their health and retirement benefits in exchange for a three-year moratorium on furloughs, as well as an end to existing furloughs, according to the L.A. Times. The mayor expects all city employees to pay more for their benefits, including police and firefighters. He hopes that his threats, will force other city unions to follow. Those who do not cooperate will have additional furloughs and layoffs imposed on them.

Union leaders told members they had no choice and acted as if they were making concessions to armed terrorists. Others asserted that their members were willing to “share in the sacrifice” without actually surveying them. In reality, the unions have several choices, the most obvious being to say “no” and to back it up with job actions. Workers might very well support a job action, too. In reality, they are not being asked to “share in the sacrifice,” but to take it on entirely. A 4% pay cut to someone making $50,000 per year means a lot more than it does to someone making $1 million or more per year, yet the wealthy are not being asked to make any sacrifices at all. Considering that there are close to 25 billionaires in Los Angeles, it ought to be quite easy to turn its deficit into a whopping surplus if the mayor had the balls to levy a greed tax, or simply increase the city’s business taxes.

Thousands of L.A. Students Walk Out, Protest Mass Teacher Firings

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) issued over 7,000 pink slips to teachers and support staff (around 5,000 just for teachers) in order to close a $408 million budget gap. Thousands of students walked out of class today across the city to protest the layoffs and to send a message to legislators to start fund schools adequately.

Hundreds of students walked at Belvedere Middle School in East L.A., according to KTLA. They had also gotten petitions signed and wrote letters to the district. Students walked at Manual Arts High, as well as at Estaban Torres High, in East. L.A. Over 3,000 students were expected to walk out of Hamilton High School, according to Mike Klonsky, who also happens to be an alumnus there. Students carried with picket signs and “Save Hami” T-shirts. According to a statement made by Hamilton students,

“This is not a school wide "Ditch Day." We are walking out not to avoid our classrooms, but to save them. To protest the terrible budget cuts our school could face. To protest the 22 pink slips handed out to our beloved teachers, to protest the potential closure of our school library. We are walking out to protest the increase of class sizes by 50% or more. And we will walk out to stop our magnets from facing a 90% loss in funding.”

Protecting Poor Kids By Firing Veteran Teachers (& Undermining Collective Bargaining)

An appeals court yesterday refused to delay a settlement that would shield low income schools in Los Angeles from layoffs. The settlement came in the aftermath of a lawsuit by the ACLU on behalf of low income families who argued that seniority-based layoffs disproportionately harmed their schools since they had a disproportionate number of newer teachers.

Today John Fensterwald (Educated Guess) wrote a piece suggesting that the LAUSD ruling might become a model for other school districts. This question is not trivial. The LAUSD ruling undermines seniority protections that had been negotiated between United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and LAUSD, and thus the power of the contract itself. If a lawsuit can weaken or possibly strip away seniority protections, despite having been negotiated and signed into a contract, then why couldn’t other protections, like class size limitations, also be stripped from a labor contract?

It should be pointed out that the disproportionate number of newer teachers at low income schools is not caused by seniority. It is a consequence of weak or incompetent administrators that do little to bring veteran teachers into low performing low income schools or to improve those schools and make them desirable places to work. It is also important to recognize that low income schools tend to burn teachers out more than middle class schools as they place much higher demands on teachers to bring up test scores and to solve the educational problems caused by poverty. Therefore, even if newer teachers at these schools are shielded from being laid off during this round of cutbacks, these schools may still lose higher numbers of teachers due to attrition.

Jack O’Connell, the former state superintendent, took no position on the lawsuit. However, the new Superintendent, Tom Torlakson, has filed briefs opposing the settlement and called for delaying its implementation because of the potential implications to disrupt teacher assignments throughout the state.

In a related piece of disturbing news, Education Trust-West issued a list of recommendations for reforming the layoff process called Victims of the Churn: The Damaging Impact of California’s Teacher Layoff Policies on Schools, Students and Communities in Three Large School Districts. Notice that the title of the report does not even include teachers as victims of their own layoffs. Ostensibly, teachers are dispensable, easily replaceable objects in the machinery of education. Their recommendations include:

• Repealing the state law requiring districts to use seniority as the primary criteria for layoffs (using the courts or legislature to crush contracts and collective bargaining)
• Protecting high-poverty schools from the disproportionate impact of layoffs (by killing seniority?  Or by some other means?)
• Delaying the March 15 deadline for layoff notices to the summer to give districts more time to make accurate layoff decisions

Charter School Fires Founder, Threatens to Sue LAUSD

Slap on Wrist or Decertification for Crescendo?

Crescendo Charter Schools, embroiled in a scandal over it administration’s mandate for teachers to cheat on state standardized exams, has fired its founder, John Allen, and threatened to sue Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in order to keep its six schools open. Last week, the Los Angeles School Board voted to close the schools. John Allen had ordered principals at the schools to require teachers to open the sealed exams in advance and allow students to study them before taking the exams in earnest. Several teachers risked retaliatory actions and reported the corruption to authorities.

Crescendo had been making miraculous, unbelievable gains on its exam scores, which had originally prompted LAUSD to recertify their charter. However, when it became clear that faculty had cheated, these miraculous gains became suspect. As a result of the cheating, there was no way to know if Crescendo had been making any real progress at all.

Anthony Handy, chair of the Crescendo governing board criticized LAUSD for “acting prematurely,” and in violation of California’s open meeting law (the decision to revoke all six charter was not included in the board’s published meeting agenda). One should wonder why Crescendo should get a second chance? They initially gave Allen a slap on the wrist (a six-month suspension, with his job preserved for him upon his return) and the guilty principals only received ten-day suspensions. It seems that LAUSD is only guilty of waiting too long to revoke their charter and doing so only after public outrage became more damaging than the guilty administrators.

In a calculated and cynical move, incoming LAUSD superintendent John Deasy lauded the firing of Allen, saying it was “a long time coming.” Deasy was hand-picked for the job of superintendent by pro-charter school billionaires and had served as head schools official at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a pro-charter school philanthropy. Deasy’s criticism was damage control, an attempt to show that the system is self-correcting and fair, that charter schools are essentially wholesome and good, and the occasional bad eggs are quickly removed.