L.A .Teachers Vote No Confidence in Deasy and Their Own Union

The Los Angeles times reported that LAUSD teachers “overwhelmingly expressed ‘no confidence’ in superintendent John Deasy last Wednesday, the first time such a vote has occurred in the nation's second-largest school system.

It is certainly significant that a majority of LA teachers voted no confidence in their superintendent—and not at all surprising, considering Deasy’s war on teachers. Under his watch, LAUSD has implemented teacher evaluations based on student test scores. There have been numerous charter school conversions, furloughs and layoffs, as well as ongoing budget shortfalls. There have also been abuse scandals in which the district has covered up misconduct or obstructed investigations and then punished teachers en masse for the wrongdoings of one or two teachers, while trying to redirect blame onto the union.

However, it would be a gross exaggeration to say that teachers overwhelmingly supported the no confidence vote. Only about 17,770 teachers (slightly more than half of UTLA’s 32,000 members) participated in the vote. Of those who voted, a whopping 91% expressed disapproval. Yet, as a percentage of the total membership, this only constitutes slightly more than 50%. Looked at differently, one could say that nearly half of Los Angeles teachers did not feel strongly enough to vote at all.

Low voter turn-out for UTLA is nothing new (see here and here). Poor organizing by the union is one likely explanation. Simply placing “vote no confidence” posters on its website is not enough to get teachers to actually participate in the vote. They should have had organizers talking to teachers at every site and agitating for action, should the vote go their way, because in the end, a vote of no confidence has no teeth. If LA teachers want Deasy out, they’ll have to drive him out. Indeed, Deasy responded to the vote by asserting he was too busy trying to provide quality education to needy children to be bothered with such “nonsense.”

Another likely reason for the low voter turnout is general discontent with UTLA by its members. As bad as Deasy has been, UTLA has been complicit with many of his policies, including evaluation reform and furloughs.

Ironically, another measure on the same ballot that criticized UTLA only won 77% approval (probably because the teachers most frustrated with their union didn’t bother to vote). This resolution explicitly criticized UTLA for “weakening and dividing” its members, and for not organizing and mobilizing its members and community allies. The measure called for a reduction in standardized tests for evaluating teachers and an end to reconstitution of staff at low-performing schools.

The Times reports that UTLA president Warren Fletcher embraced the second resolution, despite its criticism of his leadership. Question is, will he do anything about it?

Education Cuts for California Despite Prop 30 Victory

Image from Flickr, by Double-M

The California Teachers Association (CTA) lobbied heavily for passage of Proposition 30, mobilizing thousands of teachers to phone bank and canvas neighborhoods. Together with other state unions, they spent $50 million to get the initiative passed. They claimed it would save public education and restore funding to the schools. However, with more than $18 billion slashed from K-12 education since the recession began, the $6.6 billion in projected revenues from Prop 30 won’t even come close to restoring public education funding to pre-recession levels, especially considering the state budget deficit is now estimated at more than $15 billion. It will do nothing to bring back the 80,000 teaching jobs lost since the recession began nor reopen any schools that were shut down, the WSWS reports.

What Proposition 30 will do is prevent $6 billion in trigger cuts that had been built into the last state budget as a way to blackmail California voters into approving the tax hikes. Rather than restoring public education, Prop 30 simply maintains the status quo of an $18 billion hole in the state’s K-12 funding and one of the very lowest per pupil funding rates in the nation. While it does raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 per year, the increase is only a nominal 1-3% increase on their payroll taxes (i.e., the taxes withheld from their salaries) and it leaves the tax rate on their capital gains (which makes up the majority of their income) unaffected. At the same time, Prop 30 raises the state sales tax from 9.25% to 9.75%—a regressive tax increase that disproportionately affects poor and working class people.

While the California State University (CSU), University of California (UC) and state community college systems are all planning to increase course offerings and some, like CSU, are planning modest tuition refunds ($249 per semester, according to the Los Angeles Times), they are also planning other fee increases and service cuts. CSU, for example, is still planning to implement fee increases for students taking more classes than they need to graduate, and the UC system is planning on increasing fees for graduate and professional programs by 1.5% to 35%. UC, which threatened 20% tuition hikes if Prop 30 failed (and promised no new fees this year if it passed), is leaving open the possibility of raising undergraduate tuition again next year.

In response to the proposed cuts and the unwillingness of UC to go beyond a tuition freeze and actually lower tuition, UC students have been protesting at UC campuses and at meetings of the university’s regents. Students staged a sleep-out in Berkeley on Wednesday night. Hundreds of students were joined by faculty and unionized workers on Thursday to protest budget cuts that have resulted in slashed course offerings, layoffs and large tuition hikes. They blocked roads leading to the meetings and then disrupted the meeting so effectively that the regents had to call a temporary recess.

Students do not simply want a reduction in tuition—many want a completely subsidized higher education system. Last Friday, KPFA’s “Up Front” news program broadcast protesters chanting, “No cuts! No fees! Education must be free!” Until recently, California did subsidize both the UC and CSU systems to the point that neither charged tuition and both charged fees that were relatively affordable for middle income families. Back in the early- to mid-1980s, for example, it only cost $1,000-1,200 per year to attend UC. By 1995, it was over $4,000. By 2010, it has risen to more than $11,000. Last year, tuition at UC was $13,218. (Click here for more on the history of UC tuition).

With the passage of Prop 30, Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) is planning on restoring the five school days that had been cut from the school year the Los Angeles Times reports, as well as restoring teacher pay for the 10 days which they had lost to furloughs. However, Superintendent Deasy warned of a new round of cuts (implying the furloughs and pay cuts could return) if Congress and President Obama cannot resolve the “fiscal cliff” crisis, as this would leave LAUSD with a new $60 million budget shortfall.

Of course, if this happens, many districts in the state could suddenly find themselves with large deficits, too. This is because Prop 30 is only a bandage over a gaping wound. Education at all levels, from pre-K to graduate school, has been eviscerated over the past decade and Prop 30 does nothing to restore the cuts. Prop 30 does little to close California’s current budget deficit and it does nothing to stabilize California’s revenue stream or prevent future deficits and education cuts.

There is a glimmer of hope for education funding in the future. One of the reasons California has had so much difficulty in balancing its budget for the past decade is that voters approved a law requiring a two-thirds supermajority in the legislature before any new tax increases can be approved. The most recent election, however, gave the Democrats just such a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature for the first time in nearly 80 years. This will not only allow lawmakers to pass tax increases, but it also gives them the power to override the Governor’s veto.

Whether or not they will use their power in this way remains to be seen, but seems unlikely considering that every one of them would be negatively affected by a serious tax increase on the wealthy. This is not only because they are all wealthy themselves, but because they would be biting the corporate hand that feeds them, keeps them in office, and provides them jobs when they get termed out.

What was Behind the UESF Strike Vote

Guest blogger Andy Libson, from SFUSD (Teacher at Mission High School in San Francisco and Vice-Presidential candidate for EDU slate), talks about the recent strike vote by San Francisco teachers:

On May 10th, 1880UESF teachers, counselors and paraprofessionals voted overwhelmingly (97%) to authorize a strike vote. The UESF strike vote was the first step of a two-step process for strike authorization. The vote was a big step forward for United Educators of San Francisco and showed the immense well of anger building within our membership over the immediate attacks by the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD); and the years of sitting-by while district administrators slowly chipped away at our contract and work conditions.

This year, SFUSD is calling for more furlough days, even larger class sizes within both general and special education, massive cuts in the work year for Early Child Development teachers, and cuts in prep time for AP teachers and department heads. What’s more, in March they hit our union with nearly 500 pink slips. All this was done while SFUSD sat on over $75 million of restricted and unrestricted reserves, $40 million of that amount coming from concessions SFUSD already extracted from us in our last contract round in 2010.

Though the strike vote meeting was called late & hastily thrown together by UESF officials, the results of the vote made it clear that all of us (UESF leadership and those of us who had been pushing for a strike vote for many months) had underestimated the immense anger brewing within a layerof our membership and the willingness to strike in the face of years of attacks on public education.

UESF moves because we do

Still, the strike vote was not just a result of the belligerence of SFUSD. It was certainly not the result of persistent contract campaign run by the PLC. The central organizing impetus within UESF for the strike vote came from the reform caucus Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU); and dovetailed with our run for union office.

EDU ran a yearlong campaign to replace the current UESF leadership based on a campaign organized around rejecting concessions (No Layoffs, No Furloughs), rejecting austerity (Tax the Rich) and emphasizing class struggle and strikes as the basis for defending our work conditions, our students and our schools.

The EDU decision to connect its strategy of building for a strike to a campaign for union offices was the subject of much debate within the caucus as far back as August of last year. A central argument against the run was that EDU was too weak within the union to contend for top offices, that we should instead emphasize building from our bases at school sites. There were concerns that EDU did not have the resources to both fight around the contract campaign and run a successful election run.  Additionally,some within EDU opposed the idea of raising a strike openly within our campaign for fear of alienating members and getting trounced in the elections.

Those of us in favor of running a full slate did not counter-pose a contract campaign to an election run but saw them as intimately connected to the political task of making the case to the membership about the need for building a union that was willing to fight concessions; and that building for a strike was the best tool for doing so.  We argued that members would not take our message seriously unless we posed both a clear organizational and, more critically, political alternative to the current leadership.

Socialists and radicals in unions have often worried that contending for formal leadership within our union can pull us away from the rank- and-file. This is true if radicals and socialists run a campaign that focuses narrowly on changing the leadership as a basis for reviving our unions and hide their politics while doing so.

The fact is that decades of low class struggle aren’t just a result of poor leadership. Business unionism as an organizing model combined with record-low strike levels have conditioned workers to tolerate defeat and to systematically lower their expectations of what is possible.

If we are to build a fighting union, our membership will need to be directly engaged and challenged about what is possible if we struggle and the need to construct our organizations (unions, coalitions, political parties) to do so. This means working class politics must be at the center of any reform campaign. The question of who runs for election in a reform caucus is important, but not nearly as important as what politics the caucus runs on.

EDU would not just be running a campaign to change the leadership. We would be using the elections to make the case to the membership that we don’t have to accept concessions, but that we ALLwould need to be prepared to strike in order to win. EDU ran as the leadership prepared to lead UESF in a fight if the members were prepared to wage it. We asked members to vote for us on this basis: a vote for EDU is a vote for you to fight in your own interests and we are prepared to lead that fight.

EDU pushes from below and above

In the last contract round in 2010, PLCwas unwilling to survey members saying it would only be ‘divisive’ in the context of accepting cuts.  But this time, EDU pushed early with an October leaflet to UESF members calling on school sites to poll their members for their top three contract demands. EDU also called on UESF to survey all members in preparation for our contract fight. EDU used this leaflet to introduce UESF members to our position on furloughs, class size, standardized tests, benefits and wages and the need to make strike preparations in order to win our demands.

By the end of November UESF began surveying members. Even though they rushed the process and gave us only two weeks to do the surveys (which EDU pushed to 3 weeks), over 1500 members returned their surveys and gave us all a glimpse of the desire of members to have their voice heard this time.
 In January, as we got closer to bargaining EDU officially initiated its election campaign when it put forward its Executive Officer slate (President, Vice President, VP for Substitutes and Secretary) and called for members to vote for us on the basis that EDU rejects all furloughs and layoffs, as well as any concessions on our work conditions.

EDU also called for a raise for paraprofessionals and Child Development workers (who don’t make a living wage in our bargaining unit), and an increased health care contribution from SFUSD for our members with families. Most significantly, EDU called on UESF to begin now to make preparations for a strike in order to win these demands; citing the spirit of the Occupy movement and the specific example of educators in Tacoma who waged a successful fight against concessions with a militant 10-day strike.

When SFUSD launched its attack on our members by demanding 495 layoffs, EDU called for a rally at the Board of Education as a response to the district’s attack. The PLCcalled such an action ‘premature’ and likely to provoke SFUSD unnecessarily. Though few members came to the Board meeting, EDU’s action signaled to the leadership that we would not be waiting for the PLCto give us permission to act.

In February, when SFUSD revealed the full scale of its attack on our contract and that SFUSD was sitting on millions of dollars in reserve (up to $75 million), UESF leaders had no strategy for countering the district.  They seemed to make no effort to inform UESF members of the scale of the attack or the fact that SFUSD actually had the money to avoid most of the cuts they were proposing. EDU pushed UESF to get the information out and urged the UESF bargaining to team to take a position of “No” to any-and-all cuts proposed by the district. This position was supported by the UESF survey of the membership that showed that members were looking for a pay increase and a raise in benefits and were very reluctant to accept more furloughs or further increases in class sizes.

By the end of February, the PLCstill did not have a strategy for fighting the district and told members that SFUSD bargaining team was in ‘disarray’ because Superintendent Garcia was preparing to step down. This ‘disarray’ did not stop SFUSD from bypassing seniority in the layoff process, skipping over schools in the "Superintendent's Zones" leaving other schools to face more layoffs. This was a blatant attempt to use layoffs to divide and bust our union.
In the face of this obvious escalation, EDU called for another mobilization to the Board of Education and proposed initiating the strike vote process as a response to the provocation. UESF leaders supported EDU’s call for mobilization but ruled EDU’s call for initiating the strike process (or even discussing strike) “out of order” because SFUSD would see such discussion within UESF as ‘bargaining in bad faith’. Still, the March rally at the Board of Education was successful and EDU had a large visible presence at the action.

By the end of March, the UESF bargaining team declared at the Assembly that they would not be accepting any of the proposed cuts and would be demanding an across the board pay increase of 2%.  At that meeting, UESF President Kelly told the Assembly that this position meant we would likely need to be choosing between striking in the spring or the fall.

By this time, UESF had adopted many of the major points that EDU was running its election campaign on. It had become clear within EDU and to our supporters that PLCwas feeling the pressure of both an intransigent school district on one side and EDU’s campaign to win leadership, push for “No Concessions” and prepare for a strike.  The constant pressure from EDU at Executive Board meetings, Assemblies and while appealing directly to the membership during our campaign was pushing UESF leadership to move.

 Near the end of March, EDU formally started its site visits to talk to members about why we were running, why they should vote for EDU, and why they should prepare to strike. These site visits were a critical part of our campaign and proved the linchpin to connecting EDU election run to the contract fight within our union, building internal pressure for a fight and build a more democratic, rank-and-file run union.

Over a two-month period (March-April) as the contract fight was picking up, EDU candidates visited almost 30 of the 125 schools in SFUSD. This outreach was made possible, and necessary, because of the current crisis in education and the desire for members to hear an alternative.

It was also a result of the fact that EDU had been an active caucus for the three years since our first election run in 2009.  Had EDU beenjust an‘electoral’caucus thatwent tosleep between elections, we would not have built the relationships that got us into so many sites.

During our many visits to work sites, the response to the EDU message was positive; members raised many questions about what a strike would look like, what it would take to win, and if we, the membership, were ready to do it.  It would be a myth to report that EDU faced only agreement from members on our message, but at all sites we visited we sparked new conversations about the role of unions in defending public education, and the need for militant methods and radical ideas in shaping the course of our struggle.

The overall lesson from our visits was that there was a definite layer in ALLour schools that had been waiting for a group like EDU that was not afraid to take ‘extreme’ positions like “No Cuts!” and “Tax the Rich!”  A group that was not afraid to talk about strikes, and more importantly, not willing to ‘say anything’ just to collect votes.

In April, UESF launched the “Enough is Enough!” campaign. It called for a May 10th membership meeting, but refused to publicize it as a ‘strike vote’ meeting. While UESF leaders agreed it ‘might’ be a strike vote meeting, EDU pushed the leadership at every chance, made the May 10th date a focus of our campaign and informed all school sites we visited that they should be telling all members to ‘save the date’ and to consider it a strike vote meeting unless we were told it is not.

SFUSD’s response to rumors that UESF might have started the strike vote process was to declare impasse and end negotiations. This escalation forced UESF leaders to declare a strike vote. Caught between an intransigent school district and a radical and active caucus, they would have to act or else appear weak to both SFUSD and members about to vote in the union election. At the May 10th meeting, EDU passed out a flyer to all members denouncing the bullying tactics of the SFUSD and urging members to stand fast in our demand to reject cuts and get a 2% raise.  EDU called for a “Yes!” vote, urged members to be prepared for a second vote in the Fall and argued for immediate preparations for a potential strike in the Fall unless SFUSD backs down.

Five days later, the UESF elections were completed and votes tallied. EDU did not win the Presidency or Vice-Presidency (but lost by only 60 and 110 votes respectively).  EDU won the Secretary and Vice-President of Substitutes position. EDU also took all but a few of the Executive Board positions for which we ran. The one dark cloud for our union was the low voter turnout with only 800 of 6000 members submitting ballots to decide the union leadership. This low voter turnout (lower than last election) shows the apathy of many of our members toward our union and its leadership (whether it be PLCor EDU). Membership apathy and disaffection represent a challenge to any group looking to build a fighting union.

Next steps: strike and union reform

Still, for EDU, the results represented important gains. EDU was closing in on the existing leadership, and had pushed them to shift left and do things they had no intention of doing back in January.  We had also shown in practice what it means to build a democratic union by pushing for the member survey, putting forward our ideas at the Assembly and going to sites to directly engage members around our contract and our union.

By running an aggressive campaign that was a clear political alternative to the existing union leadership, EDU used its election campaign to begin to transform the debate about our union among UESF members. We talked with hundreds of members about the fact that fate of our schools is wrapped up with the fate of our union. In the process, we broadened our base of contacts at a number of sites throughout the school district. These sites will be central points of contact for continuing our contract fight next fall.

EDU has also become a stronger caucus over the course of the election.  The debates around the campaign that started in August were revisited over the course of the campaign as we discussed how to pitch our message to the members and how to talk about strikes in relationship to our campaign. There were definitely times when EDU was preparing to step back from running an aggressive, class-struggle campaign, but the debates we had throughout the year in which reminded ourselves of the political goals we set out in August were essential for the caucus to mature politically and organizationally.

For those of us in EDU who are socialists, we ran openly as such. That it never proved an issue among our members, within EDU nor among our election opponents says something about the ability to run on radical politics if you are willing to run on them boldly and openly - while still acknowledging and respecting voices within our union who disagree.

EDU’s campaign shows how running for office can be directly connected to reviving class struggle and how building a reform caucus around radical politics can push our unions to break out of their business unionism straight jacket.  We believe this work can be done in anywhere members are frustrated with their do-nothing unions, but we must start now. This means building reform caucuses across the country with the explicit aim of building for strikes and occupations (and other work actions) and putting socialist politics back into center of union debate and discussion. It is not enough to just raise the specter of social justice unionism; we must see our central task as reviving class struggle unionism as the best way to fight for social justice and the only means for making revolutionary change. Union elections and building reforms caucus centered on class struggle can be a part of that revival if we are prepared to put our politics front-and-center.

Within UESF, the way forward is clear. EDU must make all preparations in the Fall to push for a second strike vote and oppose any concessions demanded from SFUSD or the current UESF leadership (if they crack under pressure over the summer).  It also means opposing any ‘trigger cuts’ which ties our contract and work conditions to Governor Brown’s tax initiative.

EDU’s election run, and the strike vote it helped produce, has proven that there is a deep reservoir of support within our union that is prepared to reject any concessions and to draw a line in the sand to defend public education. Those members are prepared to strike! So are our sisters and brothers in Chicago. So are higher education teachers in the California Faculty Association. The ground is set this Fall for a successful strike wave that can finally take back what has been stolen from us and the families we serve.

Jobs Trump Pay & Conditions Says San Diego Labor Council

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Collaborate with the bosses! Accept their unsubstantiated claims of declining profits and their insane demands for pay cuts and speedups, or else feel their wrath by way of mass layoffs.

Sound like the insane ravings of a corporate CEO, or right wing pundit or politician?

Think again.

This was the cry of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, which recently called on the San Diego Educators Association (SDEA) to work more closely with San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) in order to avert layoffs, according to San Diego 6.com.

To be fair, labor council CEO Lorena Gonzalez said she was not making concessions for SDEA and she did ask SDUSD to provide “real” numbers so the union could better assess their actual financial status. However, the council’s demand that they go back to the bargaining table and work together suggests the council has lost patience with SDEA, (which is a member of the labor council), and that they expect a quick resolution, even if that means more concessions on the part of the teachers. It also suggests that they expect SDEA to accept the district’s dubious financial prognosis and use it as a basis for determining how much to concede, rather than backing the teachers’ reasonable expectation that the district should be the party to compromise find a way to compensate and treat them fairly.

The union and the district have been in a contentious contract battle since last summer, when the district demanded numerous concessions from SDEA, including furloughs and a continuation of the pattern of no pay increases that has been ongoing for the past few years. The district says the concessions will avert mass layoffs, yet Reduction in Force (RIF) notices have already been sent out to nearly 1,700 SDEA members (one in five district teachers, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune). The district claims that either the concessions or the layoffs are necessary in order to close a $120 million budget gap. However, if the district follows through with all these layoffs, they will be unable to open school in the fall because there won’t be enough teachers.

Lorena Gonzalez, CEO of the Council, said "We can't sit back and wait for things to work themselves out like in years past." Yet she did not make it clear how today is substantively different than in years past. Sure, the budget gap is larger than usual and the number of layoffs is high, but large numbers of teachers are laid off every year due to budget uncertainties and most get hired back once the budget is ironed out in the fall.

There is, however, one difference that neither the labor council nor the district want to admit: teachers may be unwilling to go another year without a raise, while continuing to have greater and greater job demands and duties imposed on them.

Like most large labor organizations around the country, the labor council’s officials are more concerned with a possible public backlash against unions (and the potential threat to their livelihoods as union officials) than they are with the pay, working conditions and wellbeing of their constituents, San Diego’s teachers and other working people. Thus, getting the teachers to agree to concessions, in exchange for reduced layoffs and labor peace with SDUSD, become much more important than wages and working conditions.

SDEA has apparently come to an agreement with SDUSD that would give teachers a raise starting July 1. However, the district plans to lay off 20% of teachers starting on June 30 to pay for it, according to the Union-Tribune. It is a false causal relationship. The district has plenty of other ways to cut costs, starting with its bloated administration. It can also start doing what district throughout the country should have been doing long ago: demanding an increase in local and state tax revenues.

From the union’s perspective, it was the right move. Their members deserve a raise, as do all working people, who have been paying for years for a financial crisis caused by the wealthy and which has benefitted only the wealthy.

The district cannot open school in the fall with a 20% reduction in teachers without significantly increasing class sizes and cutting course offerings, something they are unlikely to accomplish without a significant backlash from teachers and parents. If they do, the union should strike.

What Kind of Union Asks for 10 Furlough Days?—UTLA Does

There is no question that Los Angeles Unified School District is facing a serious financial crisis. They are millions of dollars in the hole and trying to recoup that money on the backs of teachers. In a particularly audacious attack, they demanded that United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) accept 20 furlough days next year (see 4LAKids Blog), which amount to the loss of nearly a month’s pay or an 8% pay cut.

It is easy to appreciate UTLA’s desire to protect its members’ jobs. However, in order to do so, UTLA actually asked for (and got) 10 furlough days, which I suspect most members will find unacceptable.

UTLA has stated that its priority is to restore jobs, save educational programs and protect class size.

If this is true, then UTLA cannot seriously be considered a union. Indeed, what kind of union asks the boss for 4% pay cut?

The goals of protecting positions, programs and class sizes are all great goals, particularly for students, but they are just a tiny part of teachers’ working conditions and remuneration. A real fighting union starts with the assumption that the workers and the bosses have an adversarial relationship (even if they treat each other nicely) in which the bosses try to extract more work for less money from the workers. The union’s role is to fight for better remuneration and working conditions for their constituents, (i.e., the teachers), NOT their clients (i.e., students).

RIF is Gonna to Git Yo Mama

The 4LAKids Blog suggests that a new term has taken hold in California schools: "the RIFing season," which refers to the time of the year in which "reduction in force" letters are sent out notifying teachers they may be laid off at the end of the school year.

Lately the numbers have grown ridiculously high. In March, 20,000 RIF letters went out to California teachers. Yet in the previous three years, only 25% of those receiving RIFs actually lost their jobs. While this is still a large number of layoffs (11% of the state’s entire teacher workforce) and it is certainly anxiety-provoking for those who receive RIFs, it seems excessive, cruel and unnecessary to send out layoff notices to 3 times more teachers than will actually be laid off.

The layoff notices destroy teacher morale and create uncertainty in school communities that negatively impacts students. The process is also costly to schools, costing around $700 per noticed teacher ($14 million for the 20,000 RIFfed teachers), when one factors in the expenses of having to send RIF notices by certified mail and the appeal hearings before administrative law judges.

To make matters worse, some districts may be using the fear and uncertainty of the RIF process to pressure teachers into accepting furloughs, pay cuts and other concessions and it is regularly brought up by Ed Deformers as justification for doing away with seniority and even tenure.

Of course the most immediate and logical solution to the problem is to increase revenue by increasing taxes on the wealthy and their corporations, something Jerry Brown and the CTA hope to do in November with their “Millionaires Tax Initiative.” However, this tax increase will barely maintain the status quo and restore virtually none of the $20 billion that has been looted from California K-12 public education over the past 4 years. There are also attempts in the works to create legislation that would delay the RIFfing season by a few months.

Teacher Strike Vote in San Francisco

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Members of the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), the union representing San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) teachers, are set to vote this week on whether to authorize a strike, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today. The district is demanding a $30 million cut to teachers’ salaries and benefits over the next two years. UESF wants a 2% pay increase and says the district is sitting on an $80 million surplus.

Less than a week ago, the district declared an impasse in their contract negotiations. The 6,000-member UESF will take the first of two required strike votes this Thursday. Even though there are only three weeks left in the school year, UESF President Dennis Kelly said there is still time to strike. Indeed, a strike at the end of the year could be particularly effective, as it could delay or prevent the issuance of grades and report cards.

Like other districts throughout the state, SFUSD is crying “Uncertainty,” and claiming that any surplus is needed as insurance.

It is true that K-12 education faces $5 billion in cuts if voters reject the governor’s tax initiative in November. It is also true that even if the initiative does pass, SFUSD will still receive the same anemic funding it did during this school year. What is not clear is the veracity of the district’s claim that the failure of the tax initiative would result in $80 million in losses to SFUSD.

Squeezing Blood From Turnips

Even if the district’s claims are accurate, there is no justification for making further cuts since, by their own math, they would need only $80 million to cover the losses caused by the possible failure of the tax initiative (and only $30 million to cover teachers’ salaries, a sum they most definitely have in reserve). Nevertheless, their current contract proposal demands that teachers accept four additional furlough days for each of the next two years, even if the tax initiative does pass. (This would add $7 million to the district’s surplus), while Superintendent Garcia wants an additional five furlough days each year if the tax increase fails in November.

The austerity does not end there. Sup. Garcia wants to eliminate sabbaticals and the extra prep periods currently offered to Advanced Placement teachers, which would save the district another $3.5 million. The district has called for a reduction in teacher training, to save another $3.1 million. And it wants to cut pay and health benefits for full-time substitutes, which would save another $1 million. The district also wants to increase K-3 class sizes from 22 to 25.

Strike Early, Strike Often

San Francisco teachers (indeed most teachers) have made so many concessions over the past few years that there is virtually nothing left to give. Their union has argued that the concessions would save jobs or keep conditions close to the status quo. In reality, it has resulted in a downward spiral in pay, benefits and working conditions for teachers and a concomitant decline in learning conditions for students, with increasing class sizes and declining services, course offerings, librarians, nurses and counselors.

There have been very few significant teacher strikes in the past thirty years. As a result, school districts have grown more aggressive in their demands and tactics. They have become accustomed to the unions making compromises, giving concessions and accepting austerity in exchange for jobs and labor “peace.”

During this same time period, the locals’ parent organizations (AFT and NEA) have increasingly focused their resources and energy on political campaigns, often at the expense of organizing and the promotion of strikes.

The time has come for unions to start taking a harder line. It is time to start thinking of strikes as something potentially positive (since they are the most effective way of achieving improvements in working and living conditions), rather than something to be feared and avoided. While strikes may be risky and bad for students in the short term, they also have the ability to slow down and even reverse trends that are bad for students in the long term.

Strikes also have the ability to beget more strikes by inspiring workers in other districts or even in other industries. During the past few decades of increasing union-management collaboration and declining labor militancy, bosses had no reason to take seriously the threat of a strike. In contrast, when bosses start to see an increase in strikes, they understand that workers are becoming more aggressive and militant and they start to take their demands more seriously. If enough teachers unions go on strike at the same time, they can start to pressure the state, as well as their districts. In fact, a state-wide General Strike of public sector workers may be the most effective tactic for achieving a sufficient increase in taxes necessary to adequately fund schools, health, safety and other public services.