The Northeast Educators General Safety Committee met on October 8 and approved this statement based on the meeting’s opening report.
Low wages, long hours, labor shortages, and the pressure of impossible jobs – educators everywhere face an unacceptable crisis. Nearly three years of pandemic-related illness, debilitation, and death. These are causing immense damage to educators and the problem is ongoing.
We are not only facing increased attacks on jobs. As members of the working class, we face a growing crisis in the entire political and social order of global capitalism. From rising inflation and prices, to growing austerity, threats of dictatorships, attacks on democratic rights, environmental disasters, and unmitigated people. The spread of disease and the very real threat of nuclear war.
These circumstances are causing a surge in class struggle internationally. Across the United States and Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, millions of workers are launching strike actions against austerity and the devastating consequences of the pandemic and the proxy war of the United States and NATO against Russia in Ukraine. increase.
It is becoming increasingly clear that if we are to wage a real fight to protect our jobs and public education, stop the pandemic and prevent a nuclear world war, we must unite the fight with industry and workers globally. It is Trade unions that isolate us from each other and betray our interests at every turn will not put up such a fight. As part of the International Workers Confederation General Commission (IWA-RFC), we must do it ourselves by expanding the network of general commissions.
In this explosive situation, all educators, students and parents who now rise to establish a General Commission will play a decisive role in leading the immense struggle of the working class on the imminent horizon. can do.
The most conscious manifestation of the need to free the working class from unionization was the campaign of socialist Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman, who led the United Auto Workers (UAW) I am running for president of the union.
In his call for the building of a general workers’ movement, Will represents millions of workers, either from the capitalist system or from the labor bureaucracy acting in concert with them. We must reject the idea that we have something to gain from parasitic layers. Corporations and state institutions for suppressing class struggle. Our committee stands in solidarity with his campaign and seeks to mobilize support for it among educators.
real situations we face at school
The reality that we educators face every day stands in stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s bogus claims that the pandemic is over. As governments at all levels cut funding for pandemic safety resources, teachers and parents on our committee report that COVID-19 is widespread in schools.
Like the rest of the United States, New York City, the nation’s largest school district with more than 1 million students, has completely dropped mitigation measures and the education sector has given up on conducting testing and contact tracing. With the region’s positivity rate above his 10% and thousands on the road sick, school administrators are operating as if COVID-19 was just a personal problem. increase.
At the same time, a historic bipartisan attack on public education has been launched against America’s working class in the wake of the pandemic. In New York City, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams has wasted hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in education funds this year. The impact of this attack is that hundreds of colleagues, including an art teacher, a band he director, early and special education support staff, to name a few, have become “overwhelmed” with little or no notice, What we are left to do is to solve the problem. Pieces. A month into the new school year, the impact of this devastating austerity program is only beginning.
In Boston, the threat of putting entire public school districts in “direct trusteeship” and leaving public education in the hands of private interests will force workers to accept the school’s pathetic contract for 2022-2023. It was used as a stick to Year.
The ruling elites claim they have no money for public education and health, but we know this to be a lie. Instead of meeting the basic needs of the people, they are obsessed with forcing workers to pay for their ruthless domestic policies and criminal military operations abroad. Tens of billions of dollars have been diverted into the US and NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, while attempting to create a recession with the aim of defeating the demands of the United States. for better wages and living standards.
threat of nuclear war
Biden has made it perfectly clear that the world is on the brink of nuclear war. Addressing his personal audience of billionaires, he said:[W]We haven’t faced the possibility of Armageddon since President Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The destruction of Nord Stream’s pipeline, the terrorist bombing of Kerch Bridge by Ukrainian special operations forces, and the subsequent escalation of operations by both sides of the conflict should be taken as a stark warning to the international working class. The class is ready to threaten the very existence of human civilization in order to achieve its geopolitical objectives.
The US-NATO war with Russia in Ukraine is the result of decades of US attempts to compensate for its declining economic position through military intervention abroad. The US criminal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Serbia, etc. that have ravaged entire societies are direct manifestations of this process.
At the same time, the corrupt Putin regime’s failure strategy is based on Russian chauvinism and nationalism, and cannot oppose imperialism or find progressive solutions to the conflict. It can advance only through the most desperate and reactionary means against the Ukrainian and Russian working classes.
Role of trade unions
We will stand up not only to attacks from politicians representing school districts and big business, but also to the betrayal of trade unions who seek to strangle our opposition and bind us to the capitalist party.
This applies to all fields, not just education. More than 100,000 railroad workers in the U.S. voted in favor of a strike months ago, but railroad unions are clamoring for a nationwide campaign to avoid disrupting the economy and hurting Democrats heading into the midterm elections. It has used successive tactics to delay rail strikes.
Our own trade unions perfectly encapsulate the true functioning of these giant bureaucracies.
Randy Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), whose salary is nearly $500,000, is touring the country, spending $5 million in dues, in anticipation of public opposition to reopening schools for the 2021-22 school year. and the school advertised the lie that it could be face-to-face. Stay safe during a raging pandemic.
At the height of last fall’s delta surge, with record numbers of children contracting COVID-19, being hospitalized and dying, Weingarten has turned to far-right pseudoscience, including Open Schools USA and collaborator Jay Bhattacharya. Allied with the forces. The creator of the outbreak manifesto, the author of the Great Barrington Manifesto, called for schools to remain open.
Weingarten is now on a pre-war tour of Ukraine, acting not as a teacher’s representative but as a loyal servant of the US war machine. During her travels, she deliberately covered up the Ukrainian fascist role in cooperation in the Holocaust during World War II.
Weingarten’s successor, Michael Mulgrew, president of New York’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT), is similarly a highly-paid labor parasite. Over his decade-plus, he has been instrumental in curbing educator opposition to the spread of COVID-19 and ratifying a wholly inappropriate contract among New York City educators.
While the negotiating committee met behind closed doors, Mulgrew and UFT leaders effectively demobilized educators during the current contract negotiations. Each member of the 500-body committee is said to have signed a non-disclosure agreement, demonstrating the undemocratic nature of the bargaining process under the protection of union bureaucracy.
These bureaucrats do not represent us.
The Northeast Educators General Safety Commission is calling on educators, school staff, parents and students to build public movements within and beyond our communities to protect workplace safety, living standards and public education. . Our commission, in conjunction with our national and international sister commissions, plays a key role in mobilizing the working class against the threat of war and the pandemic. This is an urgent need for workers everywhere.
we require:
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Undo all budget cuts and restore all jobs and programs cut from schools!
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For the eradication of COVID-19! This includes a temporary lockdown to stop transmission with full financial support for workers and families, mass testing and contact tracing programs, free high-quality masks, and renovation of ventilation and filtration systems. All available public health measures should be fully mobilized, including: in all schools and public places. In addition to this, we must provide all students with a quality distance learning infrastructure and free high-speed internet.
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40% salary increase for incumbent educators. Full reimbursement of medical expenses for retirees and active employees!
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Monitor all contract negotiations together!
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Hundreds of billions of dollars should be paid for education by billionaire expropriation.
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Stop the U.S. Supply of Arms and Money to Ukraine Now! Educators must play a central role in turning young people into the working class and building a large-scale international anti-war movement.
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