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Indybay Feature
Be a Class Traitor for $300 a day
Randy Ward, state administrator for Oakland Unified School District's receivership, is already getting ready to hire scabs when the K-12 teacher go out on strike--which it's almost certain they will. But remember that he forced 7,000 district employees to take a 4% pay cuts, while laying off 100 custodians, in 2004. Now this parasite, with privatization of the whole district on his agenda, is going for more blood and wants the teachers to pay more for their healthcare. The working class in the entire Bay Area should get behind the Oakland teachers and fight against this.
Here's the Craigs List ad calling for scabs:
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Emergency Temporary Teachers, $300 per day
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Emergency Temporary Teachers
$300 per day
For over a year and a-half the Oakland Unified School District has attempted to reach a settlement with its largest teachers’ union. Negotiations are continuing, but in order to protect the educational opportunities of the children of Oakland’s working families, and to avoid any disruption of their learning, the District immediately seeks emergency temporary teachers to work during a STRIKE OR OTHER JOB ACTION.
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:*
Bachelor’s Degree
Fingerprint Clearance
Tuberculosis Test (TB)**
CBEST Waiver*** (if necessary)
* Only applicants who attend one of the hiring events are eligible to receive free fingerprinting, TB testing/reading, and CBEST waivers at the District’s administrative offices. The District will pay all associated costs for those services only if they are performed at its administrative offices.
** In lieu of TB testing, applicants can provide proof of a negative TB Test administered within the last 6 months. Proof must be in the form of a letter from a physician on letterhead and containing medical license number.
**Applicants being tested for TB must return to the District’s administrative offices 48 hours after testing to have the results read or they can fax or mail proof of negative test result from their own physician.
*** Applicants who have taken CBEST, must provide copy of passing scores.
To interview you must:
1. Present two forms of official identification (driver’s license, passport, social security card, or California I.D.)
2. Provide proof of Bachelor’s Degree in the form of an official college transcript with seal indicating graduation from accredited university or official foreign evaluation by approved agency.
3. Complete application at the event, and
4. Attend one of the hiring events to be held from January 20 – 21 or January 23 – 27th from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Hiring events to be held at the Oakland Airport Hilton, 1 Hegenberger Rd, Oakland, CA 94621.
For more information:
Visit http://www.teachoakland.org
Call: (888) 330-OUSD (6873)
Job location is Oakland
Compensation: $300 per day
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Emergency Temporary Teachers, $300 per day
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emergency Temporary Teachers
$300 per day
For over a year and a-half the Oakland Unified School District has attempted to reach a settlement with its largest teachers’ union. Negotiations are continuing, but in order to protect the educational opportunities of the children of Oakland’s working families, and to avoid any disruption of their learning, the District immediately seeks emergency temporary teachers to work during a STRIKE OR OTHER JOB ACTION.
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:*
Bachelor’s Degree
Fingerprint Clearance
Tuberculosis Test (TB)**
CBEST Waiver*** (if necessary)
* Only applicants who attend one of the hiring events are eligible to receive free fingerprinting, TB testing/reading, and CBEST waivers at the District’s administrative offices. The District will pay all associated costs for those services only if they are performed at its administrative offices.
** In lieu of TB testing, applicants can provide proof of a negative TB Test administered within the last 6 months. Proof must be in the form of a letter from a physician on letterhead and containing medical license number.
**Applicants being tested for TB must return to the District’s administrative offices 48 hours after testing to have the results read or they can fax or mail proof of negative test result from their own physician.
*** Applicants who have taken CBEST, must provide copy of passing scores.
To interview you must:
1. Present two forms of official identification (driver’s license, passport, social security card, or California I.D.)
2. Provide proof of Bachelor’s Degree in the form of an official college transcript with seal indicating graduation from accredited university or official foreign evaluation by approved agency.
3. Complete application at the event, and
4. Attend one of the hiring events to be held from January 20 – 21 or January 23 – 27th from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Hiring events to be held at the Oakland Airport Hilton, 1 Hegenberger Rd, Oakland, CA 94621.
For more information:
Visit http://www.teachoakland.org
Call: (888) 330-OUSD (6873)
Job location is Oakland
Compensation: $300 per day
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Calling somebody who could quite possibly be a minority, a woman, or otherwise oppressed a "class traitor" for taking their one chance to earn $300 is empty rhetoric at its best. $300 goes a long way for somebody who is unemployed, under-employed, or working from paycheck to paycheck. Two days of that and you can cover the rent in lots of Oakland. Take advantage of the opportunity.
It's also called dividing and conquering. Unite, peeps!
Randy Ward's boss is Democratic Superintendent Jack O'Connell. This is the same Democrat who refuses to support alternativess to the latest scheme to close the workingclass schools: a high school exit standardized test in order to get the high school diploma. So now, the taxpayers have to pay for courtroom time for lawsuits which have been filed. One was for the special education (slow) students who won a settlement. The other is for the workingclass whose schools are substandard where they cannot possibly learn what these tests require as they do not have basic textbooks, regular teachers or safe and adequately supplied buildings with working toilets, lights, heat, and so forth.
$300 a day is what a teacher should receive as it is a job that requires a college degree. These unions need to get off the dime and start fighting. If they do not get what they want, they need to expand the teacher's strike to a general strike citywide and Bay Area wide. A serious labor movement would improve the political climate tremendously, and we could get rid of both the Democratic and Republican parties at the same time.
$300 a day is what a teacher should receive as it is a job that requires a college degree. These unions need to get off the dime and start fighting. If they do not get what they want, they need to expand the teacher's strike to a general strike citywide and Bay Area wide. A serious labor movement would improve the political climate tremendously, and we could get rid of both the Democratic and Republican parties at the same time.
If it's the Gifford I know, he must have been in a less-than-fully-alert state when he decided to repost the entire text of the ad for scabs. There are, after all, people who view this site who are not averse to scabbing, and this post may just give one or more of them a heads-up.
I think the editors should remove the post. The relevant information can be reposted in a way that doesn't give too much info to potential scabs and includes suggestions for harrassing the scab-herders.
I think the editors should remove the post. The relevant information can be reposted in a way that doesn't give too much info to potential scabs and includes suggestions for harrassing the scab-herders.
During the last Oakland teacher's strike scab substitutes were used as well. That was in 1992, and the daily pay for a scab was only $150. That was still 50% more than what a regular substitute teacher made per day, and since the substitutes in Oakland are automatically covered by the union, only new, non-regular substitutes could get the extra 50 bucks. $300 is even more than what a regular substitute makes, showing the kind of logic of capitalism: they will pay a class traitor twice as much as they pay a regular worker just so they won't have to pay the regular worker a little more. It is a punishment to those with even a touch of class consciousness by taking advantage of those without any class consciousness. A robber baron once boasted that he could pay half the working class to kill the other half.
Aaron, Gifford may be slipping in terms of his credentials (the collaboration with leftist bureucrat-in-waiting Chris Carlsson comes to mind at once), but his posting of the full add is meant to showcase the kind of shitty strategy the bosses use. If you find it nauseating, then Gifford has done his public service. The scabs will find their niche without any extra prodding.
Aaron, Gifford may be slipping in terms of his credentials (the collaboration with leftist bureucrat-in-waiting Chris Carlsson comes to mind at once), but his posting of the full add is meant to showcase the kind of shitty strategy the bosses use. If you find it nauseating, then Gifford has done his public service. The scabs will find their niche without any extra prodding.
"The working class...should get behind the Oakland teachers and fight this."
How?
How?
To DT, Aaron Aarons & DT, who attempts to use PC logic to excuse away scabbing, there are many errors here.
1. To take the job of someone on strike is being traitor to other working class people, regardless of their race or gender. And it makes someone a SCAB. It's being used as a tool of the ruling class to break the back of strikes and the end result of using this divide-and-rule tactic is that all other forms class struggle are weakened. Wages take a dive and the ruling class sets its sights on other sectors to attack in the same way. The only way to support other working people on strike is to refuse scab or to cross their picket lines and to actively support them with solidarity.
2. Aaron, since I know that you've never worked, I can only think that your comment comes from ignorance because you don't have the foggiest idea of how people find jobs. Someone looking to scab is most likely going to find that add on Craig's List (where the ad came from) before surfing the 'net and seeing it first on indybay. And since I know that you're clearly not going to make your first stab into the working class now by trying to get a $300 a day job, I thought at least some of that Trotskyite dogma you've swallowed hook-line-and sinker would compel you act on the only impulse you do have, which is to protest. Since saying that explicitly might tip off the Oakland pigs, I didn't say it outright. But now I am. Aaron, you know the address and the time, so get out the markers and posterboard and get down there to protest!
3. The last strike against OUSD was 1996, not 1992.
4. As for my "collaboration" with Chris Carlsson, the "leftist bureucrat[sic]-in-waiting," maybe you could of learned something by coming to the presentation. It was about general strikes in the Bay Area and mine was on the last general strike in the U.S., which was right here in Oakland in 1946. The chance of another one occurring, in these times of almost no expression of working class consciousness, would seem next to impossible. Like the illegal strike of the NYC transit workers last December, it would require other working class people to be willing to take risks; in this case defying Taft-Hartley laws against sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts. I don't expect that to happen, but by trying to counter the collective amnesia of this culture, we might show that the lessons of the past might suggest radical possibilities in the present.
As for Chris being so facilely slagged off, care to back up your insinuations? I don't agree with Chris about everything, but I do respect his attempt to make history relevant to the present and his tireless work creating a space for discussing such things.
Gifford
1. To take the job of someone on strike is being traitor to other working class people, regardless of their race or gender. And it makes someone a SCAB. It's being used as a tool of the ruling class to break the back of strikes and the end result of using this divide-and-rule tactic is that all other forms class struggle are weakened. Wages take a dive and the ruling class sets its sights on other sectors to attack in the same way. The only way to support other working people on strike is to refuse scab or to cross their picket lines and to actively support them with solidarity.
2. Aaron, since I know that you've never worked, I can only think that your comment comes from ignorance because you don't have the foggiest idea of how people find jobs. Someone looking to scab is most likely going to find that add on Craig's List (where the ad came from) before surfing the 'net and seeing it first on indybay. And since I know that you're clearly not going to make your first stab into the working class now by trying to get a $300 a day job, I thought at least some of that Trotskyite dogma you've swallowed hook-line-and sinker would compel you act on the only impulse you do have, which is to protest. Since saying that explicitly might tip off the Oakland pigs, I didn't say it outright. But now I am. Aaron, you know the address and the time, so get out the markers and posterboard and get down there to protest!
3. The last strike against OUSD was 1996, not 1992.
4. As for my "collaboration" with Chris Carlsson, the "leftist bureucrat[sic]-in-waiting," maybe you could of learned something by coming to the presentation. It was about general strikes in the Bay Area and mine was on the last general strike in the U.S., which was right here in Oakland in 1946. The chance of another one occurring, in these times of almost no expression of working class consciousness, would seem next to impossible. Like the illegal strike of the NYC transit workers last December, it would require other working class people to be willing to take risks; in this case defying Taft-Hartley laws against sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts. I don't expect that to happen, but by trying to counter the collective amnesia of this culture, we might show that the lessons of the past might suggest radical possibilities in the present.
As for Chris being so facilely slagged off, care to back up your insinuations? I don't agree with Chris about everything, but I do respect his attempt to make history relevant to the present and his tireless work creating a space for discussing such things.
Gifford
A Clear Radical Suggestion
Someone anonymously wrote:
"The working class...should get behind the Oakland teachers and fight this."
and then asked "How?"
Which is an important question. And which also addresses Miles attempt to dismiss drawing lessons from history.
At the time of the Oakland General Strike in 1946, the whole country reached a high point of class consciousness. 15% of the population had been on strike sometime that year and in the spring, with coal miners strikes combining with railroad workers strikes, brown-outs were occurring across the country. With 750,000 steel workers on strike, joined by auto and electrical workers, along with many, many other sectors, the country came the closest to a nationwide general strike since the Great Upheaval of 1877. Truman threatened to draft strikers right into the military. There were 6 general strikes in 1946, which is still the all-time peak year for most statistical categories of measuring strikes and strikers, and what made those times so volatile was that people would not stand by and watch other working class people get shit on. Strikes at one workplace encouraged strikes at another. Strike breaking by company thugs or cops provoked counter-attacks by a united working class community. Being a scab was considered to be the lowest form of life. Remember the diatribe against scabs by Oakland's own socialist, working class writer Jack London (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/nalc820/scab.htm)?
In response, the state came up with the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, which bookends neatly with the Wagner Act of 1935, in creating the institution of collective bargaining and the oversight of the National Labor Relations Board. The result today is the kind of business unionism whose main role is to negotiate contracts with no-strike pledges in order to pacify the working class through mediating the class struggle away from the workers themselves--into bureaucrats dealing with management across the negotiating table. The age-old radical tradition of direct action on the job is all but dead.
Since I'm assuming that the person asking the question lives in the Bay Area, what we can do when the teachers strike is go to their picket lines and help bolster them, with enough people, to the point that scabs feel either intimidated or physically prevented from crossing the picket lines. If anyone has kids in the district, keep them out while the strike's going on. If you work in another sector that's affected, like school bus drivers or food service, talk to you co-workers about taking the risk of defying your union--or on your own if you don't have one--and walking out on a wildcat strike in support of the teachers. Same with all the other support staff workers for the district. And yes, these are very, very large risks. Your union, or you individually, could have a court injunction issued against you and very large fines. But if that should happen, hopefully it will enrage other working class people in the area and make them think about supporting the strike too. That's how general strikes used to spread from one workplace to whole communities.
Of course all of this is wishful thinking. Class consciousness today is at an all-time low. But if we countered the atomization and isolation by simply trying to talk amongst ourselves as working people about what we all could do, it would be a start.
I expect you purists out there to point out how these are just "vague liberal plattitudes" and don't toe the revolutionary line. Or how how your maximalist platform, once put into motion, will sweep away such good intentions as your vanguard leads us to the revolutionary promised land. So be it. Let's hear what you're going to do.
In Solidarity,
Gifford
Someone anonymously wrote:
"The working class...should get behind the Oakland teachers and fight this."
and then asked "How?"
Which is an important question. And which also addresses Miles attempt to dismiss drawing lessons from history.
At the time of the Oakland General Strike in 1946, the whole country reached a high point of class consciousness. 15% of the population had been on strike sometime that year and in the spring, with coal miners strikes combining with railroad workers strikes, brown-outs were occurring across the country. With 750,000 steel workers on strike, joined by auto and electrical workers, along with many, many other sectors, the country came the closest to a nationwide general strike since the Great Upheaval of 1877. Truman threatened to draft strikers right into the military. There were 6 general strikes in 1946, which is still the all-time peak year for most statistical categories of measuring strikes and strikers, and what made those times so volatile was that people would not stand by and watch other working class people get shit on. Strikes at one workplace encouraged strikes at another. Strike breaking by company thugs or cops provoked counter-attacks by a united working class community. Being a scab was considered to be the lowest form of life. Remember the diatribe against scabs by Oakland's own socialist, working class writer Jack London (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/nalc820/scab.htm)?
In response, the state came up with the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, which bookends neatly with the Wagner Act of 1935, in creating the institution of collective bargaining and the oversight of the National Labor Relations Board. The result today is the kind of business unionism whose main role is to negotiate contracts with no-strike pledges in order to pacify the working class through mediating the class struggle away from the workers themselves--into bureaucrats dealing with management across the negotiating table. The age-old radical tradition of direct action on the job is all but dead.
Since I'm assuming that the person asking the question lives in the Bay Area, what we can do when the teachers strike is go to their picket lines and help bolster them, with enough people, to the point that scabs feel either intimidated or physically prevented from crossing the picket lines. If anyone has kids in the district, keep them out while the strike's going on. If you work in another sector that's affected, like school bus drivers or food service, talk to you co-workers about taking the risk of defying your union--or on your own if you don't have one--and walking out on a wildcat strike in support of the teachers. Same with all the other support staff workers for the district. And yes, these are very, very large risks. Your union, or you individually, could have a court injunction issued against you and very large fines. But if that should happen, hopefully it will enrage other working class people in the area and make them think about supporting the strike too. That's how general strikes used to spread from one workplace to whole communities.
Of course all of this is wishful thinking. Class consciousness today is at an all-time low. But if we countered the atomization and isolation by simply trying to talk amongst ourselves as working people about what we all could do, it would be a start.
I expect you purists out there to point out how these are just "vague liberal plattitudes" and don't toe the revolutionary line. Or how how your maximalist platform, once put into motion, will sweep away such good intentions as your vanguard leads us to the revolutionary promised land. So be it. Let's hear what you're going to do.
In Solidarity,
Gifford
The above link doesn't work, so here's the link for London on scabs:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/nalc820/scab.htm
and an interesting speech on scabs London gave in Oakland in 1903:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/WarOfTheClasses/scab.html
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/nalc820/scab.htm
and an interesting speech on scabs London gave in Oakland in 1903:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/WarOfTheClasses/scab.html
I agree with Aaron Aarons. Putting this add up on indymedia is a bad idea. An offer of this much money may very well attract people who aren't actively looking for work.
Gifford's intentions are good but his thinking is naive.
Gifford's intentions are good but his thinking is naive.
1. The Oakland teacher's strike can be won. The Oakland Unified School District can be rapidly compelled to settle, and to the overwhelming advantage of striking teachers -- if this strike immediately leads to a city-wide school kids walkout.
2. The word for this should be spread by people who aren't strikers, and aren't employees of the school district.
This will prevent any individual strikers from being singled out and victimized later.
3. An action waged in this manner might result in some working people getting a better deal that we get when we play by the horseshit rules of trade unionism. It may also tend, in a very slight way, to politicize the strike and give it something of a more general character.
4. Now, I don't have any kids, and I don't exactly hang out with the under-18 set. So I have no idea of what the level of class consciousness is among kids these days. An appeal for a mass student walkout should certainly be phrased in terms of class solidarity. Most kids in public school are future or current wage slaves, and besides, in any case it's just the right thing to do.
But the real effective appeal of this might be a more amorphous anti-authoritarian one -- kids hate school; my guess is most do, at least. I did, back when I was a kid, (sometime way, way back, during the Coolidge administration, I believe.)
This also suggest another problem in communicating a message that resonates, which is that a lot of schoolkids may percieve of teachers as coercive authority figures.
So the appeal of this should be couched as a jumbo-sized holiday for school kids.
The resulting city-wide chaos, or, let's say, "adultist" fears of vast numbers of unruly young people flooding into Oakalnd's downtown and fucking up the city's bond rating, and the appeal of Oaktown condo living to yuppie gentrifiers might bring the OUSD back to the bargaining table on bended knee at speeds approaching that of light.
5. Gifford Hartman's call for mass picketting as a fundamental element of a winning strategy for striking teachers might come from the right place emotionally -- but it isn't going to win this strike, or any other strike, either.
Only new tactics that jettison virtually the entire framework of the classical, social democratic workers' movement are going to be effective in the short term -- and more importantly in the long term .
6. Aaron Aarons didn't excuse scabbing, and Chris Carlsson isn't a "leftist bureacrat in waiting."
Kevin Keating
2. The word for this should be spread by people who aren't strikers, and aren't employees of the school district.
This will prevent any individual strikers from being singled out and victimized later.
3. An action waged in this manner might result in some working people getting a better deal that we get when we play by the horseshit rules of trade unionism. It may also tend, in a very slight way, to politicize the strike and give it something of a more general character.
4. Now, I don't have any kids, and I don't exactly hang out with the under-18 set. So I have no idea of what the level of class consciousness is among kids these days. An appeal for a mass student walkout should certainly be phrased in terms of class solidarity. Most kids in public school are future or current wage slaves, and besides, in any case it's just the right thing to do.
But the real effective appeal of this might be a more amorphous anti-authoritarian one -- kids hate school; my guess is most do, at least. I did, back when I was a kid, (sometime way, way back, during the Coolidge administration, I believe.)
This also suggest another problem in communicating a message that resonates, which is that a lot of schoolkids may percieve of teachers as coercive authority figures.
So the appeal of this should be couched as a jumbo-sized holiday for school kids.
The resulting city-wide chaos, or, let's say, "adultist" fears of vast numbers of unruly young people flooding into Oakalnd's downtown and fucking up the city's bond rating, and the appeal of Oaktown condo living to yuppie gentrifiers might bring the OUSD back to the bargaining table on bended knee at speeds approaching that of light.
5. Gifford Hartman's call for mass picketting as a fundamental element of a winning strategy for striking teachers might come from the right place emotionally -- but it isn't going to win this strike, or any other strike, either.
Only new tactics that jettison virtually the entire framework of the classical, social democratic workers' movement are going to be effective in the short term -- and more importantly in the long term .
6. Aaron Aarons didn't excuse scabbing, and Chris Carlsson isn't a "leftist bureacrat in waiting."
Kevin Keating
How much more can Randall Ward do to destroy our community? This is an example of how the state of California respects the people and the sovereignty of their community. Frankly, I feel the state let the school get into debt just to be able to take it over. There was never any need for the district to get into debt in the first place. How did that happen?
Randall Ward is a hired gun. He apparently has no respect for the democratic process. He truly represents the american establishment today and they are at war with the american people. We have $2 trillion to spend on the war in Iraq, $270 billion a year for defense spending (it has never come down since the end of the cold war) and we spend over $5 billion per year as a grant to Israel.
Oakland is the battle ground for how this plays out. If they can destroy the respect of our community for its members who are teachers, it will have won. If they can convince the community that our fellow citizens, the teachers, are not worthwhile -they have succeeded. If the community does not stand behind the teachers, we really don't have much more of a future in this country because everything is sold out. If this dictator Ward can achieve this, we the people, we the community will have lost so much. But more than anything we will have lost our self respect. We might as well just build more and more prisons and more and more Walmarts. There is not gonna be anything else expect massive police forces and repression of the people.
Randall Ward is a hired gun. He apparently has no respect for the democratic process. He truly represents the american establishment today and they are at war with the american people. We have $2 trillion to spend on the war in Iraq, $270 billion a year for defense spending (it has never come down since the end of the cold war) and we spend over $5 billion per year as a grant to Israel.
Oakland is the battle ground for how this plays out. If they can destroy the respect of our community for its members who are teachers, it will have won. If they can convince the community that our fellow citizens, the teachers, are not worthwhile -they have succeeded. If the community does not stand behind the teachers, we really don't have much more of a future in this country because everything is sold out. If this dictator Ward can achieve this, we the people, we the community will have lost so much. But more than anything we will have lost our self respect. We might as well just build more and more prisons and more and more Walmarts. There is not gonna be anything else expect massive police forces and repression of the people.
Message to Kevin Keating:
After all the shit you've talked, about me and everyone else--always based on attacking the other's character, leave us the fuck alone and create your own thread if you want to discuss these things.
These things work like clockwork: someone takes a position differing or critical of yours and then then the venom comes out. You spend the rest of the time on the thread telling us how deficient everyone's character is, all the while screaming about how they're not responding to your questions.
I always thought you were a megalomaniac, the trait where you always think you're right and everyone else in the world is wrong. But I stand corrected after reading the other thread: you have Narcissistic Character Disorder. That much is clear. It's impossible to work with you.
You talk all this shit about me being obsessed about you. If you really believe that, why do you come around trolling where I'm posting stuff? Again, leave me the fuck alone!
If you think you have anything to contribute to the Oakland teachers' struggle, do it autonomously from what my comrades and I are doing.
I ask this of you respectfully.
Gifford
After all the shit you've talked, about me and everyone else--always based on attacking the other's character, leave us the fuck alone and create your own thread if you want to discuss these things.
These things work like clockwork: someone takes a position differing or critical of yours and then then the venom comes out. You spend the rest of the time on the thread telling us how deficient everyone's character is, all the while screaming about how they're not responding to your questions.
I always thought you were a megalomaniac, the trait where you always think you're right and everyone else in the world is wrong. But I stand corrected after reading the other thread: you have Narcissistic Character Disorder. That much is clear. It's impossible to work with you.
You talk all this shit about me being obsessed about you. If you really believe that, why do you come around trolling where I'm posting stuff? Again, leave me the fuck alone!
If you think you have anything to contribute to the Oakland teachers' struggle, do it autonomously from what my comrades and I are doing.
I ask this of you respectfully.
Gifford
Every radical and union-supporter should apply for these "jobs", and then fail to show up. I know i will. Even people who are not qualified should apply. I also think that everyone in this debate (except for Kevin sometimes) are not bad people, even if they someitmes have bad tactics.
Members of the teachers union and their supporters should be picketting the scab-herding meetings and even attemptign to shut them down, maybe in conjunction with workers at the Oakland Airport Hilton, who i belive are Union workers as well.
Somebody should ask Craig Newmark why he's supporting this attack on teachers.
I wish I could be a teacher. But I would never ever cross a picket line-- no matter what. 300 dollars a day is a lot of money for most folks today... but it doesn't matter how much.
It shows the greatest disrespect and the world we would be educating our children to live in is no world to want to live in.
I hope Craig Newmark could pull the ad or make a strong statement.
But don't jump to conclusions. It is easy to blame and judge.
Wait and see who sides with who first-- Craig may not be able to really control everything that goes up on his site anymore.
It shows the greatest disrespect and the world we would be educating our children to live in is no world to want to live in.
I hope Craig Newmark could pull the ad or make a strong statement.
But don't jump to conclusions. It is easy to blame and judge.
Wait and see who sides with who first-- Craig may not be able to really control everything that goes up on his site anymore.
The S.F. Weekly had a cover story a couple months ago about Craig Newmark (http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2005-11-30/news/feature.html). The fucking guy's worth millions, but never fesses up to it. And the way he makes those million is by charging businesses $75 a pop for job ads in S.F., L.A. and NYC. And he lists those by the tens of thousands. You do the math.
So I doubt that he, being a good capitalist, would bite the (capitalist) hand that feeds him.
There are some radical Oakland teachers around, and it would be good to get the inside scoop from them and proceed from there. Direct action is going to be more effective than guilt tripping rich liberals.
Gifford
So I doubt that he, being a good capitalist, would bite the (capitalist) hand that feeds him.
There are some radical Oakland teachers around, and it would be good to get the inside scoop from them and proceed from there. Direct action is going to be more effective than guilt tripping rich liberals.
Gifford
I was told by a O.E.A. building site rep ( Equivalent to Shop Steward ) that there was going to be a picket today, Monday 1-23 , 3-30 p.m. at the Oakland Airport Hilton , 1 Hegenberger rd . to protest the scab recruitment . He was uncertain whether it would be a ''official '' union picket line or an action by a small group of Union activists and supporters. Does any one else have any more infro on this ?
I'll try to go and I think others should be there in solidarity too. Scabherding of any kind in our community should confronted and stopped, if possible.
Gifford
Gifford
DON'T BE A SCABSTITUTE!
Today at 4 p.m. about 75 teachers, subs and community supporters marched from a restaurant at the corner of Hegenberger and Doolittle to the Airport Hilton Hotel. People proceeded to the front door of Hall 5 (I think that was the #), where the scabfair was taking place, and had a speak out. People also went the hall's back door, kept it open, and chanted for people not to scab.
I missed whatever rally proceeded the march, but all-in-all it was inspiring to let Ward and the district know that they aren't going to hire scabs uncontested.
The next thing is to figure other ways to show solidarity with the teachers and to thwart the district's plans. Some of us have some thoughts in mind. E-mail the above address if you'd like to join us.
On March 23, 2003 lots of Oakland high school kids left school, marched down International Blvd. to Fruitvale BART, where the BART and Oakland pigs shut down the station and attacked them, and they continued to try to get downtown to protest the war. If that energy could be tapped into again, it could really help empty the schools and make the upcoming strike completely effective.
In Solidarity,
Gifford
Today at 4 p.m. about 75 teachers, subs and community supporters marched from a restaurant at the corner of Hegenberger and Doolittle to the Airport Hilton Hotel. People proceeded to the front door of Hall 5 (I think that was the #), where the scabfair was taking place, and had a speak out. People also went the hall's back door, kept it open, and chanted for people not to scab.
I missed whatever rally proceeded the march, but all-in-all it was inspiring to let Ward and the district know that they aren't going to hire scabs uncontested.
The next thing is to figure other ways to show solidarity with the teachers and to thwart the district's plans. Some of us have some thoughts in mind. E-mail the above address if you'd like to join us.
On March 23, 2003 lots of Oakland high school kids left school, marched down International Blvd. to Fruitvale BART, where the BART and Oakland pigs shut down the station and attacked them, and they continued to try to get downtown to protest the war. If that energy could be tapped into again, it could really help empty the schools and make the upcoming strike completely effective.
In Solidarity,
Gifford
Does anyone know around when the teachers will decide to walk if there is a strike? We should be making plans now to have flying squads in Oakland the day it happens and sustain the the entire period of the strike.
Might make sense to start calling groups to put people on the lookout.
Might make sense to start calling groups to put people on the lookout.
Today's Chronicle (1/24) has an interesting story saying and an independent auditor said that the district can offord to give the teachers raises.
But the teachers have been working 2 years without a contract, so Ward can impose one at any time. The Chron article seemed to imply that the unions release of the above report might play his hand and force him to do so soon. Then the union will obviously take a strike vote, which means a strike could happen soon.
Like Janky said, we should survey how we could be ready to act in solidarity with the teachers and the other support staff.
Gifford
But the teachers have been working 2 years without a contract, so Ward can impose one at any time. The Chron article seemed to imply that the unions release of the above report might play his hand and force him to do so soon. Then the union will obviously take a strike vote, which means a strike could happen soon.
Like Janky said, we should survey how we could be ready to act in solidarity with the teachers and the other support staff.
Gifford
But, I'm not about to get fired putting the word out for this myself.
Okay, saying that Carlsson isn't a leftist bureaucrat-in-waiting means that both Kevin and Gifford are agreeing that either:
1. Chris Carlsson is not a leftist;
2. Chris Carlsson is not a bureaucrat-in-waiting.
The first theorem is patently false. Carlsson is some kind of anti-capitalist (precise leftist variety unknown at this time, but his previous nom-de-plume was an hommage to a Central American nationalist guerrilla of some kind), and his affiliation to the Union of Concerned Commies makes at least some kind of leftist pedigree unquestionable.
As for the second theorem, all I can conlude is that he has already established himself as a bureaucrat. Perhaps his self-proclaimed leadership of Critical Mass in an indication of that success.
So I stand corrected: Chris Carlsson is an actual leftist bureaucrat.
1. Chris Carlsson is not a leftist;
2. Chris Carlsson is not a bureaucrat-in-waiting.
The first theorem is patently false. Carlsson is some kind of anti-capitalist (precise leftist variety unknown at this time, but his previous nom-de-plume was an hommage to a Central American nationalist guerrilla of some kind), and his affiliation to the Union of Concerned Commies makes at least some kind of leftist pedigree unquestionable.
As for the second theorem, all I can conlude is that he has already established himself as a bureaucrat. Perhaps his self-proclaimed leadership of Critical Mass in an indication of that success.
So I stand corrected: Chris Carlsson is an actual leftist bureaucrat.
Hey Miles, Chris isn't on this thread, so why don't you take it up with him personally? His contact info is easy to find. And wasn't the Union of Concerned Commies a group back in the late 1970s? That's just under 30 years ago. What the fuck does it have to do with the upcoming Oakland teachers' strike?
Here's a link to Jason Justice's account of the 1995-96 Oakland teachers' strike actions:
http://www.justicedesign.com/classrooms_first.html
And the following article from today's Oakland Tribune shows that, with the agreement on the SEIU contract, the pressure on the OEA for making similar--but not yet announced--concessions will likely provoke a strike very soon:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLERICAL UNION, SCHOOLS STRIKE TENTATIVE DEAL
Teachers say district is trying to isolate them
By Paul T. Rosynsky, STAFF WRITER
OAKLAND — While Oakland public schoolteachers continued their fight for higher wages and continued free health benefits, the state-run school district announced Tuesday it has reached a tentative deal with a different union.
The negotiating team of a union representing district security officers, clerical workers and instructional and early childhood aides agreed with district leaders on the framework of a deal that will last until 2008.
It covers roughly 1,100 members of Service Employees International Union/OCDPA Local 790.
The preliminary agreement must pass through two more layers of union approval to become final. The union's executive board and its roughly 1,100 members must ratify the deal. Voting is scheduled to take place next week and Feb. 15.
Because the deal has not yet been approved by membership, union President Mynette Theard declined to comment Tuesday.
District leaders did not return calls seeking comment. They did release a statement describing the deal as a "fair and fiscally sound" one.
"The hard-working men and women of the SEIU deserve our praise and thanks for working tirelessly to achieve a timely resolution," State Administrator Randolph Ward said in the statement.
Here's a link to Jason Justice's account of the 1995-96 Oakland teachers' strike actions:
http://www.justicedesign.com/classrooms_first.html
And the following article from today's Oakland Tribune shows that, with the agreement on the SEIU contract, the pressure on the OEA for making similar--but not yet announced--concessions will likely provoke a strike very soon:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLERICAL UNION, SCHOOLS STRIKE TENTATIVE DEAL
Teachers say district is trying to isolate them
By Paul T. Rosynsky, STAFF WRITER
OAKLAND — While Oakland public schoolteachers continued their fight for higher wages and continued free health benefits, the state-run school district announced Tuesday it has reached a tentative deal with a different union.
The negotiating team of a union representing district security officers, clerical workers and instructional and early childhood aides agreed with district leaders on the framework of a deal that will last until 2008.
It covers roughly 1,100 members of Service Employees International Union/OCDPA Local 790.
The preliminary agreement must pass through two more layers of union approval to become final. The union's executive board and its roughly 1,100 members must ratify the deal. Voting is scheduled to take place next week and Feb. 15.
Because the deal has not yet been approved by membership, union President Mynette Theard declined to comment Tuesday.
District leaders did not return calls seeking comment. They did release a statement describing the deal as a "fair and fiscally sound" one.
"The hard-working men and women of the SEIU deserve our praise and thanks for working tirelessly to achieve a timely resolution," State Administrator Randolph Ward said in the statement.
Sorry, I deleted the end of the above article. Here is how is finishes:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"(It) keeps us on the road to fiscal recovery."
Meanwhile, the 3,000-member Oakland Education Association, which represents teachers, continued its almost two-year campaign for a favorable contract.
Buoyed by an independent arbitrator's report that for the most part sided with the teachers' contract demands, union President Ben Visnick said district leaders were using the deal with the Service Employees Union to try to shame teachers into agreeing to a contract that will hurt Oakland public education.
"The district is trying to pit one union against the other," Visnick said. "They are desperate, they are trying to isolate the OEA."
The district and teachers union have been fighting over the contract since August 2004 and now are trying to schedule their final negotiation session.
Should that session prove fruitless, teachers could decide to strike, or Ward could decide to impose the contract he wants.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"(It) keeps us on the road to fiscal recovery."
Meanwhile, the 3,000-member Oakland Education Association, which represents teachers, continued its almost two-year campaign for a favorable contract.
Buoyed by an independent arbitrator's report that for the most part sided with the teachers' contract demands, union President Ben Visnick said district leaders were using the deal with the Service Employees Union to try to shame teachers into agreeing to a contract that will hurt Oakland public education.
"The district is trying to pit one union against the other," Visnick said. "They are desperate, they are trying to isolate the OEA."
The district and teachers union have been fighting over the contract since August 2004 and now are trying to schedule their final negotiation session.
Should that session prove fruitless, teachers could decide to strike, or Ward could decide to impose the contract he wants.
SPECTER OF STRIKE WILL LOOM IN TALKS
Oakland schools, teachers set mandated negotiations, but a walkout remains real possibility without contract
By Paul T. Rosynsky, STAFF WRITER
OAKLAND — The city's state-run school district and a union representing its 3,100 teachers have agreed to meet Saturday in what many believe is the final showdown before a possible strike.
Following rules established last year, the two sides scheduled a mandatory negotiating session to discuss contract recommendations made by an independent arbitrator brought in to help solve the two-year battle.
If the meeting fails to result in an agreement, a strike is the most likely outcome.
While both sides say they are open to negotiations, they continued to argue Thursday in favor of their respective positions.
The teachers union said it wants a contract that follows the recommendations of the independent arbitrator. The district has contended it cannot implement those recommendations without losing money each year.
State Administrator Randolph Ward said fiscal responsibility must take precedence as he pushed for his plan to make teachers pay a portion of their health insurance premiums and to restore
3 percent of the 4 percent pay cut they accepted when the district claimed bankruptcy three years ago.
District officials did not return calls seeking comment but released a prepared statement by Ward: "We need to get this done nowTeachers union President Ben Visnick said teachers should get the entire 4 percent back and pay less in health insurance than the district proposes. The district has the money to treat teachers fairly, he said.
At the center is the arbitrator's report, which sides with the teachers union on several issues including pay and health benefits.
"We are on the brink," Visnick said in a prepared statement. "The OEA Executive Board strongly urges you, Dr. Ward, to accept this report and all of its recommendations.
"I can report to you tonight that the OEA Executive Board overwhelmingly concurs with the fact-finder's report."
Visnick said Thursday the union might budge on some issues, but "we don't want to go below what the fact-finder recommended."
In a sign of the seriousness of strike threats, Visnick has scheduled a Sunday flight to Los Angeles to raise money for an Oakland teachers strike fund.
Ward is continuing his efforts to hire temporary teachers through job fairs at the Oakland Airport Hilton.
Oakland schools, teachers set mandated negotiations, but a walkout remains real possibility without contract
By Paul T. Rosynsky, STAFF WRITER
OAKLAND — The city's state-run school district and a union representing its 3,100 teachers have agreed to meet Saturday in what many believe is the final showdown before a possible strike.
Following rules established last year, the two sides scheduled a mandatory negotiating session to discuss contract recommendations made by an independent arbitrator brought in to help solve the two-year battle.
If the meeting fails to result in an agreement, a strike is the most likely outcome.
While both sides say they are open to negotiations, they continued to argue Thursday in favor of their respective positions.
The teachers union said it wants a contract that follows the recommendations of the independent arbitrator. The district has contended it cannot implement those recommendations without losing money each year.
State Administrator Randolph Ward said fiscal responsibility must take precedence as he pushed for his plan to make teachers pay a portion of their health insurance premiums and to restore
3 percent of the 4 percent pay cut they accepted when the district claimed bankruptcy three years ago.
District officials did not return calls seeking comment but released a prepared statement by Ward: "We need to get this done nowTeachers union President Ben Visnick said teachers should get the entire 4 percent back and pay less in health insurance than the district proposes. The district has the money to treat teachers fairly, he said.
At the center is the arbitrator's report, which sides with the teachers union on several issues including pay and health benefits.
"We are on the brink," Visnick said in a prepared statement. "The OEA Executive Board strongly urges you, Dr. Ward, to accept this report and all of its recommendations.
"I can report to you tonight that the OEA Executive Board overwhelmingly concurs with the fact-finder's report."
Visnick said Thursday the union might budge on some issues, but "we don't want to go below what the fact-finder recommended."
In a sign of the seriousness of strike threats, Visnick has scheduled a Sunday flight to Los Angeles to raise money for an Oakland teachers strike fund.
Ward is continuing his efforts to hire temporary teachers through job fairs at the Oakland Airport Hilton.
Lucio Cabanas was a Mexican guerilla, not Central American.
And I don't know whether he was any kind of nationalist -- but then, Miles, if you can't get the small details of stuff like this right, I don't suppose the bigger questions are really going to matter. People in the US often can't tell the difference between Mexico and Central America, can they?
Is your handle 'Miles,' a reference to the main character in the Woody Allen movie 'Sleeper?" It seems ironically appropriate, given your own apparent state of suspended animation in the increasingly distant past.
And I don't know whether he was any kind of nationalist -- but then, Miles, if you can't get the small details of stuff like this right, I don't suppose the bigger questions are really going to matter. People in the US often can't tell the difference between Mexico and Central America, can they?
Is your handle 'Miles,' a reference to the main character in the Woody Allen movie 'Sleeper?" It seems ironically appropriate, given your own apparent state of suspended animation in the increasingly distant past.
Hey Kevin and Greg, please take your spat from the late 1970s/early 1980s elsewhere.
Seeking to avenge shit coming from grudges that go back more than 30 years is lame.
Gifford
Seeking to avenge shit coming from grudges that go back more than 30 years is lame.
Gifford
As opposed to the grudges of 150 years ago? Isn't that fight a little old? But then, the differences in goals, strategies and tactics from the First International weren't settled by 1876 were they? I would argue that they are still being fought today, only with differnent rhetorical flourishes. Some fights have staying power; things done to some by others cannot but be taken personally. If you have the ability to forgive and forget Gifford, bully for you. Others of us are just too crass to rise above personal affronts, regardless of the timing. Your enmity against Kevin seems recent; how long before that conflict becomes old and tired to the rest of us? Who gets to set the date? The offenses that have transpired between you may never be resolved, so I wouldn't expect any resolution in the near future. Some of us are still pissed off at the Bolsheviks for suppressing any and all independent working class self-organization...
Thanks for the geography lesson anon.
My nickname is not a self-chosen homage to Woody Allen's character, but was given to me as an ironic anagram of "smile". But maybe your story works better as irony.
Thanks for the geography lesson anon.
My nickname is not a self-chosen homage to Woody Allen's character, but was given to me as an ironic anagram of "smile". But maybe your story works better as irony.
Greg/Miles,
By the sound of it, some people round these parts are still angry at their parents for telling them to clean their room.
It's quaint and nostalgic to live in the past, to second guess decissions back then, and to rehash arguments from a century and a half ago, but it ain't gonna do fuck all to deal with the low level of class struggle today. It actually hinders developing such critiques.
As for the others you mentioned, I don't care enough to relish carrying the grudge into the future. For me, it's so unpolitical that it's really more of an annoyance I'd rather be done with.
But the Oaktown teachers will probably strike on February 2nd at the earliest. I'd rather discuss that.
Gifford
By the sound of it, some people round these parts are still angry at their parents for telling them to clean their room.
It's quaint and nostalgic to live in the past, to second guess decissions back then, and to rehash arguments from a century and a half ago, but it ain't gonna do fuck all to deal with the low level of class struggle today. It actually hinders developing such critiques.
As for the others you mentioned, I don't care enough to relish carrying the grudge into the future. For me, it's so unpolitical that it's really more of an annoyance I'd rather be done with.
But the Oaktown teachers will probably strike on February 2nd at the earliest. I'd rather discuss that.
Gifford
I have no beef with Greg, let alone a multiple-decade long beef. He can contact me sometime, if he likes.
man ol man... how useless it is to come here looking for dialogue as to how we can help the teachers' strike... The inefectiveness and disconnect from reality of you all just gets worse and worse...
--Keep up the good work, the capitalists are trembling in their shoes.
--Keep up the good work, the capitalists are trembling in their shoes.
Gifford's descent into the stereotypical caricature of radicals acting out unresolved conflicts with their authoritarian parents is only surpassed by his descent into anti-intellectualism. Ideas aren't important because there's a class struggle going on! Hoorah for the incipient proletarian uprising destined to be sparked by the Oakland teachers. Never mind the cadre of BAMN, never mind the paucity of actual radical content to the labor situation of state-sponsored (mis)education. We don't need to talk about those things, or the big ideas behind a radical analysis of them, because strikes within the framework of business unions are the clear path of united front politics--oops, I mean proletarian self-organization. Absurd. Don't get me wrong--I support any strike that has even the smallest amount of class combativeness in it, but intervening with the Oakland teachers seems pretty silly given their role as promoters of the status quo and "good citizenship". Creating a framework for teachers who want to teach and students who want to learn, and doing that explicitly outside the strictures of a state-sanctioned curriculum, is much more interesting than complaining about how shitty the pay is in the Oakland system. That is real community based self-organization, and a worthy project to assist.
Hey Miles,
I agree with almost all of what you've posted here. Drop me a line at proletaire2003 [at] yahoo.com
anon.
I agree with almost all of what you've posted here. Drop me a line at proletaire2003 [at] yahoo.com
anon.
Hey Greg Dunnington, if you're going to put words in people's mouths, at least do it honestly, without hiding behind a pseudonym.
Who even implied this:
"...intervening with the Oakland teachers seems pretty silly given their role as promoters of the status quo and "good citizenship"?
Attributing things to people who don't even say such things is a pretty cowardly way to build up a straw man to facilely knock it down.
Gifford
Who even implied this:
"...intervening with the Oakland teachers seems pretty silly given their role as promoters of the status quo and "good citizenship"?
Attributing things to people who don't even say such things is a pretty cowardly way to build up a straw man to facilely knock it down.
Gifford
Hey Kevin or anon. or Louis Adamic,
>Hey Miles,
>I agree with almost all of what you've posted here. Drop >me a line at proletaire2003 [at] yahoo.com
>anon.
You know Greg's e-mail address, so please deal with him privately.
Gifford
>Hey Miles,
>I agree with almost all of what you've posted here. Drop >me a line at proletaire2003 [at] yahoo.com
>anon.
You know Greg's e-mail address, so please deal with him privately.
Gifford
Yeah, let's keep talking talking talking about how this or that class struggle isnt going to raise the level of the proletarian revolution. Meanwhile, real folks in the real world who are not as priveledged as kevin or miles to attend higher education get fucked on a daily basis.
Keep talking. Keep talking. Keep talking. You and your intellectual buddies will continue to wither into irrelevant incoherency. Meanwhile, the class struggle continues.
Keep talking. Keep talking. Keep talking. You and your intellectual buddies will continue to wither into irrelevant incoherency. Meanwhile, the class struggle continues.
Thanks for the offer proletaire, but I prefer to remain anonymous, at least for the time being. Let me know who you are and I'll reconsider.
And Gifford, why are you stooping to harassing phone calls to people who are not involved in this discussion? Petty paranoia is always unbecoming comrade.
And Gifford, why are you stooping to harassing phone calls to people who are not involved in this discussion? Petty paranoia is always unbecoming comrade.
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