Defend the teachers! Mobilize Detroit workers against strike-breaking!

The breakdown of negotiations and the indefinite suspension of classes make it clear that the Board of Education—and behind it the whole political and corporate establishment in Detroit—is determined to impose its demands for sweeping wage and benefit concessions. The school board is now calling on the judge to enforce the terms of a reactionary state law banning strikes by public employees. This could mean teachers being fined one day’s pay for each day the strike continues, and Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) officials and even individual union members being jailed.

Workers throughout the Detroit area cannot allow the leadership of the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, Teamsters and AFSCME city unions, through their cowardice and complicity, to isolate this strike and allow it to be defeated. The teachers are fighting not only for themselves, but to defend public education, and they must have the active backing of the entire working class. Any strikebreaking action by the courts must be answered by the mobilization of workers and young people throughout the Metro Detroit area in sympathy strikes and mass demonstrations.

What is the line-up in this struggle? On the one side stand the teachers and the vast majority of parents, school employees and students who support them. On the other, stand the corrupt school officials, the Democratic Party politicians, the media and the corporate elite. My Democratic Party opponent, the supposed “friend of labor” Congressman Sander Levin, is part of the anti-teacher front. He remains silent while the judge threatens to fine and jail strikers.

MOre
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/sep2006/detr-s12.shtml