top
US
US
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Oakland, California teachers walk out as unions sabotage West Virginia strike

by Jerry White (WSWS Repost)
Oakland's teachers walkout began as unions sabotaged the two-day strike by 33,000 teachers and school employees in West Virginia.

The unions are not working class organizations, but instruments of the ruling class.

Oakland teachers must draw the sharpest lessons from these experiences if their struggle is not to be isolated and betrayed.
oakland_teacher_strike.png
Oakland, California teachers walk out as unions sabotage West Virginia strike

By Jerry White
21 February 2019

Three thousand teachers in Oakland, California began a strike at the end of class yesterday to demand increased pay and a reduction in class sizes. They are also opposing plans by the Democratic Party controlled school board to slash funding and close as many as one third of the schools in the district. The strike is the latest in a wave of strikes by educators against the bipartisan assault on teachers and public education.

The Oakland walkout began as unions sabotaged the two-day strike by 33,000 teachers and school employees in West Virginia. The West Virginia teachers walked out Tuesday to oppose legislation that would introduce the state’s first ever charter schools. None of the issues that provoked their nine-day strike last year have been resolved.

During a press conference Wednesday night, the leaders of the West Virginia affiliates of the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) said they were sending teachers back to school Thursday because of a bipartisan effort to back Republican Governor Jim Justice’s “clean” bill that would not tie a five percent pay raise to charter schools, school privatization or the requirement that unions to get annual permission to deduct dues.

WVEA President Dale Lee and AFT-WV President Fred Albert praised Justice, a billionaire coal baron who has championed tax cuts to the energy industry that have bled the public schools and other state service dry. Justice’s funding bill will do nothing to do address miserably low teacher pay, chronically underfunded schools and impossibly high out-of-pocket health care costs, which triggered last year’s walkout.

Aware of the deep opposition among teachers and fearful of a repeat of last year, when striking teachers revolted against union orders to return to work based on similar worthless promises, Lee and Albert claimed they were only following the orders of their members to end the strike.

“We have been in touch with our members,” Albert said. “Overwhelmingly they wanted Senate Bill 451 to be dead, and their work in capitol was done… I have heard over and over, that I am going to act in their best behalf and that I would never do anything to betray their trust.” Even as reporters asked about teachers in the coal mining areas such as Mingo County defying the order, Albert said hopefully, “As we came out united and strong, we need to go back united and strong.”

The decision provoked a firestorm of anger from educators on social media denouncing the sellout by the unions.

Read the rest of this story at the World Socialist Website. Jerry White was most recently the Socialist Equality candidate for the United States presidency in 2016.
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by Retired Union Worker
What pure unadulterated tripe to claim that the unions are part of the ruling class! You can not equate the unions, which are groups of workers joined together in common defense, with the labor bureaucrats who act as the bosses tools to stave off struggle. The politics of the entire American labor leadership is pro-capitalist and Democratic party which is the PROBLEM. Workers need their own political party, a fighting party, independent of the bosses political filth. It is the responsibility of conscious working class cadre to demand that of their union so as to make them the organizations needed to advance our class.
by The Plot Thickens
Thank you to Retired Union Worker for blowing the whistle on the anti-labor phony World "Socialist" Website, WSWS. It is of course not unions that are the problem, but certain misleaders who can hardly wait to sell out. Only the union members can and must change that.

WSWS is notorious for supporting the horror known as nuclear power, even more deadly than fossil fuels, both of which must be replaced by renewable clean energy solar, wind and tidal power. You may read their insanity to verify their reactionary position at:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/03/pers-m24.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/03/lett-m26.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/04/pers-a12.html
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$110.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network