Detroit public schools teachers continue sickouts
Teachers marching in front of the Detroit Public Schools office
Detroit public school teachers continued rolling sickouts yesterday, forcing the closure of 24 schools or over one-fifth of the district. This follows Monday when 64 schools were closed, as hundreds of teachers have taken a united stand against the overcrowding of classrooms, unsafe schools, budget cuts and privatization.
It is an unprecedented feat by teachers who have used social media and local connections to develop the initiative as a grassroots campaign organized independently of the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT). The militancy of teachers has taken both government officials and the teachers union by surprise. Both have gone into overdrive to try to suppress the snowballing protests and prevent them from taking a politically independent form.
Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who has presided over millions of dollars worth of cuts to Michigan schools, including the shuttering of entire school districts, issued a statement saying the sickouts came “at the expense of the kids,” and threatened state retaliation if the struggle continues.
Public employee strikes are illegal in Michigan and state legislators have been trying to find a mechanism to categorize sickouts as strikes. In the hopes of carrying out mass firings and/or imposing fines, they also seek to eliminate teachers’ right to a hearing in the event of victimization.
The lead editorial in the Detroit News Tuesday was headlined “Fire DPS strike ringleaders,” and called for state legislators “to make it easier to punish teachers who break the law.”
Meanwhile, the DFT—discredited for its willingness to sign onto any concessions contract, layoff and school closure handed down by a succession of emergency managers—has been unable to stop or control the sickouts and has gone into crisis mode.
For the DFT and its national parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), it is now ‘all hands on deck’ to try to quell the protests while at the same time trying to prevent further loss of union membership come next June, when members will be able to opt-out under the state’s right-to-work law.
The level of crisis by the union bureaucracy is indicated by the fact that Randi Weingarten, AFT president, is flying into town to address a mass union meeting this Thursday. She will be joined by Michigan AFT President David Hecker and DFT Administrator Ann Mitchell. Weingarten is notorious for her intimate connections with all manner of school privatizers such as the Gates Foundation, as well as her mantra, “School reform with us, not against us.”
Meanwhile, the corporate media, from the local Detroit press to the New York Times and UK-based Guardian, have falsely claimed ousted DFT president Detroit public schools teachers continue sickouts - World Socialist Web Site: