The UTLA Victory in Context - International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

The UTLA Victory in Context - International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

The UTLA Victory in Context

The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) have won a big, although limited victory, as detailed in Peter Olson’s on-the-ground account in this issue of Against the Current. [1] The strike is part of a nationwide teachers’ upsurge that began with, and was largely made possible by, the 2012 strike of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

Before that pivotal strike, teachers and their unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), had become stuck in a spiral of concessions, as corporate privatizers — supported by both Democrats like Barack Obama and Republicans — expanded the growth of charter schools in major cities across the country.

Cities have the following percentages of students in charter schools: post-Katrina New Orleans 92%, Detroit 53%, the District of Columbia 43%, Philadelphia 32% and Los Angeles has 20%. As the number of charter school students increased, resources devoted to public schools declined and loss of students led to loss of programs — and in the worst case a closure of public schools like the 48 schools closed in Chicago a year after the 2012 strike.

In the two years between the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) winning control of the CTU and going on strike in 2012, the union worked relentlessly to change the CTU’s culture from a service model union into an organizing model under the slogan “The Schools Chicago Students Deserve.” This led to the stunning CTU strike victory, much to the surprise of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and union leaders like Randi Weingarten of the AFT.

Teachers throughout the country then realized it was possible to fight the privatizers and gain public support. The St. Paul Federation of Teachers published their own version of “The Schools St. Paul Students Deserve.” Caucuses in major cities, like Los Angeles, won control of their union and began the preparation to unite their members and build ties with the community needed to win a struggle against formidable foes.

Fruits of Organizing

As one of a dozen or so members of the “UTLA Solidarity Squad,” organized by Labor Notes and the United Caucuses of Rank-and-File Educators (UCORE), I was able to compare the level of organization in Los Angeles compared to that of the 2012 Chicago strike.

While in both cities the union members were united and energized by the strike, the level of internal organizing appeared better in LA. Despite its geographical sprawl, there was the eye-popping 80% level of support of LA teachers compared to “only” 67% during the Chicago strike. UTLA clearly did their homework!

UCLA education professor John Rogers commented to the Los Angeles Times that what surprised him was not just how strongly the union message came across, but how ineffective the school district management was in trying to persuade the public that it just didn’t have the money to fix the schools. He noted that “It’s breathtaking how different this conversation is than a decade ago during the recession, when the conversations were so focused on bad teachers.”

The Union Power leadership of UTLA is the result of a decade-long effort of rank and file UTLA members. In 2006 the Progressive Educators for Action (PEAC), a social justice caucus originally founded in the 1990s, formed an alliance with A. J. Duffy; the unified slate won office. But as a leadership it wasn’t unified and four years later it was defeated by a slate focused on “bread and butter” issues.

Led by Warren Fletcher, that slate hired a “professional” bargainer and organized a single-focused “Rally for a Raise.” Meanwhile PEAC organized a contingent calling for programs that would facilitate a system of quality schools.

The current Union Power leadership, which comes out of the PEAC current, won office in 2014. Its president, Alex Caputo-Pearl, has worked to develop a team committed to internal organizing and linking it to a social justice orientation with strong parent and community alliances.

This, in turn, has transformed the union from bottom to top. The caucus built a union infrastructure in each of 900 CONTINUE READING: The UTLA Victory in Context - International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine