Longshore, Transit, Teamsters – All L.A. Labor:
Join in Action with Educators, Students, Parents…

To Win the Teachers Strike
We Must Shut Down L.A.

LOS ANGELES, January 21 – After a full week – five school days – the Los Angeles teachers strike is stronger than ever. Picket lines have been large and spirited. “Rain or shine, we walk the line,” chanted teachers in the endless rain, with scores picketing at almost every location and hundreds ringing large schools. Despite vows by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) bosses to keep schools open with scabs and administrators, by week’s end less than one in five students were attending and principals called to close the schools. The mid-day strike rallies have been massive, with over 50,000 in downtown L.A. on Monday, January 14, another 50,000 marching on Tuesday the 15th, and when the sun finally came out, upwards of 60,000 jammed into Grand Park on Friday. Teachers roared their determination to make picket lines even stronger if the strike extends into a second week.

But to win, there’s a hard fight ahead. After lying low for a few days, the forces trying to undercut and destroy public education are raising their heads. The liberal media and Democratic Party politicians are trying to stampede the leadership of the union, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), into signing a contract cooked up in secret negotiations that would only offer up some crumbs, leaving the big problems in place. Minimal and temporary reduction of class sizes for a couple of grades, a few full-time nurses, promises of woefully inadequate funds from the state budget: nothing compared to what it will take to even begin to undo the results of years of schools being starved of resources. And those crumbs can be taken away the minute the District cries “budget deficit.” The privatizers who preside over the public school system are deliberately trying to run it into the ground.

Speaking to the crowd on Friday, UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl compared the strike to a boxing match: “We have stunned our opponents, the billionaires, the District bureaucrats, the nay-sayers, the nonprofit/industrial complex,” he said. “We have stunned them by taking over this city.” Public opinion polls show 80% in support of the strike, so far. But the opposition is not on the ropes, not by a long shot. Even having teachers, parents, students on the strike lines, with tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets and massive community support, it’s not enough. Now is the time to escalate. To knock out the privatizers and bust the union-busters we must MOBILIZE LABOR and Latino, African American, Asian, immigrant and all working people of this city to SHUT DOWN LOS ANGELES.

To win real gains over bitter opposition from the enemies of public education will take the power of the entire working class together with parents, students and oppressed communities throughout the city. This means building strong picket lines that no one crosses, in order to shut down the schools. At the same time, to defeat those powerful capitalist foes it is necessary to mobilize the entire labor movement. At the Friday rally we saw members of the ILWU (port workers), ATU (transit workers), SEIU (service employees), IATSE (stage hands), SAG-AFRTA (actors) and other unions. We need to see thousands of those unionists marching in contingents, and undertaking solidarity action at the workplace. If it’s teachers alone, the LAUSD will just try to wait them out. Want to win the strike? Make it cost. Shut down the ports, stop mass transit, jam the freeways. That’ll get the bosses’ attention. And it will inspire working people and youth throughout the country and around the world.

What “Deal”? Don’t Settle for a Sellout!

So far, the walkout by educators in the second-largest school district in the country has had fairly good press. Even an anti-union rag like the Los Angeles Times (16 January) headlined, “Teachers bask in support for strike.” At a briefing on Day Two, the UTLA leader said triumphantly that the strike was the number one trending topic on social media, and that Democratic Party politicians including potential presidential candidates (Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Corey Booker and Bernie Sanders) had claimed to support the strike. But things will soon change if the teachers hang tough. The media are already floating the potential terms of a sellout “deal” to be brokered by Democratic mayor Eric Garcetti and Democratic governor Gavin Newsom. Garcetti has been “mediating” talks between the LAUSD and UTLA for the last several days.

A week of striking in the rain showed the determination of the teachers. It also had a festive quality: a street fair in Koreatown, a “Red for Ed marching band,” student dance videos for public education, car pool videos for the union. But opponents of the strike are beginning to mobilize. Already we’re beginning to see articles parroting LAUSD boss Austin Beutner’s cynical references to poor and homeless students depending on school breakfasts and lunches. The same profiteers that breed poverty and homelessness have the nerve to use this in their demagogic anti-strike appeals. Expect to see more union-bashing trash in the media.

While headlining on Saturday that “Hopes rise for a deal to end strike,” Friday’s Los Angeles Timessuggested what “a deal that meets or exceeds reasonable expectations” would consist of:

“[A] final deal may look a lot like the district’s most recent offer in the key particulars. Peripheral elements could prove crucial – like a pilot program using union-backed reforms. Tougher accountability for charter schools at the state level also would be something the union could sell as a win.”

Who needs a “pilot program” to show that drastically smaller classes are crucial, or that every school should have a full-time nurse and a librarian – as well as a library?! Every educator knows that you can’t effectively teach, much less give individual attention, to 45 students in a high-school classroom – or even 35, or fewer still in lower grades. To cut class sizes in half will require the hiring of thousands more educators at full union scale. The money is there – how the capitalist politicians come up with it is their problem.

And what does “accountability for charter schools” mean? The UTLA’s pamphlet Whose Schools: Community Representation and Transparency in Charter School Governance in Los Angeles (June 2018) talks of “disproportionate influence of corporations” and calls for adding a couple of parents to governing boards. But that won’t change the nature of this union-busting, corporate operation. Class Struggle Education Workers insists: Charters must go! Turn them into public schools!

From even before the beginning of the strike, the CSEW and the Internationalist Group have fought to build active solidarity from the labor movement. Motions were put forward and passed in the faculty union (CFA) of California State University and the Los Angeles transit union (ATU Local 1277) pledging to join the picket lines in the event of a teachers strike. From Day One, transit workers have been at the picket lines and the demonstrations in their red hoodies and t-shirts calling for transport workers solidarity with the strike and proclaiming the bottom-line union principle that picket lines mean don’t cross. Our supporters have also participated in organizing and preparing strike support together with members of the dock workers union, the ILWU, the powerhouse of L.A. labor.

From the outset, the CSEW has called for measures to win the strike, like building strike support committees, supporting student walkouts and posing demands defending educators in charter schools, in order to organize the unorganized. A key measure is for a mass strike committee of representatives to be elected at every school. If a tentative settlement is agreed to by the bargaining team, UTLA members should demand to see it in writing, and to have the chance to debate any proposed agreement in a democratic mass meeting of the membership.

Democrats Are Leading the Drive to Privatize Public Education

The drive to privatize education is behind the intentional underfunding of public schools, in order to make them fail. This is a racist campaign against a school system in which more than 90% of students are Latino (74%), African American (8%), Asian (8%), Pacific Islanders and Native Americans. Yet the underfunding (and the whole issue of charter schools) isn’t raised in the strike demands, on the grounds that it can only be addressed at the state level. The LAUSD pleads poverty, but 90% of local school funds come from Sacramento, and the richest state in the country is near bottom in per-pupil spending (L.A. spends half as much on every student as NYC). California pays $10,000 a year for each K-12 student, and $75,000 a year per prison inmate. But this fight isn’t about budget priorities, it’s about ruling-class interests.

Above all, there must be clarity about the bosses’ Democratic Party. Unlike the teachers revolt last year in a series of Republican-governed “red states” (West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, North Carolina), in California teachers face Democratic administrators and officials at every level. At the Friday rally, Caputo-Pearl said, “Democrats, right here in California, the bluest of blue states, allow privatization to happen by underfunding our schools and being afraid of the charter industry.” His conclusion? “Democrats have to stand up.” Yet Democrats lead the drive for publicly funded private “charter” schools. “Right here in Los Angeles,” said the UTLA leader, “Eli Broad and Austin Beutner are pushing the privatization agenda.” What he didn’t say is that billionaires Broad and Beutner are top Democratic Party donors, with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama – yet another proof of how Democrats’ attacks on labor and the oppressed helped pave the way for raving Republican bigot Donald Trump in the White House.

The fight to defend public education is eminently political, and in California today the immediate enemy in this fight at every level is the Democratic Party. Union leaders (along with many reformist leftists) criticize “corporate Democrats,” while looking for aid from supposed “progressive” Democrats in city hall and the state house. The governor, state superintendent of education, Los Angeles mayor and almost all members of the L.A. school board are Democrats, who also hold huge supermajorities (over 70%) in both houses of the state legislature, which they have controlled almost continually since 1970. They are the ones directly responsible for the perilous state of public education in California today. Yet both the UTLA and the LAUSD are looking to the Democrats to resolve the issues in the strike.

The Democratic Party represents the interests of capital against those of labor, immigrants and the Latino, African American and Asian working people. The Democrats’ occasional “friend of labor” campaign appeals are sucker bait. They are on the other side of the class line from workers and the oppressed. Appealing to them is a recipe for defeat. Class Struggle Education Workers says: you can’t fight Democrats with Democrats, and you can’t fight Trump with Democrats – they all defend the capitalist system. The CSEW calls to break with the Democrats and to build a class-struggle workers party.

TO WIN THE TEACHERS STRIKE, WE MUST
MOBILIZE LABOR TO SHUT DOWN L.A.

Union Pensions

Why is the CTU not paying its employees pensions?
By Jim Vail


When the union that is defending our pensions is not paying the pensions of its own employees, you know something is wrong.

Substance News reported earlier this month that the Chicago Teachers Union has been late paying the pensions of its employees and has not paid the late fees.

The Chicago Teachers Pension Fund (CTPF) said the CTU owed $40,382.94 due to untimely payroll records and pension payment submissions. But Substance reported that CTU Financial Dir. Kathy Catalano was requesting a waiver of the fees, liquidated damages and interest.

This is strange indeed, and we can't seem to get answers. I contacted CTU press relations and President Jesse Sharkey and they have not responded after numerous requests for comment.

Sharkey told delegates at the last HOD meeting that the CTU was disputing the late-fee charges. 

But this didn't just happen once, it's happened twice! 

When I was reporting for Substance News, I remember the CTPF was having trouble getting all the charter schools to pay regularly into the pension fund. The fund even had to sue a few operations. 

But the CTU has been on the front lines fighting the battle to save our pensions. In fact, that is the reason why disgruntled workers are now complaining about their salaries that saw little to no increase in this last contract because the union will say it spent all its energy on saving the 7 percent pension pickup.

The following is a Q&A with the Pension Fund with a fellow CTU delegate:

For what period of time did CTU neglect to pay the required contributions to CTPF?  I am hearing it was for a period of over six months. 

After review of our invoices we are not aware of CTU neglecting to pay required pension contributions. However, our records indicate that there were untimely submissions for some payroll records for FY 2017 and FY 2019.

Are payments to CTPF made weekly, monthly, quarterly? 

CTU is scheduled to make bi-weekly payments.

How much money in total did CTU miss paying CTPF? 

Our records indicate that CTU has not missed paying their required pension contributions. In instances where the employer reported in an untimely fashion, late fees have been assessed as required by statutes.

Has CTU paid the money money owed?  If not, is there a plan in place to pay the fund what is owed? 

At this time there is money owed which is due to statutory penalties assessed for the late payments. According to CTPF’s Administrative Rules, employers have the option to request a waiver of statutory penalties assessed. CTU has exercised this option and the request will be presented to the CTPF Board for their review.

Did the fund get compensated by way of penalty payments from CTU? 

According to our records, required pension contributions have been made by CTU. Late fees have been assessed for untimely payments received. Final determination will be made by the CTPF Board.

Did CTPF send email notices related to late payments to CTU? If so, when and how often was CTU reminded of their need to pay?  Did CTPF make phone calls to CTU in an effort to get payment? Did CTPF make a personal visit to CTPF in an effort to get the monies from CTU? 

As Chuck has mentioned, CTPF staff provides notice through email, phone calls and estimated bills to ensure compliance with reporting requirements.

What is the amount of statutory penalties that have been assessed for the late payments?  

A detailed discussion of delinquent statutory penalties for all Employers including CTU is held at each monthly Finance and Audit Committee meeting. At the last Finance and Audit Committee meeting on December 6, 2018 CTU was reported as having $37,381.18 in statutory penalties outstanding as of November 27, 2018.  

Is discussion of the CTU late payments and imposed penalties reflected in CTPF Board minutes for the periods when CTU was late with payments? 

The discussion is captured in the Finance and Audit Committee meeting minutes which are reported out to the full CTPF Board on a monthly basis by the Finance and Audit Committee Chair as part of his report.  That report is captured in the CTPF Board minutes. 

Vysotsky's b-day

THERE WAS ONE MAN WHO DID NOT SHOOT: BOTH BURNS AND VLADIMIR VYSOTSKY SHARE THE SAME BIRTHDAY {1938-1980}

By Stephen Wilson

Vladimir Vysotsky's birthday is Jan. 25!

"We could sing many songs but nobody could replace him". declares the

line on a photo of Vladimir Vysotsky which has been placed before his

grave in the Vagankovo cemetery in Moscow. His sculptured grave is

the  first one which looms out to capture your eye as you enter the

graveyard. Snow was falling everywhere . It seemed to engulf and swallow

all of Moscow. But it did not bury Vysotsky's  grave. In deed, thousands of

admirers are sure to converge on the grave to lay yet more flowers on the

legendary poet, singer and actor on the 25th of January. Countless concerts,

complements paid and performances will be held to honor the poet's birthday

all over Russia.

His birthday coincides with the birthday of Robert Burns ! Is this just a

coincidence , accident or is it due to fate ? Did the poets have anything

in common despite the width of two centuries ? What is that enthralls

Russians with both those poets ? And how might some people interpret

the powerful, potent and stirring lyrics of some ballads?

On the surface, it may seem absurd to compare the  two poets. After all,

not only do two centuries separate them but they  grew up in

distinct cultures with a different mentality. You might be forgiven for claiming

there exists an unbridgeable gap between the poets. But when you dig

deeper and understand the main spirit of the poets a lot in common emerges.

Both poets adored old ballads, both admired William Shakespeare, both

felt sorry for the underdog ,they detested cruelty of any kind, and wrote poems

not about kings but the common man. They also implacably opposed war. You

have to read the lyrics of the credo of Vysotsky's poem 'I don't Love ' and Burns'

Honest Poverty to get the gist. They did not like people who were full of

themselves and expressed conceit. Vysotsky states in his poem that : "I

don't like people who hurt the innocent and strangers who try to read my

personal letters." Both poets were against romantically depicting war. In this

regard it is worth quoting the lyrics of two ballads of Burns to make the

point. In the ballad Killiecrankie Burns wrote :

An ye had been whare I hae been

Ye wad na been sae cantie ,O !

An ye had seen what i hae seen

On the braes O' Killiecrankie , O!

The meaning translated into standard English suggests : If you had

been or seen what I had experienced at this battle in 1689 you would

not feel cheerful or content. In other words , the battle was a nightmare.

In another Ballad 'Ye Jacobites by name' you read the following lines:

What makes heroic strife ?

To whet th' assassin's knife,

or hunt a parent's life

Wi ' Bluidie war.

A Russian Journalist, Igor Kots notes that in Vysostky's ballads you

don't find the words 'Motherland' or 'Victory'. His war ballads were

a far cry from all the old as well as trendy Patriotic poems which

seem crude, cliched and primitive. He simply wrote his ballads through

the eyes of a soldier who deeply and genuinely experienced it.

A poet is not just a poet in Russia. He can be regarded as a prophet,

a spokesperson for the powerless or inarticulate and even a philosopher.

We forget than in ancient times a poem could be a prayer, a charm or

spell to protect people. In a negative way it could be used as a curse.

In early Medieval Ireland, even a written law could be framed poetically

to lend it more authority. Vladimir Vysotsky did not like being called

a bard but viewed himself as a poet. He sang 600 ballads which

tell about the lives of prisoners, those who suffered in the Gulag, climbers

and soldiers. Partly because of his unique voice as well as lyrics, the

ballads haunt you. The words have an awesome resonance . They are

evocative. He gives a voice to the lost soldier, forgotten prisoner and the

mountain climber whose soul remains in the mountains. An engineer

and scientist, Andrei Polrakov told me "We don't argue about how one

should interpret his songs. We just enjoy listening and playing his songs.

The good thing is that those songs are about simple and ordinary people."

Eugene Entin , a poet and drummer said : " I think he is just great. I

especially like his war ballads ". Anna Wilson, an artist told me : " I love

him.He inspires me from head to foot ". Nobody had a bad word for him.

Perhaps part of the appeal is that Vysotsky was endowed with

enormous empathy. He had one of those rare talents of being able to

fully comprehend the intense suffering of many of the characters of his

songs. When war veterans heard his songs for the first time they were

convinced he had fought in the war. The poet had to disappoint them with

the claim : "Please don't make the mistake of mixing me with the characters

I  act out. They are different." In the war ballads you can quickly detect

the dark emotions of soldiers who experienced Post Traumatic Stress

Syndrome. The poet appears to be one of the few persons who not only

acknowledged their hidden suffering but felt compassion for them. People

felt that here was someone who actually cared for them. But the poet

also had a difficult life. Not only had he to fight alcohol and drug addiction

but was persecuted by the security services for 'Anti -Soviet Songs'. I  also

met a Russian poet who told me he was detained and arrested for simply

being a member of a Jazz Club during the 1980's.

Of course, many people will interpret his ballads in ways which the poet

never anticipated and imagined. Some people find a deeper meaning in

his words. More obviously, war veterans can detect the symptoms of

P.T.S.S. in war ballads like 'survivor Guilt ' or the loss of meaning and

devastating alienation of post war life. Others might find another meaning.

For instance , how might one interpret the lyrics of the Ballad : 'The one

who did not shoot ' ? The ballad tells of a story of an innocent soldier who

is arrested and sentenced to be executed for treason. While facing the

firing squad one soldier intentionally refuses to shoot. The fact that he

refuses to shoot allows the victim to narrowly recover from deep wounds.

Unfortunately, the good soldier who refused to shoot dies in battle and

breaks the heart of the soldier who survives. You can detect the familiar

symptom of survivor guilt where the surviving soldier asks : "Why is it that

I am still alive while a better man than me has died? I wish I could change

places with them." On a more optimistic note  'The Man Who Did Not

Shoot' offers an instructive lesson. We often mistakenly believe that

our own deeds don't amount to much because we feel our jobs, positions

and roles are insignificant. We might think "I am only a cleaner or unemployed

person so I can't change anything by my minor actions." According to

the English philosopher Derek Parfit  this is a mistake. Each and everyone

of us , by our actions, can significantly have an impact on the lives of other

people. For example, a cleaner in a Psychiatric hospital can unknowingly

help more patients than , say some, nurses or doctors . She might

simply take more time to greet or listen to the patients. Who really knows

the results of her actions? Now the soldier who did not shoot might have

reasoned , "It won't make any difference whether I shoot or not. It is all the

same. The other soldiers who shoot will surely kill him. " But when the man

who refuses to shoot decides that the main point is to do the right thing

and not shoot it does have an imperceptible result. The prisoner does survive

as just one bullet can make a distinct difference on whether he lives.

We all yearn for  a friend who does not shoot. In the same way we want

a man with the empathy of Vladimir Vysotsky or someone who can at least

understand our pain.  Small  wonder the great poet is missed!

Post Janus

What will happen to unions after Janus?

In These Times
BY HEATHER GIES


Months after the Supreme Court’s June 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision, public-sector unions are not teetering on the brink of collapse, as their detractors may have hoped. The consensus is that good preparation softened the initial blow.

“Anyone writing our obituary is going to be sorely disappointed,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), tells In These Times. “We don’t believe we are going to get hurt nearly as badly as people thought by Janus.”

U.S. labor law requires unions to represent everyone in a bargaining unit whether or not they opt to be official, dues-paying union members. Prior to Janus, most states required those who opted out to pay for that representation through “fair-share fees,” set at a percentage of dues. In one fell swoop, Janus eliminated fair-share fees for public-sector unions nationwide, allowing nonmembers to get all the benefits of the union without paying.

In These Times spoke with five U.S. public-sector unions affected by Janus: AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the National Education Association (NEA) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Before Janus, workers who only paid their fair share and did not choose to be members made up 3 percent to 9 percent of the people represented by these unions. With the ruling, revenue from public-sector fair-share fees vanished.

But Janus also poses another, deeper threat. Current dues-paying members may decide—with an assist from rightwing “opt-out” campaigns—to leave the union, knowing they can get the benefits for free.

Public-sector unions have been hard at work to re-engage members and convince them not to opt out. These initial efforts have been successful, with far lower opt-out rates than feared, some below 1 percent. The unions are benefiting from a favorable climate: Approval of labor unions is at a 15-year high, and a majority of Americans view unions positively. “I’d like to think this is backfiring on all the corporate anti-union forces that cooked this up,” says CWA Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens.

For now, public-sector unions’ membership rates appear to be holding steady or even growing (although most unions decline to give hard figures, saying they are still collecting data from locals). Opt-ins—the conversions of fair-share fee-payers into members—have outpaced opt-outs by as much as 5 to 1. Newly unionized workplaces have also helped offset losses.

The existential threat to membership, however, is far from over. As workforces turn over, new hires may not understand why they should join the union. “It might be a slow erosion over time,” says Chris Brooks, writer and organizer at Labor Notes. “It’s probably too early to tell how deep the impacts are going to be.”

With an eye to the long game, In These Times spoke to national and local union leaders and rank-and-file members about how they are adapting to a post-Janus world.

Defying expectations

AFSCME, AFT, SEIU, NEA and CWA tell In These Times that months, if not years, of preparing for Janus helped them dodge the bullet. CWA and AFSCME began member engagement campaigns in 2015 in anticipation of the Supreme Court banning public-sector fair-share fees through another case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (only to have the death of Justice Antonin Scalia grant a reprieve). Through a program called AFSCME Strong, AFSCME prioritized personal conversations as a strategy to strengthen the union. Nearly 200,000 fair-share fee-payers joined as full members before Janus came down. AFSCME’s ratio of optins to opt-outs stands at 5 to 1.

NEA prepared for Janus by shifting from a “servicing culture” to an “organizing culture,” says Tom Israel, NEA director of state affiliate growth. The union trained staff and leaders in organizing, launched a New Ed Campaign to engage new hires and reached out to fair-share fee-payers. “Thousands of fee-payers thought they were actually full members and happily converted,” Israel says.

AFT, too, has been working to cultivate trust and a sense of belonging through one-on-one conversations. AFT President Randi Weingarten estimates that less than 1 percent of members have opted out. About a third of existing members have recommitted their membership—meaning they aren’t considering abandoning the union—and a number of locals are sitting at 100 percent membership, including Vanlue, Ohio; Yonkers, N.Y.; Springfield, Mass.; Scranton, Pa.; and more than 150 locals each in Minnesota and Illinois.

Membership in the United Federation of Teachers, which represents most of New York City’s public-school teachers, is at 99.3 percent. United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has converted more than 1,200 of its 3,000 fee-payers into full members.

“We’ve made a strategic decision to intentionally and deliberately go out and talk to members,” says Georgia Flowers-Lee, a preschool special education teacher and a member of UTLA’s board of directors. In those conversations, local leaders emphasized that the union is “not just an insurance policy” against hostile actions by bosses, but a “tool for collective action,” says UTLA Field and Organizing Director Brian McNamara.

Only 56 of UTLA’s 34,000 members have dropped their membership as a result of Janus, while the number of individuals who voluntarily contribute to UTLA’s Political Action Council of Educators (PACE) fund for political advocacy has increased 62 percent. Members have also voted over the past few years to increase union dues to put the union on stronger financial footing.

For UTLA, resisting Janus is closely tied to the union’s broader fight to protect public education and secure a better learning environment. “The organizing of educators through the union is one of the only obstacles to privatizers’ efforts to take over our public schools,” says McNamara. “Janus is about undermining and attempting to bankrupt our union so that we’re not there to lead the social justice fight for public schools.” The union voted 98 percent in August 2018 to authorize a strike, set for January 10 as this issue went to press.

UTLA is following in the footsteps of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which went on strike to fight cuts in 2012 after a reform caucus was voted into power. Its strategy of mass action and community engagement around public education fostered an esprit de corps that, along with internal member engagement, helped stave off Janusdropouts. Only 20 out of more than 25,000 CTU members have opted out. “The political initiative to weaken labor has been met with defiance within our ranks,” says CTU President Jesse Sharkey.

For Sharkey, the 2012 Chicago strike and the 2018 Red for Ed movementshow “public education finding its voice collectively and leading by example.” He adds, “There’s no blueprint for that.”

Opt out? No thanks

In many states, public-sector unions are up against right-wing groups bombarding members with opt-out messaging at home and at work. Public-sector union members are uniquely vulnerable to such campaigns because their contact information can be obtained through public records requests.

Representatives of AFSCME and AFT say that these attempts have largely backfired, and have instead galvanized support for the union.

One of the most aggressive opt-out campaigners is the Freedom Foundation, part of the State Policy Network of corporate-backed conservative groups that helped bankroll Janus. Attempting to take advantage of what it calls “the opportunity of a lifetime” to gut unions, the Freedom Foundation has targeted public employees in Alaska, California and Oregon with mailings, email campaigns, canvassing at large work sites, door-to-door visits, and an “Opt Out Today” website disguised in union colors.

The Freedom Foundation claims it has contacted 180,000 public employees and convinced 25,000 to opt out. But Peter Starzynski, executive director of Northwest Accountability Project, a watchdog group, doubts that figure’s accuracy, noting that the Freedom Foundation’s director of labor policy told the right-wing website PJ Mediathat the calculations were “more art than science.”

“Contrary to the Freedom Foundation’s thinking, union members aren’t stupid,” Starzynski says. “They know the Freedom Foundation has supported every anti-worker and anti-family policy the far-right has to offer.”

One of the Freedom Foundation’s targets is SEIU Local 503 in Oregon, a 72,000-strong union whose members include home-care providers and state workers. Shamus Cooke, a social worker and one of Local 503’s chief stewards, suspects the campaigns are making a dent in Local 503’s ranks based on how “easy and compelling” they make it to opt out.

Cooke, who lost a bid to become the local’s executive director, says that the local’s leadership did not invest in educating members about Janus in advance, and conversations he’s had at different work sites have revealed a “general dissatisfaction” with the union.

But Sara Campos, an employee at the Department of Human Services in Salem, Ore., and a board member of Local 503, says most people seem to understand that it’s the union, not the Freedom Foundation, that looks out for workers. She says, “What’s been most effective is just talking to my co-workers.”

New members have outpaced dropouts 3 to 2, Campos adds. Local 503 declined to disclose the total number of dropouts.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), an NEA affiliate, has also faced a slew of optout campaigns targeting its 181,000 members. The Keystone Teachers Association (KEYTA), which bills itself as a “professional alternative to union membership” for teachers, has tried to recruit teachers away from the union, according to Chris Lilienthal, PSEA assistant director of communications. In lieu of the workplace power a union provides, KEYTA offers $400-a-year liability insurance.

Lilienthal says that internal communications to members have provided a “strong counterbalance” to the efforts of outside groups to lure away members. Since Janus, only about 900 PSEA members, less than 1 percent, have opted out. According to Lilienthal, although some of the dropouts will be offset through new member sign-ups, PSEA expects a net loss of membership.

One of PSEA’s locals, the Interboro Education Association (IEA) in southeastern Pennsylvania, has retained 100 percent of its 300 members. Dan McGrath, a social studies teacher and former president of IEA, chalked up the success to a “multi-pronged” effort to prepare for Janus with a focus on one-on-one conversations led by respected workplace leaders. At the end of each conversation, leaders asked members to pledge to remain in the union. “It empowered some of our members,” McGrath says, noting it also provided an opportunity for members to ask questions and raise concerns.

After Janus, one IEA member threatened to abandon the union over political disagreements when the NEA celebrated Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp. The camp, inspired by the Black Panthers’ 10-Point Program, teaches skills to Bay Area black and Latino youth, such as how to respond to police brutality and access higher education. Over breakfast, a trusted IEA leader discussed the benefits of union representation with the skeptical member, who ultimately decided not to abandon IEA. “By sitting down and breaking bread, they found common ground,” McGrath says.

Cutting corners?

Most unions say they did not cut staff in anticipation of lost Janus revenue, although some imposed other belt-tightening measures, such as cutting back on travel. The bet largely paid off: With membership holding steady, budgets have not been hurt as badly as feared. AFT expected an 8 percent revenue loss, but “it’s been far less,” says spokesperson Andrew Crook. NEA’s most recent fiscal year ended two months after Janus. Its annual report showed net gains, not losses, in membership and revenue despite 87,000 lost fairshare fee-payers.

SEIU did hedge against Janus by reducing staff. One SEIU local staffer, who requested anonymity so as to speak freely, was critical of this decision, arguing that resources should have been mobilized to organize in “potentially breakthrough ways” that build worker power but won’t necessarily produce immediate dividends.

Member engagement takes time, labor, know-how and a willingness to listen to members, which may be daunting to some unions. Kate Bronfenbrenner, senior lecturer and director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, says that unions that are naturally public-sector—like education, healthcare and government work—are often better equipped for post-Janus member engagement than unions like building trades that jumped on the public-sector bandwagon because it was easier to organize than the private sector. For these unions, she says, “Putting money into offering benefits is easier than going out and doing the hard work of building a union.”

In the Midwest, five building trades locals—carpenters, laborers, electrical workers and two operating engineers unions—teamed up to pioneer a members-only benefits program to discourage dropouts. The Midwest Coalition of Labor (MCL) offers its 100,000 members—10,000 of whom are public-sector—a special package of benefits, such as life insurance. MCL spokesperson Kim Ortiz says the coalition has been “extremely effective.” Of the 10,000 public sector members, only 40 have dropped their membership since Janus, and MCL is in the process of bringing more unions on board.

Labor Notes’ Brooks, however, sees such programs as misguided. “We have to go back to unions’ roots,” he says. “We win when we fight, not when we provide better services.”

Employers react

A report released in May by Robert Bruno, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Labor and Employments, and Frank Manzo, policy director of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, projected that Janus would hurt public-sector wages by disempowering unions in bargaining. They predicted a 3.6 percent drop in wages for government workers and 5.4 percent for public school teachers (with an annual hit to the U.S. economy of between $11.7 billion and $33.4 billion).

The impacts on wages will only come to light as contracts come up for negotiation. Thus far, responses to Janus from employers have ranged from supportive to opportunistic.

In the wake of the ruling, the Cincinnati Board of Education affirmed labor rights by passing a resolution that read: “Under Ohio law, the rights of public-sector employees are unaffected by the decision in Janus.”

At the University of Illinois at Chicago, on the other hand, four of the largest on-campus unions missed thousands of dollars in dues that the university did not deduct from post-Janus paychecks in July. The university cited issues processing the payroll changes necessary to remove fair-share fee-payers. Two of the unions have filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the state.

Meanwhile, Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) at the University of Illinois Hospital and Clinics (UIH), who were in the middle of negotiating a new contract, witnessed a shift after Janus, when the university brought in a new negotiator and turned to hardline bargaining.

Tristan Bock-Hughes, an external organizer with the Illinois Nurses Association, accuses the university hospital of “trying to create a second-class status” for LPNs by refusing contract protections held by other campus workers. Of the 35 employees in the bargaining unit, 33 are women of color.

From the underpaid starting wage of $17.59 for LPNs, about $7 less than the Chicago standard, UIH proposed an increase of 71 cents. The low wages keep the LPNs chronically understaffed, roughly 15 spots short of a full contingent. “The unfairness is very blunt,” says Rosa Cantu, an LPN who has spent 13 years of her three-decade nursing career at UIH.

The university’s post-Janus actions brought together the four campus unions, representing nurses (including the LPNs), graduate students, faculty and clerical, maintenance and technical workers. On Nov. 15, 2018, they held a joint action at the university’s Board of Trustees meeting. About a hundred workers marched into the meeting with signs demanding fair contracts, living wages and an end to union busting. On the same day, the LPNs went on strike and were joined by their fellow unions on the picket line.

The Right smells opportunity

Janus has opened a new chapter in the decades-long fight over labor law.

On the pro-labor side, some blue states have stepped in to help unions weather Janus. New laws in New York, New Jersey, California, Maryland and Washington state ensure unions can meet with new hires. California, Washington and New Jersey also prohibit public-sector employers from urging employees to drop out of the union.

But the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which led the charge to pass anti-union “right-to-work ” laws at the state level, sees opportunities in Janus. The group has drafted laws to further curtail public-sector unions’ rights. Lead Janusplaintiff Mark Janus was a featured speaker at ALEC’s annual conference in December 2018, where, according to Governing magazine, he was hailed as a hero. Janus—who has left his job as an Illinois state employee to work for the right-wing think tank that bankrolled Janus—urged the state legislators in attendance to introduce ALEC’s model laws in their states.

ALEC’s Public Employee Rights and Authorization Act, for example, would require public employees to actively opt in as union members by signing a form “waiving [one’s] right to free speech.” Other ALEC bills would open the door to decertification of public-sector unions, ban paid “release time” for public employees to conduct union business, and chip away at collective bargaining by allowing public employees to bargain independently.

On another front, anti-union think tank the Buckeye Institute filed two lawsuits in August 2018 inspired by Janus. The suits challenge exclusive representation, unions’ right—and duty—to represent everyone in a bargaining unit once a majority has voted to unionize.

While the Right has long had its eye on exclusive representation, some in the labor movement have also come to question it in the wake of Janus. Labor experts James Gray Pope, Ed Bruno and Peter Kellman argued in a joint article for In These Times that abandoning exclusive representation for a “members-only” model would nullify the threat of increasing numbers of “free riders,” among other benefits.

The issue is controversial. AFSCME responded to Janus by enshrining its commitment to exclusive representation. Randi Weingarten says AFT is on the same page. “It’s really important for fairness that a contract applies to everyone.”

Legal possibilities for labor

Unions are also considering new legal strategies opened up by Janus. Robert Bruno thinks Janus “could be a way to look for additional legal rights.” He believes the logic of First Amendment rights in the Janus ruling could call into question the constitutionality of state laws that limit union activity, such as restrictions on strikes or on subjects of bargaining.

One member of the Midwest Coalition of Labor, the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 150, has begun to test these waters. In anticipation of the Janus ruling, in February 2018 the union filed suit against outgoing Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, chief architect of the Janussuit. Sweeney v. Rauner argues that Janus renders central provisions of Illinois labor law unconstitutional, such as unions’ duty to fairly represent workers who don’t pay dues.

Local 150 also made the unconventional decision to walk away from a small bargaining unit of 14 members, the Winnebago County Forest Preserve District, after five employees opted to leave the union after Janus. (The union used a longstanding, but rarely exercised, option under Illinois labor law called a “disinterest petition.”)

“It’s a clear message: If you don’t value our service, we’re not going to give it away for free,” says Local 150 Senior Counsel Ken Edwards. “There has to be a consequence for people not paying.”

Brooks calls moves like Local 150’s a “terrible precedent,” stressing that unions draw their strength from collective representation.

Firing up the labor movement

Bruno tells In These Times that while an immediate “mass exodus” of union members has not occurred, he still predicts that Janus will decrease unionization rates over the long term. He and Manzo estimated that Januswill eventually lower membership among government employees by 8.2 percent and among teachers by 4.8 percent.

“We are on target to see roughly the numbers we predicted,” says Bruno, who believes the full impact of Januswill not be known for three to five years.

He adds that Janus could also spark a labor surge. “It might generate a higher level of union activism,” he says. “If that happens, what they’ve intended to do here may backfire.”

If Janus has a silver lining, it is that unions have been challenged to rethink and transform their organizational cultures. Responding to Janus means not only exposing the intentions of the union busters who organized the lawsuit, but also recuperating the value of union membership within the union. SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana Vice President Alex Han says Janus has sparked a “resurging activist core and leadership base.”

He adds, “The saying that the boss is the best organizer is true.”

Cedric de Leon, sociology professor and director of the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is optimistic. “Unions existed before dues collection, and they were militant and improved the lives of workers,” he says. “What the labor movement needs now more than ever after Janus is a rediscovery and recuperation of the first principle that organizing is the whole damn ball game.”

Aside from forcing unions back to basics, he suggests Janus could also be a wake-up call. “People should care about Janus because it shows there is class war happening in this country and it is the employer that is waging a one-sided war against American workers,” he says. “The question then becomes, what are we going to do about it?”

HEATHER GIES

Heather Gies is a freelance journalist who has written on human rights, social movements and environmental issues for Al Jazeera, The Guardian, In These Times and National Geographic. Follow her on twitter @HeatherGies.

LA Teachers Strike

Billionaires vs. LA schools
Portside.org

Unlike many labor actions, the Los Angeles teachers’ strike is not really about wages or benefits. At its core, this is a struggle to defend public schools against the privatizing drive of a small-but-powerful group of billionaires.

The plan of these business leaders is simple: break-up the school district into thirty-two competing “portfolio” networks, in order to replace public schools with privately run charters. As firm believers in the dogmas of market fundamentalism, these influential downsizers truly believe that it’s possible to improve education by running it like a private business. Not coincidentally, privatization would also open up huge avenues for profit-making — and deal a potentially fatal blow to one of the most well-organized and militant unions in the country, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA). As union leader Arlene Inouye explains, “This is a struggle to save public education; the existence of public education in our city is on the line.”

It’s always important to “know thy enemy.” But this is especially true for the educators’ movement in Los Angeles, which is directly challenging an unholy alliance of the some of richest individuals in the United States. Here’s a short primer on the corporate “who’s who” aiming to destroy public schools in LA — and across the nation.

The Walton Family

In a watershed moment for the drive to take over Los Angeles public education, pro-charter billionaires spent an unprecedented $9.7 million to buy the 2017 Los Angeles school board elections. A key funder of this campaign to elect charter school acolytes was none other than the Walton Family, best known as the founders of Walmart.

Having made their fortune through union-busting and infamously low wages, the Arkansas-based Waltons — now the richest family in the world — have spent much of the last two decades bankrolling the privatization of public education. Nominally, this philanthropy is dedicated to improving life prospects for low-income families. Yet as journalist Harold Meyerson notes, “a more direct way to help them would be to give workers at Walmart . . . a raise and to give them more hours.”

For the Waltons, their $2.2 million contribution to the 2017 school board election was just a drop in the bucket. Over recent years, the Walton Family Foundation has given $84 million to Los Angeles charter schools and it has spent $1.3 billion on “school reform” efforts nationwide. And in a further effort to capture the hearts and minds of Angelinos, a Walton-funded media outlet, The 74, took over the well-respected LA Schools Report in 2016.

These initiatives have already had a major impact on Los Angeles. About 18 percent of students now attend charter schools, a rate far higher than in the rest of the country.

Doris Fischer

With a net worth of over $2.7 billion, Doris Fisher — co-founder of The Gap — is the second-highest political donor in California. Fisher, like her late husband Donald, has primarily donated to Republicans, but she is also close to former governor Jerry Brown and has donated to a wide range of pro-charter Democrats. In the pivotal 2017 capture of the LA School board, Fisher gave a whopping $4.1 million to the California Charter School Association’s efforts.

The Fishers’ pro-privatization advocacy has also taken more direct forms. Using over $70 million of their personal wealth, Don and Doris Fisher founded the KIPP Foundation in 2000; it soon became the biggest charter network in the United States. With fifteen schools in Los Angeles alone, KIPP LA educates close to six thousand students.

Though the educational achievements of charters like KIPP are no better than their district public school equivalents, teachers at KIPP schools are notoriously overworked, leading to extremely high turnover rates. As LA parent advocate Cynthia Liu explained to Capital and Main,

If you look at the industries where these people [like Fisher] made their wealth, you can see why they have this idea that you have to squeeze labor to make your profits. If you have children in India making your clothing, your profit margin is very large. Similarly, if you use automation and low-cost education ‘shock troops’ to minimize the role of teachers . . . you minimize your education labor costs.

Charter school leaders are unabashedly proud of their efforts to impose corporate methods upon the public sector. In the words of KIPP Foundation CEO Richard Barth, “[Don Fisher] used what he learned in growing Gap Inc. to show us what we could do in public education.”

Reed Hastings

Bay Area resident and former Peace Core volunteer Hastings made his massive fortune through developing software tools and subsequently founding Netflix. Unlike Fisher and the Waltons, he’s a liberal and a dedicated backer of the Democratic Party.

In 2000, Democratic Governor Gray Davis appointed Hastings to the State Board of Education; the following year he became board president. This rise to the top of the state’s education apparatus was the prize given to Hastings for his groundbreaking efforts to get California to lift its cap on charter schools in 1998.

Along with other privatizing zealots, Hastings has long been opposed to democratic oversight over education. In his opinion, the “most important thing” about the structure of charters is that they “have stable governance — they don’t have an elected school board.” For Hastings, the solution for public schools is not to fully fund them — rather, they need to “adopt the same principles of competition and accountability as exist in the private and nonprofit sectors.”

Eager to make this dream a reality in Los Angeles, Hastings gave a record-breaking amount — roughly $7 million — to the California Charter Schools Association in the leadup to the 2017 LA school board election. Subsequently, Hastings became a founding investor of City Fund, an institute tasked with promoting the “portfolio model” of school privatization across the United States. Citing the examples of New Orleans, Washington DC, and Denver, City Fund’s pitch concludes that “[o]ur goal is to make the model normal. After enough adoption we believe the model will transition from being a radical idea to a standard policy intervention.”

Eli Broad

As with almost everybody else on this billionaires list, LA’s Eli Broad has no professional experience in education. Yet this hasn’t stopped him from using his immense personal fortune to foist his vision upon the city’s schools. With a net worth of over $7.4 billion, Broad is the fourth richest individual in the United States. In 2017, he gave nearly $2 million dollars to elect a pro-charter majority to the school board. This was just the latest manifestation of Broad’s longstanding drive to dismantle public education in Los Angeles and nationwide.

After striking it big in the home building and insurance industries, he founded the Broad Academy in 2002 to train a new generation of privatizing school leaders. By 2012, the center was boasting that it had “filled more superintendent positions than any other national training program” and that “Broad graduates are in the number one or number two seats in the three largest districts in the country (New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago).”

Like Hastings, Broad is a liberal — and major funder of the Democratic Party establishment, including leading lights such as Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Chuck Schumer. “The unions no longer control the education agenda of the Democratic Party,” Hastings bragged to the Wall Street Journal.

Broad stepped up his hometown privatizing efforts in 2015 by producing a plan to ensure that charters would capture at least 50 percent of the so-called “market share” of LA schools. The proposal was explicit about the national stakes of the campaign: “Los Angeles is uniquely positioned to create the largest, highest-performing charter sector in the nation. Such an exemplar would serve as a model for all large cities to follow.”

A major public scandal erupted after the forty-four-page plan was leaked to the press — then-school board president Steve Zimmer denounced it as “an outline for a hostile takeover.” The specific initiative was scrapped, but only temporarily. Within two years, Broad had begun a renewed push for a “hostile takeover.” This time it took the form of helping buy the 2017 school board elections — and subsequently imposing one of his close friends as new district superintendent: Austin Beutner.

Austin Beutner

For LA’s teachers, students, and parents, Austin Beutner is currently enemy number one. Beutner is not only the handpicked representative of the democracy-subverting billionaires discussed above — he’s one of these billionaires himself.

Beutner has zero credentials to lead the second-largest school district in the country. He began his career as a downsizing investment banker in the early 1990s. The Clinton administration chose him to head their project of helping privatize state enterprises in Russia and, as the New York Times reported, “teaching the American way of doing business.”

Beutner soon after co-founded the investment firm Evercore Partners together with other Clinton confidants. Today, Evercore is the second-largest such firm in the world, behind only Goldman Sachs.

Like Hastings and Broad, Beutner is a major funder of the Democratic Party. Beutner’s considerable financial contributions to the Democrats helped convince Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to appoint him as first deputy mayor in 2010. (Last week, Beutner returned the favor by tapping Villaraigosa to be his PR man against LA teachers.) As the Wall Street Journal explained, Deputy Mayor Beutner was “charged with making Los Angeles more business friendly.”

In 2013, Beutner joined with with Eli Broad in an attempt to buy the Los Angeles Times. Though the bid was ultimately unsuccessful, their partnership bore fruit in early 2018 when the new school board chose Beutner as superintendent. Upon taking office, he immediately used Broad funding to hire a cadre of downsizers led by two consulting firms, Ernst & Young and Kitamba; the latter company has already played a central role in privatizing schools in Newark and Washington D.C. If they get their way, Los Angeles will become the model for privatization efforts across the United States.

The Stakes

Beutner and his billionaire buddies have transformed Los Angeles into ground zero in nationwide struggle over public education. UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl is clear about the stakes:

In the same way that Betsy DeVos and Scott Pruitt attacked the very institutions they were appointed to lead, Austin Beutner was brought in to attack our public schools. They want to end public education as we know it. They’re ambitious so we must be ambitious. It’s not enough to win a salary increase when we may not have a school district in a few years.

At its heart, the struggle in Los Angeles is not just about the fate of public education. This is a strike for democracy — against the plans of a tiny clique of billionaires to unilaterally impose their vision for the world upon the working-class majority.

Like the electoral insurgencies of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, LA teachers have posed the central question of our time: Who should determine governmental policy — the working class or the rich? Los Angeles strikers are leading the charge for a society that works on behalf of the many, not the few. They deserve all our support.

==

Eric Blanc writes on labor movements past and present. Formerly a high school teacher in the Bay Area, he is a doctoral student in the sociology department at New York University.

• UTLA Strike; Teachers' Unions