Teacher strike?

Possible Bay Area Teachers Strike 
By Jack Gerson


Here are some observations and thoughts on possible Bay Area teacher strikes from a former activist and member of the Oakland teachers union. 

As you probably know, UTLA and OEA are both planning to strike within the next two months. The actual demands in both LA and Oakland are pretty mild -- moderate class size and case load reduction, moderate salary increase (I think that OEA is asking for 12% over 3 years, not much considering OUSD teacher pay is the lowest in Alameda County). I think that UTLA demands are similar. But behind this is the need for a defensive fight against privatization. Oakland has been a laboratory for privatization, orchestrated by the state and billionaires (Broad, Gates, etc.) Methods tested in Oakland have been applied to LAUSD. 

So Oakland has the highest percentage of students in charter schools of any large urban district in California, now at about 30%. Los Angeles has a smaller percentage -- about 16% --  in charter schools -- but LAUSD is nearly 20 times the size of OUSD, consequently they have about 100,000 students enrolled in charters. You know where they want to take that: towards what's been established in New Orleans and Detroit, which are now all charter. Also, OUSD now has more than triple the average per student spent on outsourcing of the average California school district. Los Angeles is following suit, shoveling huge amounts to contractors / consultants. In both Oakland and Los Angeles, the districts want to close several public schools, which of course will mean still more charters. Oakland, which only has about 80 public schools,  wants to close another 23 schools -- and that's on top of the many that have been closed since the state takeover in 2003 (which formally ended in 2009, but there's still a state trustee). 

Folks in Chicago of course will recall that although before, during and after CTU's strike in 2012, Rahm Emmanuel and the Chicago school administration threatened to close over 50 schools, CTU made no demands on preventing school closure in bargaining. And six or seven months after the strike ended, 50-odd schools were closed. OEA and UTLA need to learn lessons from this. But until last month, it didn't seem like they would -- like CTU, OEA and UTLA have bargained for multiple years without demanding no school closures in bargaining. That may be changing: UTLA acknowledges that school closures are a central issue, and now says that stopping closures will be one of their key strike demands, whether or not they can raise it now in bargaining. I hear similar reports from OEA.

Pension financing is emerging as another major issue. California's outgoing Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, has a "progressive" image, but he has been a central collaborator in the attack on public education. Brown was mayor of Oakland at the time of the state takeover of OUSD (2003), and was instrumental in handing de facto control of OUSD over to billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad. Brown started two charter schools in Oakland (the Oakland Military Academy and the Oakland School for the Arts). And as governor, Brown pushed through big year over year increases in mandatory school district contributions to teacher pensions. OUSD, LAUSD and other school districts claim that consequently they must make deep cuts to avoid "structural deficits." In fact, OUSD would have no deficit, structural or otherwise, if they would reduce their outrageous level of outsourced contracting to the average level (per student) for California school districts. So what begins as a defensive fight against privatization and gutting pensions could potentially transform into a fight for what's really needed, for restoring all the programs and schools that have been so badly damaged over the past 15 to 20 years, and for winning adequate funding for education from the coffers of corporate and private wealth.

What's the situation like on the ground? Well, I've been retired for eight years, and retirees can't be OEA members, so all I can do is try to piece together what I hear from others. That said, it's public knowledge that the OEA and UTLA leaderships have been trying to coordinate  (although I don't know whether or not there has been tactical coordination.) UTLA is planning to strike on January 10. But OEA won't be strike legal until early February, when the state's factfinding process concludes. Obvious problem: Will the UTLA strike still be going on when OEA is ready to go out? Probably not.

One obvious question: if UTLA and OEA are coordinating, why aren't they walking out on the same date? The fact is, the California Teachers Association (CTA), the statewide NEA affiliate, has been uninterested in working on setting uniform contract expiration dates. Like much of the trade union leadership, it's had a passive, legalistic approach, dampening militancy while finding ways to collaborate with district administrators and state regulators.

One possibility would be for UTLA to hold off on striking for a few weeks, waiting for OEA to clear factfinding and become strike legal. However, I don't know whether that's feasible, because I don't know if there's too much pent up feeling among LA teachers to defer the strike. I've started raising the possibility to some folks, and will continue to do so.

Assuming that UTLA goes forward with its strike on January 10, there might be significant sympathy actions in Oakland and elsewhere. Two weeks ago, teachers at three Oakland schools (led by a group at Oakland High) did a sickout that got a lot of attention. They called it a wildcat. Not sure it was that -- but it wasn't sanctioned by the union leadership (which would have been subject to legal action if they had). There are already various rallies, walk-ins and other such things scheduled for Oakland in solidarity with UTLA. I think that there might be the potential for additional sickouts at other schools -- maybe even rolling sickouts, and maybe they could spread to other districts. We'll see.

I think that there's significant community support for OEA in Oakland, judging from signs in store windows and from conversations. Also, there's been a sea change in the black community: groups like the NAACP, which used to be big supporters of the corporate deformers, have turned around -- the charter schools have been so visibly destructive in the black community.

Finally: an OEA caucus emerged out of the Occupy Oakland education committee, in which Bob Mandel and I played active roles, and which led the 17-day sit-in at Lakeview Elementary in June and July 2012. Following the sit-in, the group changed its name to Classroom Struggle, and over time became a Labor Notes style (UCORE) caucus (the Union Power caucus that leads UTLA is also affiliated to UCORE). Bob and I were both retired, and retired teachers can't be OEA members. So Bob and I stopped attending their meetings, stayed on their listserve, were listened to for a while, but over time became marginalized. Long story short: Classroom Struggle is now pretty well integrated into the union leadership -- the OEA vice president, the treasurer, and several executive board members are from Classroom Struggle. Furthermore, Classroom Struggle has pretty much folded into a new group, Build Our Power, that began last fall as a slate for the OEA elections. The OEA president, Keith Brown, was on that slate. I think that this leadership does have some credibility among teachers. It will be sorely tested in the weeks to come.