OAKLAND, CA, JULY 18 — Hundreds of East Bay Area transit workers streamed into the union hall yesterday for a special meeting amid a buzz of righteous anger over an unprecedented company attack: imposing a new contract and work schedules. Many arrived seeking a plan of action, but the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) leadership offered nothing. One driver declared, “Man, we walked in here mad…strong like some dark coffee, but they just kept watering it down until it was like some weak herbal tea…and they got us drinking it!”

Union Pushes for Arbitration; Sign-up Boycott Successful

AC Transit carries about 230,000 people daily in the East Bay. Our contract expired June 30. Though for months the union president mouthed the possibility of a strike and members took a unanimous strike vote, nothing was organized. Then, a newspaper told us our union was asking for binding arbitration, ignoring a strike. Our international dispatched a representative to convince us this was the right course, promising that during arbitration, we’d continue under our old contract.

Meanwhile, the company threatened to impose their contract on July 18, demanding we “sign up” (choose our work assignments) on runs that completely violate our contract. The union asked drivers to boycott the sign-up. In a great show of solidarity, everyone boycotted. We all believed there was no way we would work these runs.

But on July 16, when the union asked the court for arbitration, they “forgot” to ask to remain under the old contract. The judge used this technicality to order the new contract be in force until a Tuesday, July 20 hearing.

Union Bets on Court System, Not Drivers’ Action

As yesterday’s meeting began, drivers expected an action plan. As one young driver texted: “I think we should strike…. By doing this [signing up] they mess up a lot of people…. Hey, I think we should do like New York transit did — strike even if the court still said no!....” Another said: “People ain’t gonna work these runs…. My wife works here too and we always work different schedules so we can pick up the kids. We can’t let them do this to us. I’m staying off work until Tuesday.”

One dispatcher and several drivers suggested we all show up to work Sunday but demand to work on the runs WE had chosen, not those the company chose for us. The union president and her “smart” lawyers said no. We now see that the union is relying on courts, lawyers and arbitrators, not on the kind of workers’ solidarity we saw on the day of the sign-up. The International wants to put out fires, not start them!

Another young driver declared, “When the verdict was announced for the cop that killed Oscar Grant [see letter, page 6), his uncle said the family felt they’d been slapped in the face by the system. Well, right now, we’re getting slapped in the face, and our union seems to be telling us to turn the other cheek. As long as we rely on their court system, this will keep happening. We’re being disrespected, spit on, stepped on. There’s no way we should work these runs!”

President Talks ‘Faith’ to Avoid Talking Business

Then the union president said, “I’m a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and the bible does say you must obey the law of the land....These laws were originally established by God, but man messed them up.”

But not everyone agrees with her use of “faith.” As one driver said later, “She’s using that ‘faith’ stuff as a smokescreen, to get people on her side. If you want to testify, go to church. We come here to deal with our business…. I remember what you said last time, this is like a war, and we’re the front-line soldiers. We’re supposed to have a battle plan.”

The union’s real “faith” is faith in the capitalist legal system. We communists point out that the legal system is stacked for the rich capitalists. As one driver put it, “They [the courts] always tend to side with the big corporation.” Instead of relying on the bosses’ legal system, communists try to build workers’ power through education, solidarity, action, building PLP and eventually revolution.

As things got watered down, some drivers were drinking the “weak herbal tea,” but others were ready for action. So many drivers didn’t show up for work that 25 runs were cancelled at one division and 10-15 at another.

In the Class War, Communists Fight To Win

Nationwide, transit workers are under attack. This is war. While the International keeps playing softball, communists believe we need hardball. Through this struggle, we want to win more workers to consider fighting this war to the finish: a revolution to destroy capitalism. 

BALTIMORE, July 8 — Today, young people learned an important lesson about state power during an angry and well-organized rally against massive cuts in summer jobs. Last Monday, about 9,000 students, who had registered months earlier with YouthWorks, were supposed to start working at their sites. However, at the last minute, approximately 3,000 of these students were informed that they had no job at all!

That Tuesday one of the youth organizations led a militant sit-in at YouthWorks headquarters, blocking the front doors for about two hours as supporters rallied and chanted. The head of YouthWorks, all of whose offices were essentially shut down for most of the morning, invited a couple of protest leaders to come upstairs to meet with her. Protesters refused, insisting that she come down and talk with the whole group.

Nervous and defensive, she finally did come down, claiming to have the students’ interests at heart, and said there’s no more money for any more jobs. She did agree to a small “concession,” that she would reconsider applications of students in the protesting group, and place some of them on a waiting list. They will then get jobs, she promised, if some students at other sites decide not to work for YouthWorks.

At today’s City Hall rally, students held their ground as they faced off with cops barring the doorway. For nearly two hours, student leaders maintained rock-solid courage, arguing face-to-face with the cops that they have no right to keep us out, and demanding to see Mayor Rawlings-Blake. At the same time, a larger group of students in the rally chanted “Are you angry! Yes!” and “We don’t want your pity! We want money for our city!” Another powerful chant was “Jobs yes! Jails no!” Maryland is spending $104 million to build a new youth jail in Baltimore City, but won’t spend just $3.6 million to employ the 3,000 youth who were denied summer jobs. The organization leading today’s protest has been fighting this school-to-prison pipeline all spring, and continued that struggle today.

Mayor Rawlings-Blake never came out, but City Council President Young did. He asked for two student leaders to come inside, go with him to his office, and represent the group. The students again refused, demanding that he stay outside and talk with everyone! He responded that it was too hot outside. What arrogance, after we’d already been in the 90-degree heat for two hours!

Finally, recognizing our unwillingness to be divided, he stayed outside and talked for a few minutes before walking off hurriedly to his limousine. He claimed to be on our side, to be working hard to fund youth jobs, and that he opposes the new juvenile jail. When asked what he’s doing right now to get jobs for the 3,000 young people who’ve been left out on the street, he angrily said it’s an unfair question; that he doesn’t have the power to make it happen.

One strong bit of truth emerged. Young said he had been trying, virtually begging, to get Johns Hopkins — Baltimore’s largest private employer — along with major businesses, to provide more summer jobs for youth. As a PL’er pointed out, speaking to the rally a few minutes later, there’s a profound lesson in Young’s remarks. It became clear that Baltimore’s big businesses are more powerful than the city government, because — even if just pretending to care about youth jobs — government officials have to go begging to big business. The capitalists are the top dogs who really hold power. The government is simply a tool of the bosses.

We also saw that the cops blocking the doors to City Hall, and all the other cops on the sidewalk who were ready to lock us up, are serving the needs of the bosses. Threatening to use the jails and the courts — if they had arrested us — would keep many of us jobless, but under control. This is called state power.

A PL’er at the rally pointed out that in school they teach us it’s a democracy, but that in reality, it’s a dictatorship of the capitalist class. They use their state power — the government, the cops, the jails, and the courts — to oppress our class, the working class. The PL’er also put forward that only a revolution for communism can create a world that is run by the working class and truly serves our needs, with jobs for all. Just about everybody gladly took copies of CHALLENGE, and some donated money. The vigorous fight for jobs will continue, and so will PLP’s fight for a world free of wage slavery! 

SEATTLE, July 11 — Progressive Labor Party members played important roles in the biannual convention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) ending here today. We helped lead a rally exposing the Obama Administration’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and a walkout and  rally against billionaire Bill Gates. We helped organize and spoke at three forums held by the AFT Peace and Justice Caucus, distributed 600 CHALLENGES, 300 Juneteenth Anti-Racism Supplements and 4,000 leaflets to delegates.

We helped the Peace and Justice Caucus recruit for forums on Haiti, on the fight-back against the racist, anti-working class Race to the Top competition and on Afghanistan and Gaza. They were attended by many rank-and-file delegates. The discussions there raised interesting questions about fights against the ruling class and built ties between delegates. (See box page 7)

The militant walkout against Gates was caused by Party members having political conversations with their friends and others in general meetings about why we should oppose his presence at a union convention. Gates is spending lots of money through his foundation to make changes in education. While he first used his money to help build small schools, now he’s focusing on “teacher quality.” The AFT leadership invited him because he’s already given millions to four school districts for pilot projects.

Gates uses his foundation’s money to influence policies that attack teachers and students. Smaller schools often exclude students with the greatest needs — special education students, English-language learners and many students whose neighborhood schools have closed. Through actions like “school turnaround,” as we’ve seen in Chicago, the Board of Education fires the school’s staff. Then lower-paid, inexperienced teachers are hired in their places — in urban areas the firings are racist because a disproportionate number of black teachers lose their jobs in the process.

At the same time, students are hurt, now having younger, inexperienced teachers, rather than teachers with skills in managing a classroom and teaching their subjects. The reorganization of the schools also resegregates the schools. The AFT has conceded this battle everywhere — only the organization of angry workers in NY, Chicago, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. has led to any defeat of the ruling-class’s attacks.

Due to the dysfunction of so many schools in many cities, parents are choosing charter schools and the smaller schools. Studies show that these new schools aren’t doing any better than the original schools. However, parents are desperate to find what they hope are better schools for their children. The major weakness in these education struggles is the lack of a teacher-parent-student alliance. 

The AFT is tightly controlled by the leadership of its NYC local (UFT), and struggle against the pro-ruling-class line of the AFT is difficult. The AFT refuses to criticize U.S. foreign policy. Their Afghanistan resolution was filled with outright lies — such as the U.S. being “drawn into” supporting the government of Hamid Karzai.

Delegates, friends and members of PL and others, fought hard to brand the war in Afghanistan a war for resources, especially oil and gas, rather than a war against terrorism. Other AFT resolutions build plans for further collaboration between the union, politicians and the ruling class. For the union, these conventions are important tools to help win members to the ruling-class’s political agenda — for war and fascism, building patriotism to convince working-class students to fight and die for oil.

Party members on the convention floor and in committee meetings analyzed the situation in Chicago Public Schools, where a rank-and-file caucus has won the leadership of the 35,000-member local and tied poor school conditions to the failure of international capitalism. Some of our ideas took the form of resolutions for debate, which provided talking points for political discussions with teachers and allows us to sharpen our struggles with people we know well.

We held a PLP picnic, bringing friends of the Party to a Seattle park to learn more about our Party and our organizing against the ruling-class attacks. We must build close ties with other workers. PL members spent time with teachers having discussions over lunch and breakfast about the Party and the need to bring revolutionary ideas to our parent, teacher and student relationships.

From the classroom, to the caucus meetings, to the convention floor, to parent conferences, communist teachers must continue to seize opportunities to build the Party. Our Party was essential to the organization of the rank-and-file opposition forces at the convention, providing tactical and political leadership.

Our literature provided ideas and analysis about issues specific to education and also tied those issues to the broader world situations of increasing war and fascism. Our leaflet about the BP oil spill explained how we can’t rely on the ruling-class’s government to solve our problems — either in the Gulf or in the schools. Our comrades led struggle, made new political friends and built stronger ties with old friends.

Overall, the convention was a success for the Party. The recent developments in the Chicago Teachers Union have created opportunities for Party members to focus our work in the AFT while broadening our base among large numbers of workers who are students, parents and fellow teachers. Concentrating on the goal of building the Party and communist relationships while working in the bosses’ organizations challenges us all. Our collective strength and our confidence in the workers will guide us on the road to revolution. 

The AFT Peace and Justice Caucus sponsored a forum on the after-effects of the earthquake in Haiti. There was much debate after two teachers from Haiti spoke about the

efforts of rank-and-file workers to improve conditions in Haiti.

The forum revealed that many workers have illusions, fostered by the media and the U.S.
government, that the UN “peacekeeping” forces and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), like the Red Cross, are the good guys.

At the forum educators from Haiti stated that these NGO workers in Haiti live off the NGO’s U.S.dollars, drive around in  large dark SUVs with tinted windows, and live in big houses. The desperation for U.S. dollars has led to an increase in prostitution paid for by this NGO money. Friends from Haiti warned that if workers want to send money to Haiti we should find workers to send it to, and not send money to the NGOs to steal. And while we’ve all been told that the UN forces are the saviors of the working class in Haiti, we heard reports of the UN troops abusing and terrorizing young men there.

A PLP member from the Dominican Republic called for the unity of the working class to  over-throw the yoke of U.S. Imperialism in Haiti and around the world.

At the forum about fighting back against the Race to the Top (RTTT) competition, the panelists described their fights against attacks on educators and students. Unfortunately, too many of the panelists described their struggles merely to get more tax money to pay for schools during this period of capitalist crisis. However, that just means taxing the working class, not the bosses, and it does not suspend payments to the banks. No matter how the budgets are cut everywhere, the debt service (money to banks to pay back debts) is never cut. Another serious weakness in the RTTT forum was the lack of discussion of the affects of RTTT and budget cuts on students, and the lack of any clear call for unity between parents, students and educators.

We should continue these kinds of discussions, continuing to bring our line to honest educators, parents, and students, to build our movement.