teachersolidarity.com

Students demonstrating last week

Teachers in Strongsville, Ohio are mounting pickets every day against substitute labour hired by the school board

The teachers union in Strongsville – a small school district in Ohio, USA – have been attempting to negotiate for nine months on a new contract. According to the union, the board is using spurious figures to justify a cut in their pay – they are proposing to freeze pay progression. The union also accuses the board of having a privatisation agenda and one based on centrally mandated tests.

Ironically the district’s schools were  designated ‘excellent’ last year. However far from respecting the teachers for their efforts, the board are refusing to negotiate and as a result teachers are in the second week of strike action.

The board continues with its aggressive stand – hiring substitute teachers and security guards, and telling parents if their children don’t come to school during the strike they will be regarded as truanting. Meanwhile the students say they are not learning anything with the substitute teachers and held a candlelight vigil outside the school board chanting ‘we want our teachers back!’ and ‘Strong Students, Strong Teachers!’

To read background to the strike go here

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Danish Teaching Union Delegates meeting last Week

Teachers in Denmark are locked in a dispute with their employers over working hours and other conditions of service

The employers issued a notice of lock out to the teachers at the beginning of this month after there was no agreement over the deregulation of working hours. If conciliation does not work the schools could be shut from April 1st.

The government wants teaching hours to be decided by school leaders and not subject to collective agreements. They also want to make it possible to give some teachers discretionary treatment.

Education International (EI) has given its full support to the Danish teachers. To read a full report of the dispute and EI’s stance go here.

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Children in Haiti learning in a Tent ‘Classroom’

Teachers struck in Haiti at the beginning of this month but the state of education in Haiti is still in crisis.Teachers in Haiti frequently do not get paid, a situation which has led to many strikes over the last months. Last November teachers and students united in protests both against police brutality as well as for fair salaries and for social improvements like cholera vaccination.

A key role in ‘turning round’ education in Haiti has been carried out by Paul Vallas – the neo-liberal US schools chief who also ‘turned round’ schools in New Orleans after the hurricane by turning them into private charter schools. Although children in Haiti have a constitutional right to free education and the government have promised that this would be fulfilled this is far from being the case as a report from Haiti Grassroots Watch testifies.

The Programme for Universal Free and Obligatory Education is supposed to guarantee that the right to education is honoured – yet the funding is inadequate, there is corruption and teachers frequently remain unpaid. There are few learning materials and the conditions of the schools are often intolerable – as witness the picture of children learning in a tent above – a situation impossible in the heat. Not only that but the school system is multi-layered – with expensive and well resourced private schools for the rich and tents, inadequate buildings or even  containers for the poor.

To read the Haiti Grassroots Watch report in full go here.

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Teachers demonstrating in Costa Rica last Year

Teachers took to the streets in Costa Rica on Friday to protest plans to cut their salaries by up to 40%

As a result of rights fought for many years ago, a large proportion of teachers’ salaries is made up of extra allowances. Now the right wing government of Costa Rica is proposing to cut those allowances, which will leave teachers struggling to make ends meet.

The government is trying to blame the teachers for the economic crisis in the country. Teachers’ leaders say that the real culprits are the corporations who are often exempted from taxes by the neo-liberal government.

Friday’s protests in the capital San Jose, also included other public service workers,  who are being similarly hit and are a continuation of strikes last year against the proposed measures. The unions are threatening a general strike if the government goes ahead with the plans. Teachers in Costa Rica are also having to fight against privatisation and anti-union legislation which makes protest more difficult and reduces fees paid to unions.

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Yesterday’s Protests

The Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC) voted to close 23 schools yesterday despite determined protests by local communities

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten was among 19 people arrested last night attempting to block the vote. There have been weeks of protests about the proposed closures and privatisation in Philadelphia from both unions and local communties. The schools are predominantly in black and latino communities in the town. Thousands of public school jobs will be outsourced to private companies and many education workers will lose their jobs.

The Sate Governor, Tom Corbett. who controls the SRC, has cut millions from the public education budget. The largest contributor to his election campaign was Charter School Management Inc and the promoters of charter schools stand to be the biggest winners from the SRC’s decisions.

Moreover the SRC last year voted to spend $1.4 million on hiring the Boston Consultancy Group (BCG) to plan the ‘decentralisation’ of Philadelphia’s schools. BCG was the group behind the plan to privatise schools in New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina. To read more about the connections between the SRC and big money go here.

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Students protesting against University and College Closures this Week

Police fired tear gas into a school in Northern Greece this week, injuring two children

The incident happened in the village of Lerissos, where the community is campaigning against the opening of a gold mine by the Vancouver based company, Elderado Gold. The company has been granted a fast track permit to mine as part of the government’s austerity programme. Local residents say the mine will have disastrous effects on the environment, on pristine forest and on tourism as well as fishing and farming.

Police have been mounting raids on the village in an attempt to stop sabotage of the mining operations and their entry into and tear gassing of a school is the latest manfiestation of this. Residents have set up road blocks outside the village.

Meanwhile in the Greek capital, students and high school pupils have been protesting this week against education ‘reform’ – ironically named Athena after the Greek goddess of wisdom – which will cut down large numbers of courses thought to be uneconomically productive, as well as closing some universities and colleges and restricting the numbers of students.

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LA Mayor Villaraigosa – Teacher Organiser turned neo-liberal ’Reformer’

Budget decisions taken in the US in the last few days face US schools with massive cuts

The cuts – amounting to some $713 million – could mean the loss of over 16,000 jobs in education as well as the cutting of programmes like Headstart and aid for low income students, according to reports. The cuts were signed off by US President Obama on Friday after the Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a way of avoiding them.

The cuts will also mean more US citizens sinking into poverty: Obama estimates 750,000 jobs could be lost – putting a further strain on the public school system.

Against this background, the fervid attempts by many Democrat and Republican state administrations to introduce education ‘reform’ are even more dangerous. For example the Democrat Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigrosa, who used to be an organiser for the city’s teachers union, is now trying to push through a programme of merit pay, charter schools and an end to tenure for teachers – much the same prescription as is being rolled out around the world by neo-liberal ‘reformers.’

The cuts will only speed up  these reform programmes. While neo-liberals misuse the language of social justice in their drive to hire teachers on temporary contracts, to make it easy to sack older teachers and to erode pay and conditions through privatisation and charters, one of  ’reform’s’ major effects will be to help save administrations money. Political scientist Kenneth Wong is quoted in a Washington Post article as follows: “The mayors are beginning to realize there is no way the current tax base can support current operations and also deal with pension liability. This is a huge factor in why we see mayors getting more involved.”

In the end US teachers, like those in the rest of the world have only one option to counter these attacks – which not only attack their pay and conditions but also threaten the future of public education itself, with disastrous consequences particularly to low income students. According to the same WP article:

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, acknowledged that the unions have been too focused on fairness for their members and not necessarily quality in the schools.

“We have made mistakes,” she said. “You have to really focus to make sure you’re doing everything you can so that kids are first. Tenure, for example: Make sure tenure is about fairness and make sure it’s not a shield for incompetence.”

This website would argue that there should be no compromise with such ‘reform’ and that the Chicago Teachers Union has shown us the way forward, by fighting back and turning for support to local communities who understand the importance of well funded public education.

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Last September’s demonstration in Portugal

Over a million people demonstrated across Portugal yesterday against so-called austerity

Carrying banners saying ‘Screw the Troika!’, protesters poured onto the streets of over 40 cities round the country. The demonstrations co-incided with a visit by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, which have enforced massive cuts in Portugal – leading to 40% youth unemployment as well as devastating cuts to education, health and other public services.

In education the government is proposing to increase teaching hours from 35 to 40 a week, which could lead to the sacking of 35,000 teachers. It is also increasing fees in higher education, introducing fees into secondary education and strengthening private education.

Last year massive demonstrations in the capital, Lisbon, stemmed a measure which was due to increase social security contributions from 11% to 18%.

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Contract Teachers in Bihar demonstrated by begging last Year

Contract teachers in Bihar, India are continuing their fight for pay justice

Teachers in the North Indian state of Bihar are still fighting for decent pay. Last October they struck and some lost their jobs as a result, yet still they are being paid a fraction of what regular teachers get as well as having no job security.

The education minister in Bihar has categorically refused to give them a pay rise of any sort – leave alone equal pay for equal work - which is what they are demanding. He says the state cannot afford it. Yet the teachers are paid only $100 a month, and many have been on temporary contracts for years. The teachers have had the support of their permanent colleagues – both in the primary and secondary teachers’ union. The Bihar Secondary School Teachers Association is calling on its members to boycott public exams if the government do not pay the contract teachers properly and regularise their contracts.

Teachers in other parts of India, including Bhopal, Jarkhand and Kashmir have been on strike for the same reason. The endemic misuse of temporary contracts is a policy followed in many parts of the Global South and one which is actively encouraged by the World Bank.

The teachers in Bihar, enraged by the statements of the education minister are on hunger strike as well as surrounding the houses of ministers in the state government.

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The Chicago Public Schools board is planning to close 129 schools in the town

The Chicago Teachers Union, which organised a successful and widely supported strike last September has been campaigning tirelessly since then to organise and enable mass protests against the closures – which are part of the city’s plan to privatise, de-unionise and degrade education for low income and minority children.

Using all the rhetoric of the school ‘reform’ movement internationally, the neo-liberals in charge in Chicago – home of neo-liberalism – are pressing on with their plans in the teeth of determined resistance by local communities. A series of meetings, organised and funded by the Walmart Foundation to promote the changes, have instead demonstrated the depth of feeling against the closures, with one being attended by 1000 people.

This policy is not restricted to Chicago – other states have also seen public schools closed, to be replaced by privatised charters. The same is happening in different forms in many parts of the world – from New Zealand, whose government has used the earthquake as an excuse to ‘re-organise’ ie close and privatise schools, to Wales, where draconian public sepending cuts are leading to the closure of rural schools, to India, where a relentless barrage of propaganda against public schools is leading to a burgeoning private school sector, even for the poor.

What is common to all these places and many more however is the will of teachers and communities to stand up for their schools and stand up to the neo-liberal ‘reformers.’ In Chicago a shut down of the city is planned for March 27th. To read more about Chicago school closures and the resistance to it go here.

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Mehmet Bozgeyik, imprisoned General Secretary of Egitim Sen

140 members of the public service union KESK and teachers’  union Egitim Sen were arrested last month.

Education International has sent out an urgent action appeal for the release of the teachers and other activists. Of those arrested, 58 are still in custody. The use of anti-terrorism laws against political activists and trade unionists is a repeated tactic by the Turkish government to suppress opposition. Last June other leading members of KESK and Egitim Sen were arrested and amongst those the general secretary and gender secretary of Egitim Sen are still in detention awaiting trial.

To join the campaign to free the trade unionists go here. To read the Education International report in full go here.

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Teachers and communities in England are continuing with their fight against ‘academies’ – similar to charter school in the US

At the Alec Reed academy in outer London, teachers in NUT and NAS/UWT are mounting  a picket line with support from parents as they fight the anti-union and bullying behaviour of the academy management, who are refusing to meet the unions. The academies – which are allowed to set their own pay and conditions – are one of the main tools being used by the right wing coalition government in the UK to wind down, de-unionise and privatise public education. They were introduced by the previous ‘Labour’ administration of Tony Blair.

Meanwhile parents and teachers at many other schools throughout the country are fighting plans to force their schools to become academies. A typical tactic used by the government is to send in so-called OFSTED inspectors, who damn the school – regardless of how well it is doing – and then the secretary of state invokes his power to force them to become academies.

The film above shows the ultimately unsuccessful but nevertheless inspiring fight of one community against forced academisation. To read all the news about academies in England (Wales and Scotland have separate education jurisdictions) go to the anti academies alliance website.

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Gordillo in happier Times with Right Wing President Vicente Fox

Elba Esther Gordillo, ‘President for life’ of SNTE, the Mexican teachers’ union, has been arrested

Gordillo is a byword for corruption amongst teachers in Mexico. In contrast to the lowly salaries of her members, she lives in a lavish style, including a private jet and a home in California. She has been arrested for allegedly syphoning off $120 nillion from SNTE, which she used to fund her luxurious lifestyle including large amounts of plastic surgery.

It is ironic however that Gordillo has been arrested by the new president Enrique Nieto - recently elected in a disputed vote - the representative of the Instituional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which in fact appointed her president for life of the union when it was last in power. When the PRI lost power in 2000 she became a trusted adviser to two more right wing governments – a factor which has perhaps caused her downfall now that the PRI has returned to power.

The issue is complicated by the fact that Nieto is attempting to introduce education ‘reform’ which is contested not only by Gordillo – since it attacks union power – but also by the strong left in the union, which rightly identifies it as a neo-liberal reform, designed to bring Mexican education into the World Bank orthodoxy of minimal shrink-wrapped and tested curricula for the masses, instead of the kind of critical education, which has a strong tradition both in Mexico and in many other parts of Latin America.

What is certain is that Gordillo is a disgrace to the teacher union movement, that she sent her goons in to attack violently teachers in communities for instance in Oaxaca who were fighting a previous round of ‘reforms.’  I suppose all it goes to show is that ‘there is no honour among thieves’.

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