Tuesday, July 03, 2018

NY Is Not West Virginia or Oklahoma

A great priority for today's MORE caucus (aside from purging absolutely everyone who thinks teacher issues are a more immediate priority than the socialist revolution) is for us to become like one of the red states that hosted a wildcat teacher rebellion. I'm all for teacher rebellion. Not enough of us stand up, and not enough of us know what's going on. One of my ongoing projects is to correct that, little by little.

There is certainly a way for us to become like one of those red states, and it's within our immediate grasp. All we have to do is stop paying union dues, like Janus wants us to do. Then our unions will dissolve, we'll have no representation, and virtually no ability to fight for ourselves, let alone our students. They can dump 70 students in a classroom like Bloomberg wanted. They can arbitrarily ask for 10K a year back to help defray medical costs. They can cut your salary at will.

Once things like that start to happen, teachers won't have many alternatives if we don't wish to live in trees. We can drive Ubers before school and pole dance afterward. We can become the guy in Breaking Bad, working the car wash in the PM and having our students ridicule us as we detail their Camaros. They can push us until we can be pushed no more.

That's what happened in the red states. They didn't have unions who could go to bat for them, so they improvised. They managed to pull together diverse groups in the state and withhold labor until and unless conditions improved. That is a great achievement, and the fact that it's been replicated in so many places should be a message to our enemies. Of course it wasn't, or there would be no Janus decision.

Actually, the thing that holds New York back from becoming West Virginia is the fact that we have things a lot better than they do. Despite all my complaints over the dozen years I've been writing this, we are unionized. There are rules. We have options to fight back. They aren't ideal, and no one knows that better than I do. I'm still fighting grievances we brought last year, grievances that are black letter violations. And though we should win all, I've met my share of troglodyte arbitrators. God help people whose jobs depend on their judgment.

But there are always ways to do things. One hard part is figuring out what they are. The other part, the one that must precede actual strategy, is standing up to be counted, and that's a challenge in NYC. There are just not enough of us willing to stand up. What's really the point in working up an action plan if no one is willing to take action?

If indeed there is any upside to Janus it is not that we are now fighting for our survival, but rather that we are fighting at all. Hey, if the UFT, to you, is a pair of glasses every other year, then that's what you're fighting for. Hopefully you have a loftier goal in mind, but I'll take what I can get. The fact that this is your biggest issue means we've done better than WV or OK, but now we need to preserve and improve that.

We are the union. You are the union. And now is the time to take ownership. We will not rise up as a state and go on strike. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we have not been painted into that particular corner. I think it's a good thing. I don't want to be without alternatives and doing the last possible thing left to me.

It's not about what leadership does. It's about what we do, and how we instruct them. They work for us and they have never been as acutely aware of that as they are now. We need to stand up and be heard. We start in our workplaces. If we can only cower in the corner, we are going nowhere. We need to talk freely with one another. We need to decide what we need and what we can do to get it.

Leadership is the second step, I think. If we are willing to do something then we can approach them. It's no longer going to work just calling them to fix things when we won't stand for ourselves. It never did, actually.

Now is the time for us to face the challenge of Janus, overcome it, and try to better our lot. By doing that, we'll be spitting in the faces of Trump, the Koch Brothers, and the Walmart family. This is where we are, and this is the point from which we rise up. Because make no mistake, they aren't finished. After this they're coming to make multiple representatives rather than one union, outlaw collective bargaining, and bring back slavery if they have half a chance.

These people are the scum of the earth and there is no depth to which they will not sink. We need to prepare to fight, and we must, must, dump them in November. We need people who represent us, and by us I mean a larger circle than the Trumps, the Kochs, and the Walmarts.
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