Members Take Collective Action

Greetings,

As the school year is coming to a close, members continue to actively organize and raise their voices for students and respect. We are fighting and winning. Just a few examples:

• In Melrose, colleagues of three middle school teachers without Professional Teacher Status staged a walk-in to protest their nonrenewal and to demand that the evaluation system be administered fairly.
• In Wachusett, years of organizing around school funding are paying off in votes by Town Meeting members to support the school budget.
• Down in Berkley and Dennis-Yarmouth, educator union support helped win overrides.
• At the Quinsigamond Community College graduation, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren publicly acknowledged the important work of the faculty, adjunct faculty and staff.

These collective actions are what it means to be union. As I wrote to one member this week when we were discussing organizing to push back against a principal weaponizing the evaluation system, "When you are in a union, you are not alone."

Sticking together as a union is more important than ever, as right-wing corporatists and privatizers are looking to undermine our union solidarity. Yesterday's 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding bans on class-action suits in arbitration by private-sector employees who have been wronged is a case in point. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissent, the decision will lead to "huge underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable workers."

This decision will almost certainly be mirrored in the Janus v. AFSCME decision targeted against public employee unions. The right-wing Freedom Foundation is already sending e-mails to educators in Los Angeles trying to persuade them to drop out of the union. They will be coming our way, too.

Talk to each other. Name your issues. Act together to regain your workplace rights and dignity. Share what the union means to you. And let us know if any provocateurs are contacting you to spread lies about our union and our power.

We've seen the power of collective action across the country and this article gives a good breakdown of what the teachers' strikes mean to all of us. It is exactly this power that so-called reformers and corporatists are afraid of.

Meanwhile, we keep marching on. Join MTA activists at the following upcoming events:

Sunday, June 3: Join educators and parents at the MTA headquarters as we continue to plan how to further expose the destructive impact of high-stakes testing and strategize about how we will deepen the resistance next year. Go here for details and to register.

Saturday, June 9: There is nothing as much fun as marching behind an MTA banner in the Boston Pride Parade in support of the LGBTQ community. Come celebrate our awesome diversity — and feel the love from this community for educators.

Saturday, June 23: The Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, which brought you the NoOn2 campaign, is holding a statewide convening of educators, students, parents, labor and community organizations to share our vision for public education and plan how to fight for it. Go here for information.

On a final note, once again the grim news of a school shooting — this time in Santa Fe, Texas — leaves us stunned, saddened and angry. Tonight I will be speaking on a panel in Northampton about gun violence in schools and how to address it. This panel will follow a screening of the film "G is for Gun: The Arming of Teachers in America."

Watching the film, which looks at an Ohio school that is arming teachers, I am made aware of the many ways our society — driven by market ideology, competition, misogyny and racism — visits all kinds of cruelty and violence on us.

Educators work every day to make the world not only less cruel, but better — more just, more open, more empathic. We must limit access to guns: that comes first. And we, as unionists and educators, must take up the flag for creating schools, worksites and communities that reflect the best of ourselves and offer a real opportunity for all to flourish.

 
Solidarity,
 
Barbara

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