Badass Book Review: The Future of our Schools, Teachers Unions and Social Justice by Lois Weiner

Badass Book Review: The Future of our Schools, Teachers Unions and Social Justice by Lois Weiner

Since the massive public sector upsurge in the 60's and 70's, teachers unions in the US have been in a long steady decline in power. Only very recently, with the 2012 Chicago teachers strike, have we seen any resurgence in teacher union power. Why is this?

Weiner presents an overview of the pitfalls of teacher unionism and what teachers can do to revive their organizations. For any teacher anywhere, frustrated by the untenable working and teaching conditions we now face, this book is essential reading. She describes the project well in a way any teacher can relate to: "The best way to explain what the union should be is to describe what it should not be, which is like most schools: hierarchical and paternalistic." Sound familiar?

Weiner herself has a long tenure in the teaching profession and with teacher unions. She therefore brings real expertise to an analysis of the history of teacher unionism in the US and the prescription for more effective unions. Key to her understanding is a focus on rank and file activism and social unionism. While she is using US examples and history, the global nature of the education reform movement means that her arguments are really relevant for any teacher, anywhere.

Social unionism is a type of organizing philosophy that contrasts with another historic trend - business unionism. In Weiner's approach, social unionism has two key elements. The first is  to adopt a set of issues and bargaining objectives that reach beyond traditional "bread and butter" demands like wages and pensions. This has traditionally meant objectives such as smaller classes and more recently the fight against standardized testing. She argues, rightly, that in a public sector context, these bridges with the community are essential to creating the social power necessary to win. Weiner writes, "One essential change from what occurred in the 1960s and 1970s is that we must now reach out to allies to ask how they think the union might use its legal and political power, including the right to negotiate legal agreements, to improve schools....It's critical that teachers understand that we are in a greatly weakened position, and parents, students, and community activists are being courted quite seductively by our opponents."

If you are a teacher in the BCTF, you might think we already do this - we are a social justice union. But I believe Weiner is arguing for a more organic and connected form of working together. While we have, in BC, approached bargaining with a view to improved learning conditions, we have not seriously engaged with some objectives that are clearly a high priority for parents, such as playground equipment and seismic upgrades. We have instead sought out parents as allies to our objectives.

The second critical component to social movement unionism (which I think distinguishes it from social justice unionism), is the requirement to have grass-roots, rank and file activism and democratic control of union decision making.

"Often union members assume someone else - anyone else - will run the union, and it will, somehow, continue to exist. Their perception and passivity are supported by the leadership's conception of the union. Perhaps without realizing it, members and leaders accept the "service model" of unionism that predominates in US labour. In this model, sometimes referred to as "business unionism," the union is run like a business and exists to provide services including lower rates for auto insurance; benefits from a welfare fund; pension advice; contract negotiations; and perhaps filing a grievance. Officers or staff make decisions on the members' behalf. The union as an organization functions based on the assumption (generally unarticulated, unless it's challenged) that paid officials know best about everything. They're supposedly the experts. Often they conduct negotiations in secret, reporting  back only when a tentative agreement has been reached. Then members have the legal right to vote on whether the contract should be approved. But other than voting on a contract and electing officers every few years, members are passive."

I'm sure this description speaks to many trade unionists, not just in teacher unions but throughout the labour movement. And while there may be aspects that are more or less true in any given union, we need to be always reminding ourselves and encouraging as much member democracy as possible in every situation. This is not just about fetishizing democracy, it is actually needed to create powerful unions that can win.

Finally Weiner touches on a number of issues that can divide us, such as race and gender, and focuses on some that are very particular to teaching. One is the "nurturing" aspect of teaching, and to what degree teacher unions should "defend schooling's social purposes and teaching's nurturing aspects". The social union perspective guides her conclusions: "The struggle to create schools that are caring makes teachers allies of parents in creating places in which we want to teach and children want to learn. Putting forward an ideal of a caring school reframes the debate about our working conditions, explaining our needs as workers and professionals in human terms."

Given the struggle we are in to defend public education and to push back on corporate and privatizing reforms, this book is a timely guide on how to revitalize our unions so that we can not just stop the tsunami of neoliberalism, but actually make gains and improve our schools.

Badass Book Review: Raising Expectations & Raising Hell, by Jane McAlevey

Book Review: Raising expectations (and Raising hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement, by Jane McAlevey

It's been a tough couple of decades to be a trade unionist. Since the early nineties, with Paul Martin's cuts to transfer payments, through the Mike Harris's assaults, to the BC Liberal's ripping up contracts and the Harper Tories legislating them, it seems increasingly hard to find strategies that win.

Yet paradoxically, since about 2011, there has been a notable upsurge in progressive movements: teachers in Wisconsin, the squares of Egypt and Turkey, the world wide Occupy movement, the Maple Spring, Ferguson, and Burnaby mountain. These are just a handful of the recent uprisings against neoliberalism. Clearly, dissatisfaction with the status quo is rampant. So why can't workers seem to harness this same energy?

On the worker front, the last three years in Canada have been pretty dismal. The wholesale dismantling of Canada Post, the ongoing decline of union density, increasing government intervention in contract negotiations, forced restructuring of bargaining units, tepid, long contracts mediated by Vince Ready, two tier contracts, attacks on pensions, Bill C-377, the list goes on.

Enter some optimism in the form of Jane McAlevey. During a period of general union decline, the mid 2000's, she worked in one of the toughest right to work states to build strong unions and win good contracts. Her book provides not only a much needed dose of excitement, but also many lessons to rebuild worker power everywhere.

She takes us on a personal account of her journey through the world of the SEIU. Having come from the student and social movements, she brought with her a philosophy perfectly suited to trade unionism - an analysis of power. And she correctly sees power rooted directly in the worker. Although she only quotes Marx once, the book is a glowing example of the need for workers to take and build power themselves.

The main section of the book describes her fight in Nevada to win new certifications and new contracts in public and private sector hospitals. For any trade union activist, the little details will be an enjoyable read, and full of practical ideas to implement yourself. My favourite, and what I sense was the most powerful, was the use of very large worker bargaining teams. She describes in detail how the Nevada local built up the strength to force a thousand member, cross workplace, bargaining team on a powerful, intransigent employer.

Along the way, she outlines some very important lessons for trade unionists: the weakness of legal strategies; the importance of what she terms "whole worker" organizing, but what could be called a form of social movement unionism; the weakness of craft organizing and the sectionalism it inspires; and the dreadful and counter productive turf wars of the union bureaucrats in their endless fights for power from each other, instead of the bosses.

Every argument is made in straight forward, concrete terms. This again is especially useful for those hoping to win these same arguments in our own unions. For example, she describes the dangers of "elite" craft unions by comparing the nurse-to-patient ratios won in California, by a nurses only union, to those won in Nevada, where the whole hospital is in one local under one contract. Comparing the two, she notes: "But in our CHW contracts, we also won language prohibiting management, as they implemented our new nurse-to-patient ratios, from cutting non-nurse positions. This difference is crucial. Because the California Nurses Union was only fighting for the elite workers, the intent of the California law [to create nurse-to-patient ratios], when it took effect, was grossly undermined by hospital bosses, who gutted their ancillary staffs to pay for the additional nurses they were required to hire." This same story is played out all the time to the detriment of us all.

There are a few ideas and opinions that will be thought provoking, to say the least. One is her attitude towards the grievance process, of which she is extremely critical. However this has to be taken in the context she found herself in - one where grievances are used by bureaucrats to build internal political power within the union. Nevertheless, as some critics have written, the grievance process is also often used as a potent tool along with organizing and many moribund unions suffer from filing too few grievances, not too many.

Also potentially controversial is her opinion on minimum wage organizing, which she considers a diversion from the immediate task of building the strength and power from a union's base outward in stable workplaces. But it is worth thinking hard about what she is saying, particularly as we have seen the same phenomena here at home. The BC Federation of Labour's $15/hour campaign is absolutely worthwhile and an important fight that needs labour's support. But given the many battles labour is facing it is arguably a tangential focus away from building genuine worker power within existing unions to win gains for our members through real solidarity and action. Moreover, workers' ultimate power is the strike in the workplace, and the yet the minimum wage campaigns have been predominantly politically based.

The one area where I do think McAlevey veers from a genuinely rank and file approach is her lack of focus on internal union democracy and acceptance of staff models of organizing. Despite her insistence on building worker power at every step, she nevertheless still sees and does this through initiation by paid organizers. Arguably, when things eventually fall apart, one factor is that not enough energy has been spent on building internal democratic processes so that the new worker leaders are able to withstand the massive onslaught from the bureaucracy to quash their power. She aptly describes the new confidence workers develop in confronting management, but not those within their own union impeding their grass-roots control. Ultimately, workers have to transform their own unions themselves, not with outsiders.

Nevertheless the book is undoubtedly a welcome breath of fresh air in a landscape where many worker activists are feeling downtrodden and unable to win. It provides both the inspiration and concrete organizing examples to inspire any activist committed to winning a better world through the power of their union.

BC's Site C Dam - Another stack in the LNG house of cards

The BC government announced today that they were going ahead with an $8.8 billion commitment to build BC's largest dam - "Site C". A few (even on the left) believe we should support Site C, as a large, green public energy infrastructure project. It is important to understand that that is not what this is.

Critics of the project consist of most of the province that isn't involved in the building and resource extraction industry. First nations oppose the project. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the BC Union of Indian Chiefs was one of the first to condemn the decision. The flooding will destroy a number of First Nations sites and is actively opposed, with law suits pending. Local communities generally oppose the project, concerned about the impact of a massive influx of people in an area already experiencing growth. The nearest municipality of Fort St. John cannot currently handle an increase of so many workers and would face strains on public infrastructure such as schools and hospitals and other public services. The residents of the 5500 hectares of fertile farm land that will be flooded obviously oppose the project.

Yet the approval should come as no surprise given the Premier's unbreakable allegiance to her ill-fated plan to make BC wealthy (or should I say some BC businessmen wealthy). This was her smoking gun in the most recent election.

On almost every metric, this project makes little sense. BC does not currently need the energy and perhaps never will. That was the sentiment of the first two decisions of the BC Utilities Commission in 1982 and 1989 which was effectively shut out of this round of decision making.

The project is estimated to cost $8.8 billion, but will realistically be closer to $10 - $20 billion given the history of costing for large government projects. To put this in perspective, just this week the very same government said it couldn't afford to pay for adults to upgrade their high school coursework to pursue post-secondary opportunities because the $20 million was too rich. This project could probably pay for smaller class sizes, free childcare, and housing all our homeless. Or how about programs to address the highest poverty rate in Canada?

While hydro electrical power may appear "clean", many believe the real purpose of the dam is to support the proposed Liquefied Natural Gas projects the Premier is so desperately trying to attract to the province. First, they introduced a tax rate of only half what they proposed during the election (which sadly had the support of the NDP as well). Now, they are providing an external energy source to support those projects, should any of them ever proceed. This project might appear to be a large, green, government infrastructure project, but the LNG component makes it more like government's part of a public/private partnership to develop natural gas extraction. This means a net increase in consumption of energy, including dirty energy.

Site C is just one more component of the public infrastructure needed to "entice" (publicly subsidize) the LNG industry. As I reported previously, the provincial mandate in education - both high school level and for colleges - is to target funds into trades programs designed to fast track students as quickly as possible into resource jobs. The trajectory of government on every front seems to have only one purpose in mind - turn BC into the next Alberta.

Lost on no one is that just as the announcement was made, the entire world is consumed with falling gas and oil prices, making new LNG investment by private interests increasingly unlikely. The Premier's entire provincial agenda is more and more looking like the last desperate attempt to win in the bursting resource extraction bubble.

The Mind of Christy Clark

My colleagues and I were somewhat perplexed at the lunch table this week to grasp the motivation behind the latest decision of the BC Liberals to end funding for adult graduates to upgrade their high school courses.

OK yes, it is obvious they want to fund less and charge more fees. But how does this fit with the grander scheme of grooming BC's youth towards a life of resource extraction? Surely getting those extra credits in Math and Science are part and parcel of the path to trades school and the LNG highway?

It is easy to forget about Christy's earlier life as Minister of Education (yes, those are dark days we educators try to block from memory). But her failed attempt to overhaul the graduation program provides some insight into the broader program she is pushing today.

Back in the early naughts, Christy tried to create a fully streamed graduation program, complete with eight distinct pathways and different degrees. Starting in grade 10 (age 14 or 15), students would choose a pathway and each would lead to a different place - be that university, vocational school, or perhaps right out into that service sector job at Walmart. At the time, she denied that this was a form of streaming, yet the proposal came at the same time as the introduction of provincial exams starting in grade 10 - essentially a high stakes barrier to some of these pathways for children as young as 14 (see BCTF report on page 8).

The original pathways proposal was never implemented, but the curriculum and graduation program was changed to reflect a similar approach. The graduation program now includes grade 10 - meaning decisions are made one year younger than the previous graduation program. Courses in key academic areas such as Math and English and Science that are included in the program include lower level curriculum which is not accepted for university entrance. For example, Math essentially has three pathways - what was first "Essentials", "Applications" and "Principles" and is now "Workplace", "Foundations" and "Pre-Calculus". Regardless of the titles, one is for graduation only, one is for vocational program entry, and one is for university entry.

Christy left government shortly after these changes. During Gordon Campbell's tenure, the focus of government education disruption was somewhat different. Entranced by technology and the Global Education Reform Movement, Campbell's year were more closely aligned with the project for 21st Century Learning (see my critique here). But Christy is back and her original vision has come with her, albeit with a heavily shifted focus not to any old vocation, but towards vocational training primarily in the trades and resource sector. Thus the government has mostly abandoned Campbell's BC Education Plan (whatever it was), the "vision for 21st Century Learning" from the BC Technology Council, and replaced these with the BC Skills for Jobs Blueprint.

If you haven't had a look at the Blueprint yet, you should. It aims to redirect students from a comprehensive senior secondary program into a trades training program that will merge seamlessly from secondary school to college. Many of the pieces are already in place, and a student can already begin their trades training in Grade 10 and be taking dual credit courses at college in Grade 12 and be ready to work shortly thereafter. Passport to Education grants, which gave some grants to graduating students and were applicable for all subjects, have been replaced with much larger grants covering only trades programs.

Like every other Christy policy extolling the virtues of "choice", in the case of trades training, this is nothing but a smokescreen. The illusion of choice always comes with institutional barriers that will in fact direct some students down one pathway and leave choices only for a select and privileged few. It is therefore fitting that general upgrading for post-secondary entrance is out, while the new trades path from grade 10 is in. Upgrading for adults allows for mobility between pathways - a genuine choice and opportunity.

Christy's program is noticeably similar and in line with the push by the Federal Conservatives for a national trades training system. Minister Jason Kenney recently took a delegation to Germany, where there is a long history of streaming students from age ten into either university or vocational schooling.  The Jobs Blueprint promise to "reengineer training and education in BC" fits right in with Kenney's plan to "reinvent" vocational high schools.

Kenney also uses the "choice" cover for what is actually a step towards further inequality. "This is about choices for kids," he said. "Sometimes the German system is criticized as being brutal with its streaming in the secondary school system. The truth is that they're just trying to help reflect where kids' aptitudes and interests are." (Canadian Press)

Ironically Germans themselves are looking at the horrific racial and class divisions entrenched in their education system. As the Guardian reports:

"most children are streamed at the age of 10 into either the Gymnasium, a route to university; the Realschule, where mid-level vocational studies are common; or the Hauptschule, for a basic secondary education.

Inequality is rampant. Children from a privileged background are four times as likely to attend Gymnasium as a child with similar grades from a working-class home and, according to the federal education body KMK, children of immigrant families attend the Hauptschule twice as often as native children – even within the same socio-economic class." (Guardian)

What is left unspoken by either Christy or her Federal counterparts is that this is a program to relieve business of the costs of training and at the same time practically eliminate comprehensive secondary education for many students, and in particular those who are low income or who struggle in school. Unsurprisingly, aboriginal students are specifically targeted, under the guise of special grants and mentor-ship programs.

Far from choice or opportunity, this grander scheme is about putting children in their place.