The Educators Rank-and-File Committee is an international network of educators, students, parents, and workers fighting for workers power in the schools, to stop the capitalist destruction of public education and eliminate COVID-19.
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The SEIU, which has kept workers on the job without a contract for over a year, is delaying in a bid to block a strike, announcing it would only hold an Unfair Labor Practice strike vote sometime “early next year.”
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to lecturers and students about the implications of shutting down entire departments and the continuing financialisation of higher education.
This atomisation of HE workers’ struggles within a single city is an acute expression of the union's policy of isolating a series of local recent strikes over job losses, and other issues, including many dozens of course closures, at universities in Edinburgh, Nottingham, Cardiff, Bradford, Leicester and Dundee—all which face defeat.
The death of Rod Paige, former US Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, who played a key role in subordinating public education to profit interests, provides an opportunity to review the bipartisan war on public education.
Many displaced WSU workers are being shunted into lower-paid positions, face higher workloads or are yet to be allocated alternative positions.
“The only way we will see justice is if we reveal the truth, hold accountable those responsible for the conditions that put us in harm’s way, and set up our own shop floor organizations to take control.”
An inquiry, organized by workers and not corrupt union bureaucrats, is needed to arm workers with the knowledge they need to defend themselves and go on the offensive against the regime of corporate dictatorship in the workplaces which makes these deaths inevitable.
Workers must fight for workers’ power and workers’ control over production, harnessing the surplus created by new technologies to improve, not lower, the standard of living for the masses.
“Rank-and-file” is originally a military term. It refers to the lower “ranks” of soldiers, who literally stand in lines or “files”. These soldiers have a different set of interests in preserving their lives than the officers or “brass” who prosecute the wars on behalf of the ruling elite.
Rank-and-file committees are of, by and for the rank-and-file workers, who have a different set of interests in preserving their lives than management, the bosses, the politicians, and the trade union apparatus, who send workers to die while defending the profits of the ruling elite.
Yes. The formation of rank-and-file committees is 100% completely legal under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
The right to freedom of speech means you can say whatever you like about what you agree or disagree with. Freedom of association, also covered under the first amendment, means you have the right to associate with others who share your views, for political ends. You also have the right to petition the government for redress, to make demands on the government and tell them what you want them to do.
No. HIPAA has an exception for disclosures to prevent and control the spread of disease, but the state is deliberately not invoking this exception in order to conceal information from workers, so that they can pretend that what they are doing is safe when it’s not.
Rank-and-file educators have the right to know who’s gotten sick, where, when, and what happened. Rank-and-file committees have to demand this information, and have to share it with other workers as a matter of collective self defense.
