Barbara Madeloni

Chicago Teachers Go Out On Strike Again

In 2012 the Chicago Teachers Union woke up union members and educators across the country with a winning strike. Seven years later, after a wave of teacher strikes in the last two years, CTU is at it again.

As educators walk out today, a lot feels like 2012. The strike authorization vote was high (94 percent) and the mayor is disparaging their demands and branding the strike as hurtful to children.

THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT

But there are noteworthy differences.

Refuse the Soft Handshake

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Barbara Madeloni

“Hey, Barbara. This is Arne Duncan. I just wanted to congratulate you on your election victory.”

In 2014, as an insurgent candidate from the Educators for a Democratic Union caucus, I won the presidency of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Duncan, then Obama’s Secretary of Education, was one of the first congratulation calls I got. The message he left on my phone provoked lots of astonished laughter when I shared it at meetings and in bars.

Less Messaging, More Action

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Barbara Madeloni

You’re at a union meeting, brainstorming for a campaign, when a hand shoots up. “What we need is better messaging. Can we get a billboard? Maybe we could make a meme.”

We’ve all been there. Maybe you’ve said it yourself. It seems like common sense that if we can just find the right words and the correct medium, we’ll win over our fellow workers, or the community, or politicians.

I was frustrated daily by this logic when I was president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, leading the campaign against a ballot question that would allow for more charter schools.

Dan Clawson, Presente!

Dan Clawson, labor organizer, scholar, and activist, died suddenly of a heart attack on May 7. We had just come off of our Massachusetts Teachers Association annual meeting, where Educators for a Democratic Union, the caucus Dan helped to form, beat back attempts to strip the budget of organizing funds and won a motion calling for a national teachers’ strike for the Green New Deal. In our caucus meetings throughout the weekend, Dan was clarifying strategy and reminding us that we shouldn’t back away from conflict when taking a principled stand.

VIDEO: Fighting Austerity and the Boss in Higher Education

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Barbara Madeloni

The ivory tower of academia does not protect its workers. Across the country, austerity politics are bleeding colleges and universities dry, opening the door for the corporate takeover of higher education. But, like their colleagues in elementary and secondary education, higher education workers are fighting back.

Labor Notes staff member Barbara Madeloni led a conversation with higher education activists on on Tuesday, May 7.

It's Our World to Make

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Barbara Madeloni

The guy at the car rental counter found my T-shirt puzzling.

It was early on a Tuesday morning, and I had just flown back into L.A. Why, he wanted to know, was someone from Massachusetts wearing a shirt that said “United Teachers Los Angeles”?

I explained that I had been out the week before to support the teachers strike. I was back for a second round because this strike was important to educators across the country.

“The whole country? Why?”

West Virginia Strikes Again, Defeating Privatization Bill in a Single Day

“Don’t start those buses tomorrow,” said Joe White, executive director of the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association.

He was announcing the second statewide education strike in West Virginia in a year, alongside the leaders of the state’s two teacher unions.

The next morning, February 19, buses throughout the state sat idle in garages.

And by the middle of the day, strikers declared victory with the defeat of an anti-union, pro-privatization education bill in the state House.

L.A. Teachers Win Big and Beat Back Privatizers

In a joyful, rain-drenched strike, 34,000 Los Angeles teachers won things no union has ever won.

They forced Superintendent Austin Beutner, a former investment banker, to accept concessions even on topics he had previously refused even to bargain over.

L.A. will reinstate limits on class size—and for most classes, reduce those limits by four students by 2022.

Despite a pro-charter school board majority, the nation’s second-largest school district agreed to move a board resolution to support a statewide moratorium on new charter schools

VIDEO: Striking for the Schools Los Angeles Students Deserve

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Barbara Madeloni

Thirty-four thousand teachers in Los Angeles are out on strike to defend public education against the privatization agenda of Austin Beutner, the former investment banker and current Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is demanding class size limits, more funding for counselors, social workers, and nurses, and a moratorium on charter school expansion. The school district is hoping to hold on to its $1.9 billion in reserves and continue defunding, dismantling, and privatizing the city's 900 public schools.

Los Angeles Teachers Strike to Defend Public Schools from the Privatizers

Last spring a teacher uprising swept the red states. Today it reached the West Coast, as the 34,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles began a long-anticipated strike in the nation’s second-largest school district.

Teachers, parents, students, and community supporters hit the picket lines in their fight against the budget cuts and privatization being pushed by the school board and Superintendent Austin Beutner, a former investment banker.

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