The education industry is in a state of crisis. School boards and state legislators are slashing our budgets (for those who work in the public sector), and the economy is hitting many private schools even harder. But while funds and personnel are being sucked out of our schools, the number of students we are expected to educate continue to climb.

Campus and education workers across the world are being asked to take cuts in pay or tiny pay "hikes" that leave us further and further behind the cost of living. We are being laid-off, down-sized, subjected to payless or "lagged" paydays. Our benefits are under attack. Teachers' workloads are soaring as classes get larger, pressure increases to teach more classes, and countless administrative, counseling and other functions are dumped on our heads.

Not only are campus and education workers under attack, so is the very concept of education. Politicians propose to replace teachers with computers, to turn our students over to advertisers and privateers so they can profit off them, to replace the education our students so badly need with "job skills" programs whereby our students are forced to work for free so they can learn to be docile, obedient low-income workers. Reducing our already sub-standard education system is a criminal act. It is a crime against our students and a crime against society. To effectively oppose this crime we need a union that is willing to fight and able to win.

The business unions have shown themselves utterly incapable of dealing with this crisis. In most states, fewer than half the educational workforce is unionized - and those fellow workers are generally misorganized into craft unions that divide educational workers into competing craft-based jurisdictions. Instead of teachers, professionals, clericals, bus drivers and the myriad of other workers necessary to keep a school or college running uniting in one strong industrial union, we have allowed the bosses to keep us fragmented and weak.

Not only are campus and educational workers divided from each other, we are divided from our students and communities as well. Too often, business unions hold themselves aloof from those who should be our colleagues in the educational process. Business union leaders hold themselves aloof from the workforce as well - most are full-time officials relying on the dues checkoff to pay their salaries and spending their days hobnobbing with administrators and politicians (to whom a large chunk of education workers' union dues are paid - a revival of the ancient tradition of requiring the hanged man to pay his executioner) rather than in the schools.

And the business unions, by and large, have acquiesced to a host of legal restrictions which guarantee that we will be unable to adequately defend our interests. In many states teachers are forbidden to strike at all, in others we are required to give advance notice so the administration can prepare scabs. Labor laws prohibit or restrict solidarity strikes, restrict our right to form our own unions, and tie us down to lengthy contracts which somehow never seem to tie the bosses' hands when they want to cut our pay or fire our co-workers or slash our benefits.

A different kind of union.

In short, education workers need organization. But we need to organize right. Education Workers Industrial Union 620 is a different kind of union. While other education "unions" lobby politicians, make common cause with administrators, and ensure that their leaders never have to return to the classroom, EWIU 620 is organizing real power on the job.

IU 620: Campus and Education Workers is open to all workers at all educational institutions. We don't admit administrators; everyone engaged in work in the education industry and interested in organizing for better conditions is welcome.

Industrial Unionism - IU 620 is an industrial union. All teachers, staff, students, and campus workers are members of the same union, rather than divided up into dozens of little unions (teachers, teaching assistants, maintenance staff, groundskeepers, bus drivers, clerical workers, etc.) with different contracts and competing institutional interests. When we organize industrially management can't play one union off against another, because we are all standing together, united. A unified body of workers is much stronger at the bargaining table, and is in a better position to take on issues of management and control - to shift power from administrators to those who actually do the work.

Solidarity Unionism - The union derives its power from the organization and solidarity of the workers who constitute it, and from their willingness to act in their own behalf. IU 620 is a union, not a political action committee. We are not interested in going to legislatures and school boards with tin cups in hand, begging for spare change. No, we want to organize the kind of power that compels the bosses to grant better pay, better conditions, and access to education for all. This kind of power does not come from "leaders" or from an expensive bureaucracy. It comes from the membership. A union can win only what its members are determined to have. Recognizing this, IU 620 is structured to ensure that power remains in the hands of the members. All delegates, negotiating team members and officers are directly elected by the members, usually for one-year terms. No officer can serve for more than three years. All officials can be recalled if they fail to live up to members' expectations. There is no hierarchy of appointed bureaucrats to tell you what to do. Policy decisions are made the members.

Minority Unionism - We will work for union representation in unorganized areas of the education industry, but we don't limit our goals to asking for legitimacy from the boss. Instead, we will work to pursue all grievances, with or without an official union in place. We also welcome dual-card membership, and will build solidarity to carry out workplace actions for members whose official union isn't getting the job done.

Each union branch is free to develop its own strategy for dealing with its particular situation. While we will offer advice and assistance upon request, the IWW Constitution prohibits union headquarters from imposing contracts, settling grievances, or otherwise interfering with members' rights to run their union and their job as they think best. This is a democratic union.

If this kind of unionism sounds good to you, get in touch. It will, of course, take some organizing before you and your fellow workers are strong enough to take on the administration and the politicians and win. But unionism is a process, an ongoing struggle. Even a few organized workers can agitate, can mobilize their fellow workers around particular grievances, can make sure that education workers' voices are heard.

As you get stronger, as you and your fellow workers come to realize the power of solidarity and direct action, you will be able to take on bigger battles - and to win them. Legal recognition or certification is not the goal of an organizing drive; it is only a possible step along the way. What matters is our organization, our solidarity, our determination to wrest dignity, better conditions, decent schools and the power to shape the decisions that affect our jobs and the lives of our students from the administration.

Alone we are weak. Together, organized into One Big Union of education workers, we will win. Are you with us?