Educational Workers Industrial Union 620

All workers in educational institutions.

Northeast Ohio Industrial Workers of the World resolution on behalf of the teachers of the Cleveland Municipal School District (CMSD)

Posted Sun, 03/18/2012 - 12:44pm by IWW.org Editor

By the Northeast Ohio Industrial Workers of the World - March 13, 2012

On behalf of the Northeast Ohio Industrial Workers of the World, we salute the Cleveland Teachers Union and the students and families of Cleveland, Ohio in their stand against Mayor Frank Jackson’s school reform initiative simply referred to as the “Cleveland Plan.” This plan, if one can call it such, has no data or research showing how any of the “reforms” would increase student learning or make the Cleveland Municipal School District (CMSD) any better. Scapegoating teachers is a failed tactic, especially in a district such as Cleveland where teachers have lowered their own pay by $25 million and pushed for innovative reforms in teacher evaluation and collaborative work environments. The problem in the CMSD is not the staff, it is poverty. It is not only economic poverty destroying so many communities, but also the craven poverty of spirit that seeks simple answers to difficult questions and uses Cleveland’s children as pawns yet again in another untested reform package.

As Workers Celebrate May Day, Union Officials Attempt to Steal Internal Leadership Election

Posted Thu, 05/05/2011 - 2:04pm by x344543

Grad Union Reformers Call on UAW 2865 to Count Every Vote in Union Leadership Election

--Cheryl Deutsch, UC Irvine, Candidate for President --Charlie Eaton, UC Berkeley, Candidate for Financial Secretary, 510-220-1520

The UAW 2865 internal union Elections Committee has been conducting a vote count since Friday, April 29th for a contentious election for the Local's top elected leadership.  As the count proceeded, it appeared possible that a slate of reformers, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (www.awdu.org) would win the election.  Then, at 8 pm Saturday, April 30, the incumbent- controlled Election Committee abruptly decided to terminate the vote count, leaving 1500 ballots uncounted -- nearly half the ballots cast.

In a blatant effort to hold on to the power and privileges of their high paying positions, paid union official Daraka Larimore-Hall and his incumbent slate have tried to spin this egregious violation of UAW election procedures.  Many of the incumbent candidates are not graduate students, including three of the incumbent candidates for top officer positions.  With the vote count, together these candidates stand to lose the hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and benefits they give themselves annually with graduate students’ dues dollars.

Cheryl Deutsch, AWDU candidate for President, said, “We won't know if AWDU won the election until all the votes are counted, but it's hard to understand why else the current union administration would abandon the vote count without having counted nearly half the ballots cast in the election.”

All but three of the Elections Committee members abandoned all of the election materials in the union's LA conference room, including boxes of more than 1500 uncounted ballots from UCLA and Berkeley union members.

A group of more than 20 UAW 2865 member reformers and three Elections Committee members still present left all materials in the conference room exactly as they were when the Elections Committee abandoned the vote count.  The group then locked the conference room to preserve the integrity of the ballots, after photographing and videotaping the room and its contents in detail.  UAW 2865 members remain at the LA office to monitor the ballots and ensure they are not tampered with until they can be counted.

AWDU has demanded that our UAW 2865 Elections Committee count every vote and have called on Mr. Larimore Hall and all candidates on his slate to join us in our demand.

IWW Work People’s College Event a Success - A Day of Education and Discussion

Posted Thu, 04/28/2011 - 7:02pm by x344543

By FW John O’Reilly

On Saturday April 16, IWW members and friends enjoyed a day of free educational talks in the new union office in South Minneapolis. The event was organized by the Work People’s College, a committee of the IWW branch, and promoted ideas and conversations about different important themes that working people are facing today. Over 60 people attended the talks through the course of the day, and many members took away important lessons and invaluable conversations.
     
Class topics included an update and discussion about the current struggles faced by pro-democracy movements in the Middle East and Northern Africa, a panel featuring organizers working in the low-wage sector and a talk about the importance of the strike as a tactic for workers. Members of the Madison IWW branch came to help lead reflections about the movement for a general strike in Wisconsin and where the situation stands today. Throughout the day, Wobblies talked and showed a characteristic dedication to educating one another and ourselves.
     

Bay Area IWW Joins in March 4th Events in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco

Posted Wed, 03/24/2010 - 11:32am by x344543

By X344543.  Photo by Alan Benjamin & The Organizer; used by permission.

Thursday March 4th was an exciting and invigorating day of action as students and education workers from around the State of California walked out of schools and universities in protest of impending cuts to education budgets statewide. Students and teachers protested against the cutbacks, attacks on unions, and even against the systematic privatization of public education.

On March 4th the IWW set up a literature table at Frank Ogawa Plaza just outside of city Hall in downtown Oakland, which was the gathering point for students and teachers in western Alameda County. Beginning at Noon, thousands of teachers and students began pouring into the plaza as organizers, activists, students, and teachers spoke out against the impending cuts. IWW members marched in several different contingents (and many active members of the Bay Area GMB are teachers).

Bay Area IWW buyback recyclers spoke out publicly against the cutbacks in solidartity with the students and teachers. The largest contingent to arrive in Ogawal plaza (and one of the last) was the 1,000-plus strong UC Berkeley contingent who marched over six miles from the Berkeley campus to downtown Oakland.

Some of the IWW members later took BART (public transit) across the bay to San Francisco to join in a rally at Civic Center Plaza organized by teachers and students in the city.

Meanwhile, some of the more militant activists made a bold stand by taking over a very busy Interstate 880 and 980 freeway interchange near Oakland's Jack London Square. It's not certain whether or not any of these activists were IWW members, several of the demonstrators were arrested (and one unlucky activist was injured by a fall from the above-ground freeway overpass to the street level below)."

“Springtime for America (Again)” - Bay Area IWW Participates in the March 4th Demonstrations

Posted Tue, 03/23/2010 - 1:06pm by x356641

By John Reimann

When Ronald Reagan ran for re-election for president in 1984, he declared that it was “springtime for America”. He should have said it was “springtime for Corporate America.” Under his administration and those that followed, Corporate America and the world wide capitalist class increased its domination of the world, seemingly without an equivalent resistance from the working class, especially from the US working class. While this has started to change in recent years, the movement in the US has been lagging far behind.

Now that is starting to change.

Youth Movement

In California, a college and university student movement started over the last six months. The attacks on college and university students that have generated this movement are part of wider attacks on public education as well as on all public services and on the working class in general. Almost immediately, the university students grasped the slogan “defend free public education” – making the link between their own situation and that of public education in general. At a California state-wide student conference last October, it was agreed to organize a state-wide strike for March 4.

Here in the working class town of Oakland, California, an “Outreach Committee” was set up build the movement in this area. One key issue was decided immediately: Our intent was to actually disrupt the workings of the state, and we were going to try to do that through setting up a protest starting at noon, rather than at the end of the work day. We also wanted this to be an event of, by and for the youth of Oakland.

This contrasted to San Francisco, where the union officialdom conspired with the Board of Education to block a day-time rally. There, they organized a rally for 5:00 p.m. to ensure that workers didn’t walk off work and students didn’t walk out of school. Throughout the region, those forces who sought to tame the movement pushed for attendance at this San Francisco rally rather than the one in Oakland.

A key focus in Oakland was to organize in the high schools. However, the size of our effort was limited by the extreme constraints on our actual forces and resources. As a result, in most schools we were unable to establish regular working groups to organize a strike. Yet on March 4, by 7:30 in the morning, there were some 30 or 40 students standing outside the high school near my home, with home-made picket signs in hand, shouting and cheering. With just the minimal outside help, these students had organized themselves!