Education Workers, Unite!

by Robbie Nelson
Co-Chair of East Bay DSA Labor Committee
Member of UC Student-Worker Union (UAW-2865)

Education workers know how to educate students, from daycare to K-12 to community college, trade schools, UCs, and beyond. And these workers, along with parents and students, know who is preventing California from providing all our residents the kind of education we deserve.

Every fight for students and educators is a fight against the billionaire class and their lackeys in government and in the privatization movement.

Copious amounts of research prove that high-quality public education, delivered free-of-charge and led by well-paid, unionized workers, is the best way to foster an educated and empowered society. Low teacher-student ratios, clean and modern facilities, enriched curricula with music and art, and plenty of integrated social services are what our teachers and our students need. Members of the Oakland Education Association know this, and that’s why they are in an escalating contract fight, demanding the schools that Oakland’s children deserve.

Workers across the spectrum of educational institutions, including childcare, preschool, trade school, college, graduate school, and adult education, are fighting to defend and expand public education. We can only achieve a lifetime of student learning by linking these fights into a broad movement to put public education back under public control, and out of the hands of billionaires and the bosses who do their bidding.

The ultrawealthy want low taxes, fewer unions, and an education system that produces compliant workers instead of empowered citizens. And since they control large parts of our political system, the politicians that they buy—from Buffy Wicks in Sacramento to Gary Yee on the Oakland school board—are more than happy to cut taxes to defund education, bust unions, and sell off our public goods for private gain.

In my role as a graduate student instructor, I’ve taught undergraduates at UC Berkeley for the past seven years. And while there are clear differences between Cal and the Oakland Unified School District, the capitalist mindset has put similar pressures on educators and students all over our state and our country. Worker wages have been flat and failing to keep up with the rising cost of housing. Students are more stressed than ever before, paying higher tuition and facing homelessness, food insecurity, bad job prospects, and mental health crises. Six-figure administrators get fancy new offices while rank-and-file educators get student debt, leaky ceilings, malfunctioning equipment, and no chalk in our classrooms.

When higher-ed workers complain about the situation and demand better for ourselves and our students, we get the same response OEA members get: “We can’t afford it.” But that’s simply not true. We can afford an army of consultants, administrators, and privatizers, but not clean facilities and fair wages? We need to re-prioritize our spending towards the actual mission of education, and we can chop from the top.

We can win important battles when Oakland teachers fight the Oakland school board, LA teachers fight the LA school board, and UC workers fight the UC Regents. But we can only win the war for education if we unite workers, parents, and students in a mass movement that demands that we tax the rich in order to fund public education across the board. And refunding public education is already a popular demand across California; a majority of citizens want the state to pay more for schools.

For more than 40 years, corporations in this state have benefited from the tax loopholes created by Prop 13. In 1978, California ranked 12th in the country in per-pupil spending. The next year, after Prop 13 passed huge tax cuts into law, that fell to 22nd. Today, California ranks an abysmal 43rd in per-pupil funding. We need to end the corporate loopholes in California’s system and tax the rich to invest in public education.

The capitalists’ endless desire for low taxes and increased profits have come at the direct expense of our students and our education workers. It’s time that workers across the education system unite and demand the schools that our workers and communities deserve.

The plutocratic corporations have the money, and they want to keep their hands on it. But when workers, students, and parents unite and fight, we can win a public education system for the many.