[Educationforall] spam con huevos, labor news, views and concerns, 11.8.11‏

[Carlos Pelayo]

We just made history in Ohio‏

Beyond Ohio: Why Public Sector Unions Need to Show Solidarity for Private Sector Workers‏

Tijuana Maquiladora Tour November 12, 2011‏

60 Farmwokers Stranded After Refusing to Work Below Minimum Wage

National Call: Hear How the White House Received Your 9,000 Signatures to End Wrongful Foreclosure‏

CSU faculty union OKs one-day strike at two campuses

Pew Report on Young-Old Wealth Gap is Misleading and Divisive; Could Fuel Intergenerational Class War

OWS and Unions: How to Defend People About to Lose Their Homes
George Will On Public Sector Job Losses: ‘That’s Good’

Pension Trusts Running Short of Cash‏

Teacher response to "Dont Hold Us Back"‏

 
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@











Nov. 8, 2011




The jobless recovery staggers along and congressional conservatives are at the heart of the slow pace of job creation, writes economist Heather Boushey.
Ohioans are going to the polls today to vote “No” on Issue 2 to repeal S.B. 5, the bill signed by Gov. John Kasich that eliminates collective bargaining rights for public employees. But they are facing a combination of recently passed voter-suppression legislation and a right-wing campaign of dirty tricks fueled by out-of-state big money.





Got comments? Post them at blog.aflcio.org.
 The Conservative-Created Jobs Crisis
 Tell Super Committee: Scrap the Cap
 Iceland’s Recovery Proves Fallacy of Economic Austerity
 First New Jersey APALA Chapter Founded
Read more important news of the day on the issues working families care about. 









Follow the AFL-CIO:
      


Take the next step. Become a mobile activist
by joining the AFL-CIO Rapid Action Text Team.
Text NEWS to AFLCIO (235246) to receive action alerts and more.
(Message and data rates may apply.)

To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.
Click here to unsubscribe.







I’m in Ohio right now, where working families just won an incredible victory. 

Ohioans overwhelmingly voted to repeal Senate Bill 5—Gov. John Kasich’s attack on middle-class jobs that was designed to destroy collective bargaining rights in Ohio.

We pieced together a short, powerful video summing up the amazing energy that went into this. I hope you’ll take a moment to watch:

Watch now.

Tonight’s victory represents a turning point in our collective work to protect good jobs, working families and workplace rights. But it’s more than that. It’s a long-overdue return to common sense. 

From the very beginning of our jobs crisis, anti-worker politicians like Ohio’s Gov. Kasich have used our poor economy to push a cynical political agenda that favors the richest 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent. Today, Ohio voters rejected that agenda. 

During this campaign, firefighters, nurses, teachers and other public employees were joined by construction workers, bakery workers and all kinds of private-sector workers. They came together to ensure the survival of the middle class. And together, we’ll keep doing it. Politicians who side with the richest 1 percent will find their radical efforts stopped by working people who want America to work for everyone.

Watch the energy and dedication that went into this huge victory—and join us.

This is our moment, and we won with solidarity. We won because the working people of Ohio—public and private sector, union and nonunion—stood together.

But the solidarity went even further than that: Volunteers traveled not just from neighboring Wisconsin—but from states as far away as California and New York—to help get out the vote. And activists from dozens of states as far away as Alaska gave up their nights and weekends to call Ohio voters from home. 

Solidarity means that when workers anywhere are under attack, we will all do whatever we can to help. It means we’re in it together.

Watch our video. See what solidarity looks like. 

I hope you’ll celebrate this moment in your own way. But the most important thing is to find a way to keep your own energy going and growing—so you can be a part of sustaining and growing our movement for all working people—the 99 percent.
 
This fight we’ve taken on and won—and the threats we face going forward—are about more than Democrats or Republicans, or 2012 battleground states. They are about good jobs and our right to a voice on the job.

Together, we're building a new kind of politics. A politics that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent. 

We’ve got to start getting ready now to win tomorrow’s victories. Over time—together—we’ll build a future that works for working America.
 
Thank you for being a part of this movement, and for all you do for America’s workers.

In Solidarity,

Richard L. Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

P.S. America is waking up. Here’s one big reason we won in Ohio—people can see that the firefighters, teachers, nurses and snowplow drivers hurt by SB 5 didn’t cause our economic problems. Wall Street did. Ohio voters saw through Senate Bill 5—they understood it was a plan to make the 99 percent bear the burden of Wall Street’s recklessness—and that it would do nothing to create jobs. 

Take a moment to watch the incredible energy that went into this win.




To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.
Click here to
 

Votes Today May Be Political Barometer for the 2012 Election 
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and SABRINA TAVERNISE 

Voters will decide issues like workers' rights, reproductive rights and voting rights, as well a number of big mayoral contests.
 
On the News With Thom Hartmann: Harsh Anti-Union Bill Up for Repeal in Ohio, and More
In today's On the News segment: Harsh anti-union Bill up for repeal in Ohio, banksters rake in 17 percent of all the taxpayer subsidies, the Occupy movement received a boost yesterday from senior citizens, poll shows that more than half the country thinks Republicans are trying to stall an economic recovery so they can win elections, and more. 
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 Beyond Ohio:
Why Public Sector Unions Need to Show
Solidarity for Private Sector Workers
By Jefferson Cowie
The New Republic
November 8, 2011
http://www.tnr.com/article/97160/ohio-referendum-unions-public-sb-5
 
Pro-labor forces appear en route to win an important
battle in Ohio on Tuesday, but the greater war they're
engaged in is very much undecided. As significant as
issues like taxes, bargaining, and benefits are for the
health of the country's public sector unions, their
real savior has largely gone unspoken in this most
recent battle--namely, the bolstering of pay and
benefits in the private sector. Progressives will no
doubt be tempted to celebrate their victory--not least
because it marks a setback for Governor Kasich, and a
good omen for Obama's struggle for this key swing state
in 2012--but they should also be wary of myopia.
Anti-labor forces certainly have their eyes set on the
broader terrain.
 
When Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker
recently declared that "public employees can't be
haves, while private sector employees are have-nots,"
he was peddling an obvious half-truth, but also
suggesting the outlines of a pernicious anti-labor
strategy. Republicans gladly acknowledge the divide in
our economy that often places many of private sector
workers on the side of have-nots--only to exploit it by
mobilizing resentment against those with relative
security. Public unions should be thinking of ways to
help pull up their embattled fellow laborers in the
private sector--or risk being dragged down themselves.
 
THE LATEST POLLING in Ohio gives the pro-labor forces a
25 point lead in the referendum to repeal legislation
that effectively gutted collective bargaining for the
state's public workers. The unions appear to be
succeeding for a number of reasons. First, there does
seem to be an important groundswell--from Wall Street to
Oakland--against these dramatic attacks on working
people. Beyond that, the most important factor is
labor's pouring of massive funds into the struggle,
which puts this on a financial par with a stiff
gubernatorial race.
 
Also at play is Republican hubris,
evidenced by their inclusion of firefighters and police
in the legislation. Safety workers are both beloved and
conservative--at least until their turf is attacked.
Then they tend to shun their social conservatism and
turn out the troops. But the promise of Tuesday's vote
as a pro-labor harbinger is undermined by the
persistent weakness of private sector unions in Ohio
and elsewhere in the country.
 
Indeed, the successes of
public sector employees have always been closely linked
with that of laborers in the private sector: it's
largely private sector workers, after all, who are
asked to pay for public sector employees through their
tax receipts. Having the mega-rich pony up will
certainly help--especially in a place like New York
City--but outside the worlds of finance capital, working
people are going to be paying a good share bills.
Unfortunately, the numbers here tell a dispiriting
story. Today 36.2 percent of public workers are
organized--a slightly higher number than the private
sector was even in the heyday of American labor history
in the 1950s. Private workers today, in contrast, have
tumbled to a mere 6.9 percent--a figure suggestive of
the wider rot in pay and benefits among unorganized
workers.
 
It doesn't take a labor scholar to see the
problem here: A relatively large and well-remunerated
public sector is teetering precariously on a rickety
and crumbling private-sector working class. No wonder
public workers fall under right wing attack as some
sort of aristocracy of labor. This isn't simply a
matter of mean spirited attacks, as these issues
genuinely tap into private sector workers' ability to
pay. We know that once we control for educational
level, public sector workers are not paid significantly
more than private sectors workers, but their benefits
do outstrip those in the private sector--and they've
often given up pay at the bargaining table to pursue
those better benefits.
 
A glance at recent history puts
this divide between public and private workers into
even starker relief. Today, private sector workers look
with either envy or scorn at public sector workers, but
it used to be the other way around: When public
employee unions got their start, their goal was to
catch-up to the better-off private sector workers. In
the mid-20th century's age of "industrial pluralism,"
things looked promising for all workers. Wisconsin's
decision to grant unionization rights to public
employees in 1959 and John F. Kennedy's 1962 Executive
Order providing unionization rights to federal workers
laid the groundwork for a widespread expansion of
public sector unionization. By 1970, twenty-two states
had enacted collective bargaining rights for their
employees, allowing them to match the quality of their
remuneration with their private sector brothers and
sisters.
 
By the mid 1970s, the incredible growth of
public sector unions began to look a bit like the
upsurge of industrial unions in the 1930s. By 1975, in
fact, a national public employees relations act of some
sort--often thought of as a "Wagner Act for public
workers"--seemed unavoidable. (Had such legislation
passed, it would have taken collective bargaining out
of the morass of state-level politics that public
unions are currently struggling with.)
 
Despite signs of labor's private sector rebirth in
the early seventies, the decade ended in retrenchment.
Core industrial unions lost their base, cultural
concerns trumped economic issues, and the Left began
to believe unions to be part of the problem not the
solution. Even then, the rising conservative movement
tried to catalyze divisions between public and private
unions in the midst of a set of city and state fiscal
crises that parallel our own. While public sector
unions only hit a plateau, private unions collapsed
into freefall. By the end of the seventies, the
densities of public and private sector unionization
crossed paths--public unionization was on the way up
and private on the way down.
 
Today, there are, in real numbers, more unionized
public workers than there are unionized private sector
workers. To the extent that public sector unionism has
always rested upon the resources of private sector
workers, that split means trouble. Public sector
unionization has often faced a rough road, because of
the sketchy right to strike against the public good, of
course, but mostly because the taxpayers pay the bills.
When the taxpayers are flush, it's much easier to argue
that we deserve a first class public sector.
 
So rather than simply organizing to protect the
achievements of that diminished number of workers
who are still unionized, progressives should be
thinking about how to spread those privileges to
even more workers. In that way, private sector
workers wouldn't think of their public sector
colleagues as adversaries in terms of their tax
money--they would think of them as their
allies on a much more pressing issue: how to pry more
wages out of private employers. That said, those
seeking to expand organized labor will have their work
cut out for them.
 
After years of being exposed to
conservative messaging, much of the nation remains
skeptical about organized labor. Less than half of the
nation approves of unions today, a figure that
approaches historic lows. Compare that with polling
back in the 1950s (when collective bargaining worked as
advertised), and three fourths of Americans approved of
unions. The Occupy Wall Street movements suggests that
the spark for the national discussion of inequality may
come from outside of the formal labor movement, but
it's hard to imagine right now a more efficient or
proven way of actually redistributing wealth than
bargaining collectively with one's employer.
 
Progressives will certainly cheer if and when the Ohio
referendum is defeated, as well they should. But let's
not pop too much champagne yet. No matter what happens
in Ohio, public sector workers everywhere will be
vulnerable until workers can find ways to make the
private sector give up a greater share of its wealth to
its workers. The divide among workers between haves and
have-nots isn't sustainable for much longer. What
remains to be seen is whether it will be resolved to
the benefit of workers at all.
 
Jefferson Cowie teaches at Cornell University and
is the author of Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the
Last Days of the Working Class.
 
____________________________________________
 
PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to
people on the left that will help them to interpret the
world and to change it.
 
Submit via email: labor at portside.org
 
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
 
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
 
Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe
 
PS Labor Archives: http://portside.org/archive
 
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 
TIJUANA MAQUILADORA TOUR
 
Come to learn about Tijuana communities and workers' conditions and struggles!
 
Saturday, November 12, 9 am to 3 pm
 
Important Notice:
 
Citizens returning from Mexico should present an U.S. passport. (Otherwise, they need an official ID, birth certificate, and waiting in line when returning to the U.S. for a period of time to be decided by the border gate officer.) More information: the U.S. State Dept. web site:  http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_970.html#entry_requirements
 
All tour participants must read the US travel alert to Mexico and sign the tour waiver. Please read the attached file.
 
 
Schedule (There may be slight variations from tour to tour.)
 
9:00 am sharp- San Ysidro/Tijuana border-bus station. We will walk together to cross the border gate and travel to our locations in Tijuana using chartered buses for transportation.
 
9:45 am- The crosses at the border: More than 7,000 immigrants have died trying to cross the border.
 
10:30 am- Otay Industrial Park, Sanyo, Douglas Furniture, other maquiladoras: workers' labor conditions, labor rights and struggles

NOTE: We will visit the Tijuana industrial area but won't enter any factory.
 
11:00 am- Community Ejido Chilpancingo-Rio Alamar: industrialization, health, environment
 
11:30 pm- Metales y Derivados, a story of struggle and success for environmental justice
 
12:15 pm- Lunch
 
1:00 pm- Group dialogue about the experience; time for questions and comments
 
2:00 pm- Working women in Tijuana are organizing artisan cooperatives and promoting an alternative economy. They will bring their handcrafts to the tour. To learn in advance
about these cooperatives, please go to http://www.ollincallicm.blogspot.com/
 
3:00 pm- Return to the Tijuana bus station
 
Donations
 
$30 regular, $20 students, $ 50 solidarity
 
Donations cover the bus, lunch, and a donation to the workers' organizations.
 
To reserve a place, please go to www.sdmaquila.org
 
If you prefer to use the postal system, or for more information, please contact:
Herb Shore: sdmaquila at cox.net, (619) 287-5535
 
Sponsored by Colectivo Ollin Calli Tijuana, Colectivo Chilpancingo for Environmental Justice, San Diego Maquiladora Workers' Solidarity Network, Environmental Health Coalition, and Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 

60 Farmwokers Stranded After Refusing to Work Below Minimum Wage
By Jorge Rivas | Colorlines

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@











Join us!
 













Thanks to you, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) has collected more than 9,000 petition signatures and postcards addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.  You asked him to stop wrongful foreclosures, protect affordable housing, and keep responsible homeownership available.  

Join our national call to hear from key representatives of the Obama administration on steps that they have taken to improve the housing market for struggling families.  Register today to hear how your continued actions make a difference.

Click here to register and receive call-in details.  (Please note that this call is closed to press.)

Date:  Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Time:  3:30–4:30 p.m. EST 

Speakers
•    Janis Bowdler, Director, Wealth-Building Policy Project, NCLR (moderator)
•    Brian Deese, Deputy Director, National Economic Council, White House
•    Phyllis Caldwell, Chief, Office of Homeownership Preservation, U.S. Department of the Treasury
•    Mercedes Márquez, Assistant Secretary, Office of Community Development and Planning, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development






You are subscribed to this list as . You can click here to unsubscribe.  If you were forwarded this email and wish to sign up for NCLR’s Action Network, click here.



@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 
CSU faculty union OKs one-day strike at two campuses

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 
 
Pew Report on Young-Old Wealth Gap is Misleading and Divisive; Could Fuel Intergenerational Class War
Older Americans have just managed to tread water for the past 25 years, while younger households have been devastated by the rapaciousness of the 1%.READ MORE
Joshua Holland / AlterNet

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 





-

OWS and Unions: How to Defend People About to Lose Their Homes
"They got bailed out, we got thrown out!" rang through the streets as we marched to two of the fourteen houses on the same street being foreclosed. READ MORE 
By Peter Olney / AlterNet 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 
 
George Will On Public Sector Job Losses: ‘That’s Good’
By Ben Armbruster | ThinkProgress 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 
Pension Trusts Strapped
By Sharon Terlep and Matthew Dolan
The Wall Street Journal
November 7, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203707504577011901934288534.html
 
Retirement trust funds created to cover
billions of dollars in medical costs for unionized
workers and their families are running short, forcing
the funds to cut costs, trim benefits, and ask retirees
and companies to pony up more cash.
 
The biggest such fund-a trio of United Auto Worker
trusts covering benefits for more than 820,000 people,
including Detroit auto-maker retirees and their
dependents-is underfunded by nearly $20 billion,
according to trust documents filed with the U.S. Labor
Department last month.
 
The funds, known as VEBAs, or voluntary employee
beneficiary associations, are being hit by rising
medical costs and poor investment performance. Their
funding comes in part from company stock, rather than
just cash payments, making them vulnerable to the
market's volatility.
 
Fearing a shortfall, the UAW is looking for answers in
its U.S. government-orchestrated bailout deals with
General Motors Corp. and Chrysler. The union, under new
labor accords reached last month with GM, Ford Motor
Co. and Chrysler, will seek to divert 10% of active
workers' profit-sharing checks into the VEBA funds, but
the plan still needs to clear legal hurdles and could
get blocked by the auto makers.
 
Improved investment returns could reduce the shortfall
over time. And, if the union doesn't win approval to
transter funds, it has some leeway to make benefit cuts
before the funds run short of cash because UAW retirees
still get richer benefits than most retired workers,
 
Without some sort of intervention, the gap could grow
quickly. This past summer, Joe Ashton, the UAW's top
official dealing with GM, said the VEBA performance was
weighing on the union. "It's definitely an issue," he
said.
 
The UAW also isn't the only union being squeezed.
 
In Pittsburgh, the United Steel Workers union is
laboring to provide benefits to tens of thousands of
employees covered by more than 30 VEBAs. "No matter how
good your investment performance is, you are not going
to be able to keep up with health-care inflation," says
Tom Conway, vice president of the USW. "The trustees
are having to take a serious look at increasing
premiums, and the retiree contribution has to be
bigger."
 
Union-run VEBAs gained popularity in the last decade as
a way to clear retiree-benefit obligations off
companies' books and shift the burden to independent
trust funds. Often, they were last-ditch efforts by
unions to salvage health-care benefits for their
members amid major restructurings or bankruptcies. But
now that the VEBAs are running low on cash, unions are
the ones doing the slashing.
 
Two years ago, when the UAW VEBA cut its ties with auto
makers and became an independent trust, it quickly
trimmed some prescription benefits, including free
Viagra, and boosted co-payments for retirees. Next
year, it will increase deductibles and out-of-pocket
payments by participants, according to a statement
posted on its Web site this fall.
 
Vincent Forbes, a GM retiree from Lansing, Mich., says
he has managed without the dental and vision benefits
he lost in the shift to the VEBA. "It's the reality of
what people are dealing with today," he says. "Other
people have to pay for these kinds of benefits. I don't
mind paying a little bit more."
 
VEBA benefits are considered generous by many standards
and many other retirees have lost benefits as companies
eliminated retiree health-care funding. Just 26% of
large U.S. companies that provide health care extend
those benefits to retirees, down from 37% a decade ago,
according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
 
The UAW first agreed to let the Detroit Three auto
makers offload their obligation to fund health-care
benefits for retirees in a 2007 labor agreement. By the
end of that year, GM had spent $4.6 billion on health
care for active and retired workers, more than it spent
on steel.
 
Under the 2007 pact, the auto companies paid into the
separate trust immediately and agreed to a series of
future payments. Combined, the three auto makers
committed $54 billion. Today, the trust is one of the
largest private health-care providers in the nation.
 
Since then, the Detroit car companies have heralded the
agreement as transformative because their health-care
costs had made them uncompetitive with their
nonunionized rivals.
 
In 2009, when GM and Chrysler fell into bankruptcy, the
government-brokered restructuring allowed the auto
makers to use more company stock to fulfill their
obligation to contribute to the VEBA. (The trust cashed
out its holdings in Ford in 2010.)
 
That year, it also became clear that the UAW would have
to do something to shore up the VEBA. The fund was
stretched because returns were falling short of
assumptions and health-care costs were rising faster
than expected, people involved in the restructuring
say. The volatility increased after the UAW agreed to
accept more payments from GM and Chrysler in stock. GM
shares have dropped 28% since its IPO last year,
further affecting the VEBA's bottom line.
 
GM declined to comment.
 
"At that time, everybody understood the VEBA would
probably not cover all of retirees' health care
benefits and that the UAW or trustees of the VEBA would
have to made decisions about cutbacks," said Steven
Rattner, who headed the Obama administration's bailout
and restructuring of the U.S. auto industry. "It was
going to their problem, not the companies' problem."
 
The UAW VEBA has indeed fallen short of the 9% annual
return that was assumed at the fund's creation to be
enough to provide current benefits to retirees for 80
years, says UAW President Bob King . Health-care costs,
meantime, have risen far more quickly than the 5% a
year assumed by the union.
 
According to VEBA trust officials, the funds for all
autos averaged a 9.7% rate of return in 2010. They
decline to say how the funds have performed in 2011
but, in response to written questions, they say the
fund has adopted a more conservative assumption of 7%
going forward. At GM, the fund currently has total
assets of $33.23 billion and total benefit obligations
of $44.68 billion, resulting in an $11.4 billion, or
26%, shortfall.
 
In negotiations this year with GM, union bargainers
sought help to cover itsVEBA costs, according to two
people familiar with the discussions. GM quickly shot
down the idea but the two sides reached a compromise.
 
The UAW, if it clears legal hurdles, will look to
transfer 10% of the profit sharing GM pays current
workers under the contract directly to the VEBA. Such a
step is expected to increase funding by around $40
million a year. The original court settlements bar the
company from making additional direct contributions,
but they permit this transfer, according to lawyers who
worked on the deal. GM, in negotiations, expressed
"serious threshold accounting, tax, legal and other
concerns," according to UAW documents. If those
concerns are addressed within a year, the union could
begin diverting cash.
 
Mr. King, speaking to reporters, said he is "really
confident" the transfer from profit sharing will clear
regulatory hurdles.
 
____________________________________________
 
PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to
people on the left that will help them to interpret the
world and to change it.
 
Submit via email: labor at portside.org
 
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
 
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
 
Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe
 
PS Labor Archives: http://portside.org/archive
 
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
 

Obama, Edelman, If you Stand For Children, walk with teachers. not w corp education reform video











 



Go to YouTubePlay video
Jonah Obama, If you stand for children, and speak for Rosa Parks, consider that the high tide of charter school prophecy is a tsunami rushing at the very children you claim to help. Remember, "The…
00:06:27
Added on 7/10/11
758 views



 



Loading video preview from YouTube
There was a problem connecting to YouTube. This video may not exist or it may only play on YouTube. Try going to their website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEKfGo9NuiA

Please see this article by a teacher. As you know we need to improve public education, but not by attacking teachers and public unions. It unfortunate that some non-profit community groups listed below have fallen into the corporate attack on public education.  This response by a teacher, don't blame the teachers that do the hard work blame the corporations that want to destroy public education! This "don't hold us back" corporate funded campaign is an attack on teachers and UTLA. The so called pro community non-profits are now used to attack the teachers and their union!! What a shame! 



Carlos Montes
www.csosite.org
 
www.stopfbila.net
www.stopfbi.net
 







 
Here is the link: 
 
http://tinyurl.com/72ycdo5 
  
*******************************
 
In an Era of Funding Darkness, Community Organizations Ally with Corporations, CEO’s
NOVEMBER 6, 2011
By Martha Infante 
 
It has been a few weeks since the latest salvo in education reform politics, and honestly, I had to calm down before I wrote about it. I am sure there is a reason why this latest campaign pushed my buttons, and the words indignant, meddlesome, and hubris come to mind.
 
It was on a long 15 hour day when I returned home after teaching, conducting two parent meetings in the evening, and picking up donations for the Washington D.C. trip. As is customary, I read through my twitter feed to catch up on the latest news. A piece in the L.A. Weekly caught my eye:
 
L.A. Charities & Minority Groups Tell United Teachers Los Angeles & LAUSD: ‘Don’t Hold Us Back’
 
I am a UTLA member. Who was I holding back?
 
As I read Hilel Aron’s article, the realization dawned on me (as the temperature rose inside of me) that a group of local community organizations had come together and paid money to purchase a full page ad in the Los Angeles Times and La Opinion, citing the school district’s graduation rate as a concern, and asking me, a teacher, to settle my contract negotiations with the district in 30 days, so that I did not “hold students back.”
 
I saw white.
I saw nothing else for several minutes as I tried to comprehend what I was reading. Thoughts jumbled in my mind:
 
Of all the factors that have contributed to the struggles of our students, we the teachers, THE TEACHERS, are the ones “holding students back?” Not the economy. Not the crime. Not the violence. Not the hunger. Not the fragmentation on the nuclear family. Not the lack of medical care and fresh food in the South Central community in which I work, but me, the teacher.
 
They really spent thousands of dollars to buy this ad, buy a webpage?  Couldn’t the money used for this ad have helped the students that are hungry and homeless stay in their apartment for one more month, get that tooth taken care of?
 
Who are the experts in what is best for students? Educators or billionaires?  Teachers or journalists?  Unions or astrotorf orgs?  I may be a parent, but when the doctor tells me how to take care of my daughter, I yield to the expert.  When her 5th grade teacher shared his expertise on how to approach her math work, I listened and implemented.  Parents play a huge role in the success of their children but we each have our own job to do; and it differs.
 
Perhaps what made me see white it is what I see on a daily basis that: colleagues constantly buying food for hungry students or uniforms for those who have stains and holes in theirs.  Work done over the weekend and on vacation that is never, ever done.  Time taken away from their own families to fill in the gaps left by absent parents lost to disease, vices, non-stop work, or death.
 
Certainly the ad was not what I needed to see at the end of a 15 hour work day or anyone else who has done the actual work of working in schools
There are three fatal flaws in the “Don’t Hold Us Back” campaign.
 
Teachers are not holding anyone back
We don’t need a contract to do right by children.  We served children through whole language, fuzzy math, Open Court, and through NCLB.  We find a way to make the best of policies imposed ON us by legislators and school board members passing through for bigger and better gigs.  I am not sitting at my desk waiting for my union and management to agree on the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement to differentiate my instruction for Derek, who already demonstrates coherent knowledge of the social, political, and economic realms of the medieval Muslim empire.  Or to speak softly and literally to Sam, who has a clear case of emotional overexciteablity and cannot handle a stern voice.  Or to realize that Kyle is an undiagnosed autistic student who needs double the help of his peers in staying organized.
I will serve my students regardless of when my CBA is settled.
 
The United Way et al, has no business interjecting into labor negotiations between me and my employer
My labor rights were acquired over a history of 50 years.  For every right acquired, there was a reason for it, a struggle behind it.  As an educator’s union, we live in an era where due to lack of funding, ergo oversight, we are sometimes managed by a system that is not in order itself.  We are the classroom experts however, and can and should have a say in what is best for schools, best for students, best for our profession.  In this recession, I have said goodbye to many colleagues who had no choice but to work in schools without the protection of a union.  Not one has agreed that working without protections was more beneficial to the school and the student, and these were some of the best teachers I have had a chance to work with in my 20 year career.  How can you be a good teacher if you have to use the restroom but don’t have a free minute until 1:00 p.m.?  How can you be a master of your discipline if you are assigned to teach 5 different classes in one day, each which requires significant prep time?  How can you teach children about responsibility and accountability if they are allowed to call you at 10:00 p.m. and ask what the homework assignment was?
Active and awake teachers and activists were quick to connect the dots (read Skeel’s comments)  as to why all of a sudden groups like the Urban League were entering the education reform business.  These dots should have been connected by the journalists, like Sam Dillon in the New York Times.  But journalists themselves are more often becoming mouthpieces for the billionaires who own their corporations, tell the editorial boards what to think and write. The motivation behind this initiative is another story, told well by Jonah Edelman in a candid moment of honesty.  What’s next?  Civil rights groups arguing against civil rights?
 
Teachers do not need corporations, billionaires, and non-education based organizations telling them how to do their job
This is the battle educators have been fighting for many years now.  Everyone from politicians, hedge-fund managers, bloggers, and now community orgs are trying their best to force me to implement their preferred reforms.  I don’t need someone to tell me what will work; I figure that out on a daily basis in the classroom. Frequently, the reforms imposed on teachers are NOT in the best interest of students.  Are we supposed to stay silent?
 
As someone who was an inactive union member for most of my 20 years in teaching, my consciousness was raised when I saw the devastation caused in my school and suffered by my students in the budgetary layoffs that began in 2009.  I saw the power of a school community coming together instructionally, emotionally, and righteously…and it was destroyed instantly when our nation entered the financial crisis, causing cut after cut after cut.  Those who survived the cuts were left behind to put the pieces back together, to look into our students’ eyes and tell them they mattered, that their beloved teachers would always be cheering them on, in spirit.
No one, not one education reformer wants to address the effects of poverty on students, magnified by crime, violence, and recession.  It’s as if these don’t exist.  These reformers have demonstrated time after time their true lack of understanding of what students need first, and assault the characters of those who dare point it out (see comment by Marco Petruzzi)
 
Here are some of the demands of the “Don’t Hold Us Back” coalition (from Progressives Find Religion on LAUSD Reform):
            a standard way to evaluate teacher performance;
            an end to “last hired, first fired,” which looks solely at teacher seniority and not at the teacher; and
            reinstituting full Public School Choice, which allows outside groups to run flailing public schools (in August, the school board temporarily barred charter schools from being allowed to take over schools under Public School Choice)
 
You can have the strictest, most fierce CBA and it will still not quell the rumbles in a student’s stomach. It will however, allow districts rife with cronyism and nepotism to fire loud and pesky teachers at will.
 
Firing teachers with the lowest AGT will still not stop mom from doing drugs, dad from absent, students from resisting the lure of gangs, promiscuity, and drugs.  It will however, cause teachers to flee to better schools, with easier to teach students to game their scores.  The more you use tests for purposes other than for which they were designed, the more the data is corrupted (please look up Campbell’s Law)
You can eliminate seniority protections in the era of layoffs but why aren’t these civil rights organizations joining Occupy Wall Street to avert layoffs in the first place?  When we lost 23 teachers in 2009, we lost good ones, bad ones, and middle of the road ones.  It was ugly, but fair.  I have seen excellent teachers shunned and targeted in spite of labor rights; the possibilities of  no rights for teachers is far worse than an anonymous seniority-based layoffs.  Even the laid-off teacher will tell you that.
Public School Choice?  An ill-conceived, market-based reform based on the idea that threats and competition will make teachers and schools work harder.
 
One has to wonder why these so-called civil rights groups advocating for the practice of giving away schools to charter organizations that have been proven over and over to not accept the same number of special education English learner students as the local public schools.  Isn’t that the true civil rights issue?  Why aren’t they funding full page ads against charter schools with sky-high attrition, or against Geoffrey Canada, the charter school CEO that kicked out an entire group of students because of low test scores?  Can they help my student’s parents who are denied access to local charters because of low grades/test scores/special ed designation?
 
At best, all I can conclude is that these organizations have been misinformed.  But my gut feeling and experience tell me this is a naive conclusion.  Scores of folks who are themselves suffering the effects of the recession have found that compromising their principles for employment in the education reform industry will at least put food on the table, get more hits on their website, get their names in the paper for their next election.
 
This coalition has chosen to communicate through public channels, all made possible with funding from the billionaires.  I will respond on the free WordPress blog and say this:  you don’t speak for me, my students, or their families.  They can and have spoken for themselves.  You have offended my sensibilities to the core, and should be ashamed that you have chosen to advocate for market-based reforms instead of opening a true dialogue with teachers who have dedicated their lives to helping students.
 
Below are the groups responsible for the “Don’t Hold Us Back” campaign:
 
Edward J. Avila
President, Alliance for a Better Community
Elise Buik 
President and CEO, United Way of Greater Los Angeles
James Cuno
President and CEO, The J. Paul Getty Trust
John Emerson
Chairman Emeritus, Music Center
David Fleming 
Of Counsel, Latham & Watkins LLP* Founding Chair, LA County Business Federation
Ronald Gastelum
Attorney at Law*
Russell Goldsmith
Chairman and CEO, City National Bank
Antonia Hernandez
President and CEO, California Community Foundation
Mickey Kantor
Partner, Mayer Brown LLP
George Kieffer
Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
Stewart Kwoh
President & Executive Director, Asian Pacific American Legal Center
Andy Lipkis 
President, Tree People
Cindy Miscikowski 
President, Board of Harbor Commissions Port of Los Angeles System
Thomas M. Priselac
President & CEO, Cedars Sinai Health System
Robert K. Ross, M.D.
President & CEO, The California Endowment
John H. Semcken III
Vice President, Majestic Realty Co.
Robert Simonds
The Robert Simonds Company
Steve Soboroff
Soboroff Partners
Blair Taylor
President & CEO, Los Angeles Urban League
Gary Toebben
President & CEO, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
Matthew A. Toledo
CEO & Publisher, Los Angeles Business Journal
John Mack
Vice President, Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners; Former President Los Angeles Urban League
Other organizations include:
Communities for Teaching Excellence
The Community Coalition
Inner City Struggle
Council of Mexican Federations
East L.A. Community Corporation
Families That Can
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Educate Our State
Watts/Century Latino Organization
Parent Revolution
Dream Team L.A.
Youth Policy Institute
Boyle Heights Learning Collaborative
Youth Speak Collective
Proyecto Pastoral at Dolores Mission
Union de Vecinos
Plaza Community Services
Ed Trust West

__._,_.___@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@



Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monitory gain to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the material for research and educational purposes. This is in accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. section 107..
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html 
Listen to Native Voice One http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/nv1/ppr/index.shtml



 
 


 













































  		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.aktivix.org/pipermail/educationforall/attachments/20111108/4ebf125a/attachment-0001.htm>