Detroit’s Teachers’ Strike is Still On!
Monday September 11 2006
Dr Rich Gibson

Detroit school workers are still on strike, under signs saying, “No Contract No Work!” However, the DFT web site which streamed that call for two weeks has been replaced with a judicial order to return to work.

On Sunday at 4 p.m. in Cobo Hall, the site where the 1999 wildcat strike was initiated, the DFT leadership held a mass meeting, under the judicial order to do so, and filmed all the speakers, also pursuant to the order. www.dft231.com/judgeorder.htm

The DFT bosses simply read the judge’s order, then shut the meeting down, leaving many teachers who were still arrive due to a closure on I-94, wondering what happened, while others shouted, “No Contract No Work,” and others still called out, “What do we do now?” The DFT leadership just left.

Only 3000 school workers attended the meeting, according to the DFT, a turnout which the School Board has to read as a serious sign of weakness. According to people in the meeting, many educators are weary, while others are absolutely determined to win a no-concessions contract.

Schools are to open again on Monday morning for a prep day. An administrator, called “Lekan the Alienator” by some educators, announced the strike was at an end. However, administrators who were laid off last week were not told to return to work for either Monday or Tuesday (once again, the purported first day with kids) as of 5 p.m. Sunday. The “CEO” announced schools would open with kids on Tuesday.

The press started to beat its drums against the strike, claiming the shutdown would not only damage the district irreparably, but cause drops in MEAP scores, the state test. Detroit schools routinely fail the racist MEAP at record numbers, while rich suburbanites boycott it, knowing the frantic test-prep for an exam written by incompetents and scored by a stock company, only makes their kids stupid.

The judge ordered the DFT and the Detroit Public Schools administrators to continue to bargain, and the governor called in a fact finder, looking for facts which will only be illuminated by which side has more power.

The DFT bureaucrats, led by President Janna Garrison, who had opposed the 1999 wildcat, claimed that the question of health care was settled in the negotiations already. Much remains on the table as DPS demands $89 million worth of concessions from a 9000 member work force which has already given up at least $65 million in concessions in the last five years, proving the dictum: Making concessions to bosses is like giving blood to sharks; they only demand more.

Administrators who were laid off last week were not told to return either Monday or Tuesday, as of about 5 pm on Sunday.

The DFT bosses did all they could not to have mass meetings anymore, not ones that would, for example, ratify a contract. They moved that to mail and in school ballots, so, most likely, a TA would send teachers back to work, where they would vote, and anyone who knows teachers knows that once they are back to work the chances for ratification of even a very bad contract are high.

President Garrison could have earned big props as a union boss if she had then torn the court order to shreds, said, "we are going to defy this court order because we have the power to do it, and if they throw me in jail they will only make our strike stronger." Indeed, Garrison could have catapulted herself to the highest levels of the AFT, and maybe even the AFL CIO as did the corrupt Al Shanker, back in 1968. But Garrison just read the order and shut down the meeting. No guts, no glory.

It is rueful that Garrison had no back-up person who is not on the Exec Board, maybe not even connected to DFT, take the mike and say," We should stay on strike. We will open day care centers in the following churches and other locations. We can open x number of centers and we need you to walk to the x number of stations we have set up here so you can volunteer to work there."

"And, since we are on strike still, we need people to walk door to door in the communities with THIS FLYER we have printed up not in the name of the DFT but in the name of the INJURYTOONEISANINJURYTOALLCOALITION, and we want you all to explain, in person, just exactly why we are staying on strike, why the strike is in the interest of kids and parents, and why we must stick this through. So, if you cannot work the day care center, you can do door to door work, and therefore you are to walk to THIS station over here and sign up."

"We must have solidarity from the suburbs. Even though the huge Michigan Education Association has done nothing about this strike, we have to go to the rank and file of the teachers unions in the suburbs and urge them to come to the demonstration we have scheduled at x place on y day at z time and we will march from 9 mile to 7 mile down Woodward across the city boundary, and we must have suburban teachers in that in mass, so here is the station for people to get to work on that right now. We will use this march to build for a massive NO CONTRACT NO WORK DAY TO INVOLVE EVERYONE IN DETROIT and shut this city down, demonstrating that nothing moves without labor. "

“Last, we have set up an open bulletin board for all school workers to talk to each other, to share ideas, and even criticize us, the leaders, as we know we must learn from each other, and the rank and file must learn to run the union if we are ever to have a contract we can defend.”

(NO UNION, of course, puts up a www site where members can just discuss anything they want. NEA did that for about a week, before their attempted move into the AFT-AFL-CIO, but people who opposed that rotten move used the www site to help stop it, which they did).

That is just the beginning of what the DFT leadership could have done, without even threatening themselves or the union treasury or the new $5 million building they just bought for themselves-- with union membership at about 3/5s of what it was a decade ago--at all.

What is needed is a worker council that would operate outside the confines of the unions, that would unite, say, hospital workers, school workers, transport workers (in at least Detroit and LA, they are largely immigrants) and anyone else inside. And, of course, an organization of honest rank and file school workers inside the DFT.

Now the 9000 members of the DFT are largely on their own. That could be bad or good. But many teachers in the Cobo meeting were grumbling that they need to get back to work, that they want to get with the kids, etc, and with the DFT systematically disorganizing them, that may happen. No crystal ball is claimed here. Organization, outside of the bounds of the union, seems key.

Rouge Forum leaders have worked closely with some strikers, and have taken action to file Department of Human Services complaints against the DPS leadership, charging that opening the schools threatens the health and safety of children. You can fax DPS bosses here www.detroitk12.org/admin/index.htm