The ERFSC is a network of educators, students, parents, and workers spearheading the fight to stop the spread of COVID-19 through schools and workplaces and save lives.
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• Essential reading for educators
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Saturday, June 19
2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time
Contact us now to join the committee nearest you. If there is not already a committee in your area, we will help you get one started.
In the US, we now have rank-and-file committees of educators in New York City, Chicago, California, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama and Oregon.
We are also connected to committees of rank-and-file educators in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and Sri Lanka.
Don't wait! COVID-19 has spiraled out of control, but thousands of lives can still be saved through urgent action.
Our committee opposes the right-wing laws recently passed by the Tennessee legislature that would withhold funding to schools where teachers “promote” class or racial antagonisms or are insufficiently “impartial” in their treatment of historical instances of such antagonisms.
This statement was issued by Volvo workers as they begin to return to work at the New River Valley plant today, following the UAW’s betrayal of a more than month-long strike last week.
The Pennsylvania Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee condemns the lifting of public health measures necessary to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and the promotion of vaccine nationalism.
“A government that claims to be acting in the interests of children is allowed to oversee the deaths and suffering of young children, with no challenge from what passes as the official organisations of the working class.”
WSWS healthcare writer Dr. Benjamin Mateus answered critical questions about COVID and ventilation from teachers at a live Q&A organized by the Alabama Rank-and-File Safety Committee.
The 2018 West Virginia teachers strike indicated that the resurgence of class struggle would bring workers into ever more direct and open conflict with the trade unions, which exist to defend capitalism and police the working class.
All over the world the trade unions, including those which were founded through bitter struggles led by socialist-minded workers, now play the leading role in enforcing the dictates of management.
In this lecture, delivered in Sydney, Australia in January, 1998, David North explains this profound transformation through an historical examination of the trade unions themselves.
Red State Revolt, written by New York University doctoral student and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Eric Blanc, was published by Verso and Jacobin in April 2019. It purports to be a “behind-the-scenes” explanation of the causes and outcomes of the 2018 teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona.
However, as WSWS Educator Newsletter editor Nancy Hannover explains in this critical review, Blanc is unable to explain or even point to the fundamental origins of this movement, precisely because the struggle of teachers did not emerge as a limited rebellion against Republican-controlled (“Red State”) governments.
In reality, Hannover writes, “the strikes were part of an international resurgence of the class struggle against relentless austerity and the historic transfer of wealth to the rich, which governments around the world escalated after the 2008 global financial crash.”
On top of hundreds of jobs already lost, this latest attack means the university will have retrenched 15 percent of its staff since the beginning of the pandemic.
On Monday, the Detroit Public Schools Community District and the Detroit Federation of Teachers announced that they had signed a Letter of Agreement (LOA) to fully reopen the school district for in-person instruction this fall.
A recent march to deliver demands to the University President was met by the campus chief of police instead.
We urge all teachers to build independent action committees at every school; rally parents, students and workers in other sectors, and fight for a unified struggle of the working class.
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Join the discussion with hundreds of educators, students, parents, and other workers from across the country and around the world in the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee Facebook Group.
The WSWS is the most powerful tool in history for the revolutionary education and organization of the international working class.
“The Chicago teachers are the voice of educators internationally. They want to go into remote learning, and that's exactly what should happen.”
“Because in this committee there's a bunch of other educators who are feeling the same way, not only in New York but on the national level. So what can we do as educators nationally to come up with a plan?”
“Rank-and-file” is originally a military term. It refers to the lower “ranks” of soldiers, who literally stand in lines or “files”. These soldiers have a different set of interests in preserving their lives than the officers or “brass” who prosecute the wars on behalf of the ruling elite.
Rank-and-file committees are of, by and for the rank-and-file workers, who have a different set of interests in preserving their lives than management, the bosses, the politicians, and the trade union apparatus, who send workers to die while defending the profits of the ruling elite.
Yes. The formation of rank-and-file committees is 100% completely legal under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
The right to freedom of speech means you can say whatever you like about what you agree or disagree with. Freedom of association, also covered under the first amendment, means you have the right to associate with others who share your views, for political ends. You also have the right to petition the government for redress, to make demands on the government and tell them what you want them to do.
No. HIPAA has an exception for disclosures to prevent and control the spread of disease, but the state is deliberately not invoking this exception in order to conceal information from workers, so that they can pretend that what they are doing is safe when it’s not.
Rank-and-file educators have the right to know who’s gotten sick, where, when, and what happened. Rank-and-file committees have to demand this information, and have to share it with other workers as a matter of collective self defense.
