We get to the classroom and we are already tired. It is not one day’s tiredness, it is the exhaustion of knowing that the salary ends before the month and that the same thing happens to our kids’ families. The Government’s adjustment is not a graph on TV; It’s the mothers who cry at the meeting because they don’t know how to pay for the bus, it’s the cooperator who can’t afford to buy supplies for the kids who don’t have it and it’s us, doing our best to stop the blows. Last year, a study we did as part of the board of directors of Ademys revealed that 93.9% of the teachers surveyed live with pain: migraines, headaches and back pain, varicose veins, digestive problems. The educational crisis is not abstract: it has a direct impact on our bodies, those of our students and their families.
But if we learned something from the teaching struggles in the world, it is that we are not alone. In MinneapolisFor example, public school teachers and workers organized with families and the community to confront not only economic attacks, but also state violence and racism. During the pandemic and the raids ICEschools became true bastions of resistance: teachers, students and parents They created mutual aid networks, organized the delivery of food and even security corridors to protect the people. immigrant families. They did not fight only for salaries or working conditions, but for the entire community, showing that when teaching joins families, the fight becomes stronger and can face even the harshest attacks of adjustment and repression.
We know that we are experiencing a tremendous situation in schools, the question is: What role can we teachers play in this crisis scenario? In a world crossed by crises, wars and rebellions, teaching and youth have been protagonists of great struggles. The Minneapolis experience shows us that unity with families and the community is not only possible, but necessary to transform anger into organization and collective strength.
If in Argentina the plan mercy It is to advance against what we have left, our role is to organize the fight. We are not going to be the last straw in the jar while the Government raffles off the present and future of our students. Teaching has to be the spearhead: not only so that we are no longer adjusted, but to conquer once and for all the life we deserve, inside and outside the classroom.
Modernize backwards: a slave reform
In Argentina, a few days ago the Milei government achieved a parliamentary victory and legalized job insecurity. The Labor Reform, that since PTS and the April 9 We denounced throughout the summer, promotes the hours bank by legalizing the 12-hour day, ends the overtime that many workers used to make ends meet, makes working conditions more flexible with cheaper compensation in favor of employers and curtails the right to protest by expanding essential services – among which is education – with the aim of disciplining us and thus passing the adjustment more effectively.
The closure of the plant FATE It is the living example of this model: more layoffs and closed factories.
However, the strength he showed mercy in extraordinary sessions it is only apparent; underneath lies a weakness structural. A February report published by The Nation reveals that the 70,8% of unionized workers reject Javier Milei’s management. As pointed out Myriam Bregman In a recent interview, the government “has feet of clay” and its project can only be sustained if it manages to discipline the workers and dismantle the social organization.
Furthermore, his economic plan is tied to the luck of Trumpwho has been strongly questioned on multiple aspects. In a recent survey published by CNN they claim that 6 out of 10 Americans disapprove of attacks on Iraneven within the movement MAGA there are differences. In addition, he has suffered electoral defeats and faces an uncertain scenario for the midterm elections, conditioned by the internal crisis after the ICE murders. From wherever we look at it, the missteps of Trumpism are also the weak leg of the Milei government.
Macrism vs. education
In the city, Jorge Macri y Mercedes Miguel they deepen educational embezzlement. From illegal control of biometric data to reform “BA Learn”with the closure of the orchestras and game libraries, the objective is clear: transform the school into a cheap labor factory and the teachers into simple computer facilitators. Under the Milei and Macri model, education becomes more flexible and disciplined for a voracious labor market.
Faced with this attack, the leadership of UTE – the Celeste list – It does not organize but co-governs. It does not call assemblies, plenary sessions of delegates are not prepared with grassroots mandates and strikes are not debated in schools to involve all teachers who want to confront the plans of the right. While teachers from socio-educational programs are being fired and the reform advances, the union bureaucracy negotiates behind the grassroots’ backs.
We do not see or mark the plan they make only from the left: they are sectors that claim to be Peronists who demand fighting plans and a response consistent with the attack. That is why from the April 9 We want to be clear: in the streets and in the schools, all of us who want to confront the Milei government’s plan must unite, build networks and organize to fight side by side to recover our unions and put them at the forefront of the fight.
How do we get out of this?
The dispute is program against program. On the one hand, the Milei project and all its allies with a wig: adjustment, slave labor reform, reduction of rights and commercialization of education. Pichetto meets with Cristina and raises “a capitalist, productive and central proposal, which provides predictability and guarantees to investors and economic agents”. An alliance with Rocca and the Madanes Quintanillathat genocidal class responsible for the last civil-military dictatorship of which this month marks 50 years.
On the other hand is the need for a program of class independence: salary equal to the family basket, decent retirements, unrestricted defense of the right to strike, increase in the educational budget, reinstatement of all those laid off, rejection of the reform BA Learn and the biometric fingerprint, and democratic control of teaching and the community over educational policies. In short, the money produced by those of us who work goes to improve our lives and not to the International Monetary Fund. Are they o us.
From 9 de Abril we believe that we have to fight an important battle from each school we are in: unite with the community —families and students— with this program, in the perspective of joining forces to overcome the adjustment. In a largely feminized union, where women In addition, they carry double and triple shifts of work, it is important to look at the enormous mobilization of the last 8M: We show what forces there are and that, if sectors such as education, health and the state put that weight at the service of facing layoffs and adjustment, we could transform that anger into an unstoppable force.
This means organizing assemblies in each school and district where not only teachers, but also assistants, families and students participate. Assemblies and organization spaces that allow debate, decision and coordination of fighting actions – such as strikes, mobilizations and campaigns – in defense of the public education and the labor rights.
The growing individualism and ideas of “every man for himself” They are part of the extreme right’s program. Faced with this, the only possible response is collective organization. Today many teachers are thinking about disaffiliating from our majority union (UTE). To those teachers who are angry with the celestial delivery policy, we tell them that we have to organize ourselves to recover the union in our hands. It is not a utopia, in Argentina there are multiple examples of combative unions, recovered in the hands of teachers, who organize schools and their communities, for example the Neuquén Capital and Plottier branches of ATEN, the SUTEBA of the Province of Buenos Aires, UNTER of Río Negro, UEPC Capital of Córdoba, CEDEMS in Jujuy and Ademys in the Federal Capital.
Uniting with our students and their families is the only way to respond to the attacks. If today it is difficult for all families to come to a parents’ meeting, with the application of the labor reform it will be even worse. The experience, from Minneapolis to Catalonia, shows that only organization from below—with assemblies by school and coordination between sectors in struggle—can stop the advance of adjustment. It is essential to unite with the entire working class to impose another solution: our lives are worth more than your profits. For this, we workers need our own tool, a workers party, anticapitalist, anti-imperialist y combative. A party without bureaucrats, without bosses and without traitors. Building this organization is an urgent task to provide a way out of this reality.
The teaching of CABA It has a long tradition of fighting. Today, more than ever after the great strike on March 2 and the teacher rebellions in Chaco and Catamarca, the enormous mob of women last Monday, we need to return to that path: break with the co-government of the union bureaucracy and face the adjustment with our own program, of class independence and in unity with the rest of the sectors in struggle.
In that sense, the next March 24when they are fulfilled 50 years of the genocidal coup, is also a date of political struggle in the present. From the tradition of Memory, Truth and Justice Meetingwe defend the independent mobilization of all governments and the employers’ forces that yesterday and today support the same social order. It is not only about remembering State terrorism, but also about pointing out that the dictatorship was the instrument of ruling class to impose an economic plan against the working class, the effects of which are still felt. Therefore, for teaching and for the entire educational community, March 24 must also be a day of organization and debate in schoolslinking historical memory with the current struggles against adjustment, job insecurity and the attack on public education. Because the fight for public education is the fight for the future of the entire working class.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
