We Can’t Wait, an alliance of fourteen CA locals, is a great idea— but it’s not clear how much real life it has in it.  The East Bay districts that are part of the alliance have little or no organizing going on that is connected to We Can’t Wait.  A February rally in Oakland was small due to a  downpour and no other events connected to the campaign have been organized in the two months since the rally. Locals have been focused on bargaining with their school districts with only an occasional newsletter or press release mention of We Can’t Wait. Will it reactivate in the fall as contract bargaining heats up?  And if so, why drop the ball in the meantime?

The idea that we need to work publicly as more than one local at a time is a great one, and a long time coming. Fighting our districts one at a time can only go so far when the state legislature controls how much districts have to spend. CTA lobbying in Sacramento has not gotten us what our schools need (Highest class sizes in the country anyone?). We need educators to take visible action.  A unified message in speaking to the public will also increase our leverage. But moving the state of California will take a lot of both action and outreach— longer than a contract round.  To sustain a campaign on that time scale will require both member education and ongoing structures for member involvement.

The We Can’t Wait coalition has been around for a while as the California Alliance for Community Schools (CACS) .  However, this was always a coalition of officers more than locals. Local presidents talked to each other but there was very little communication with members about the project beyond “We’re part of this”, and there were no spaces for membership involvement.  We Can’t Wait seemed like an improvement;  there would be rallies, cross-local mobilizations, combined publicity to defend public education.  But  it hasn’t fulfilled that promise yet; so far there’s only a website and one rally.

To succeed, We Can’t Wait can’t just be organized around a single contract round— it needs to be a long-term project.  That requires consistency, membership education and involvement, and organizational structure beyond meetings of local officers. So far that hasn’t been the case: one rally with no plans announced for further action,  no member education beyond a paragraph in a newsletter, and no functioning local committees beyond the standard contract action teams.  

The WCW locals have aligned their contract expiration dates.  An excellent start, but how will this be used? The procedures legally required for bargaining and for legal strike action will make it difficult or impossible to align strikes if they happen, unless some locals are willing to work under an expired or likeley imposed contract while other locals finish the process. (This is what the UAW locals of graduate school workers and researcher workers in the University of California system did in order to have a unified strike.) Unfair Labor Practice strikes allow locals to choose when to strike— but then be required to have their publicity, signs, and statements to be primarily about the ULP issues rather than local contracts or state funding. How do we achieve common action in a legal framework designed to make this impossible? It’s worth remembering that educator unions in most states  began with illegal strikes; after the strikes collective bargaining laws for schools were passed in most states, allowing other locals to form. 

Visible action by educators is what can galvanize public opinion and force the political establishment to act. There are several possible paths to state-wide action: official but illegal strikes, go-to-the capital on a school day, sickouts or wildcat strikes organized by non-officer members outside the union structures.  Getting to any of these from where we are now will take a lot of organizing and a space where these ideas can be discussed.

A campaign like this can’t be turned on and off.  If officers make all the decisions and only call on members to come to events then the campaign will stop and start and will not generate long-term involvement. Each local needs an ongoing committee open to all members that will help organize both united actions and member and community outreach.  Officers will need to build active involvement of members and worry less about tight control of organizing structures and messaging; the campaign needs a life of its own.  Without this We Can’t Wait will be another nice gesture toward state-wide action without much substance.

David  de Leeuw  OEA retired