Our union members are caught between a rock and a hard place with this Tentative Agreement (TA). For many of us who were here in 2019, it feels like déjà vu. While the gains of the TA are necessary to immediately retain teachers in OUSD, they’re nothing to write home about. Devastatingly, the compensation, class sizes, and caseloads for SpEd and psychologists that we received after seven days of striking are virtually the same as OUSD’s pre-strike proposals. What can members conclude, if not that striking doesn’t work? The reality is that striking does work — if it’s done right! Not only can we do better, but we must if we are to transform public education in Oakland and beyond. Whether we vote Yes or No on this TA, we must approach our union’s politics in a critical and proactive manner. Fundamentally, we must change the relationship that our union has to CTA, OUSD, and the existing political and economic system.

OUSD and OEA officers: a subservient partnership

Over the last four years since our 2019 strike, OUSD has learned that it can get away with just about anything, often without opposition from our union leadership! OUSD regularly violates our contract with impunity, often in the payroll department (e.g. their recent docking of pay for random teachers after the March 24 wildcat action). OUSD stole thousands of dollars in wages from our most vulnerable members after striking a backroom deal with OEA officers (the overturning of the substitute arbitration, which denied substitute teachers hard-won compensation). OUSD retaliates against our union activists, with OEA failing in most cases to file an Unfair Labor Practice (e.g. OUSD firing and disciplining members after the Parker occupation, the ongoing admin retaliation against many Met West teachers). OUSD puts forth extremely weak proposals that OEA leaders accept at face value without any pushback, such as the 2021-22 Compensation MOU that resulted in a one-time $1000 payment for every full-time OEA member, lagging far behind inflation.

This subservient partnership allows our officers, who have been out of the classroom for over four years, to maintain positive working relationships with OUSD as they make deals that are just “passable” to membership. It also falls into lockstep with the politics of our more conservative parent union, the CTA, which takes 55% of our dues to maintain a $334 million lobbying machine for the Democratic Party, a legislative champion of charter schools and austerity.

We must transform OEA into a fighting union

Since the “Build Our Power” (BOP) leadership took office in 2018, our union’s resources have been mainly invested in lobbying and keeping the leadership in power, instead of site organizing, member education, and strike-preparedness. As a result, the members’ collective power has declined, and the dictatorial powers of the officers has increased. Almost every year since 2019, our local has more than doubled our Political Action Committee contribution (to the local Democratic Party). In the last two school board election cycles, our Political Involvement Committee made $120k in donations to candidates who were completely unaccountable to OEA, and even hostile to the union, including Sam Davis and Mike Hutchinson in 2020. Even the three other OEA-supported candidates voted for cuts to classified workers in February. BOP also increased OEA dues during the pandemic in order to fund more full-time release for themselves (three officers on full time release, instead of just the President as it was before). 

Rank and File Power is the only way forward!

We are not trying to replace one group of bureaucrats with one offering more progressive-sounding rhetoric. We want a democratic union and a leadership that performs its role accordingly: not a top-down bureaucracy that makes decisions on behalf of members behind closed doors, but leaders who execute policy made by the members themselves. 

In future contract campaigns, here’s what we propose to make serious material gains:

• Make bargaining transparent and democratic. A big team is not necessarily transparent and democratic, especially when union officers and CTA take over bargaining at critical moments.
• Expand member participation by organizing every site (more reps, site meetings, two-way communication between sites and leaders)
• Collaborate with classified worker unions (SEIU, AFSCME) as well as other unions across the Town and State
• Fair representation and legal defense for all members
• Put an end to the paternalistic control by CTA and their waste of our dues money