Why OEA must change

Since the 2019 strike, when OEA made slight gains in educator pay and student services, we have had three official strikes and numerous “wildcat” (unofficial) workplace actions. Despite all this, our working conditions have barely improved, our pay hasn’t matched inflation, our healthcare package is under threat, and privatization (charters and outside contractors) and austerity continues almost unabated in Oakland. The reason for all this is that OEA is not nearly as strong as it must be in order to confront the enormous onslaught on public education by the billionaire class that we are facing.

OEA is not meeting even the minimal standards of an organizing union. Union meetings have very low turnout (many schools don’t even hold them!), and most members have scant knowledge about (let alone influence over) decision making, which is done secretly by a small clique of officers and CTA staffers. In fact, OEA is underperforming even as a service union. Our staff and officers do little (often nothing) to protect members who are under attack – especially educators of color who are disproportionately disciplined and pushed out of OUSD. A union must protect all members against retaliations, unfair dismissal and discipline, bully administrators, and unfair evaluations. 

Strong unions are democratic and member-led

A union is only as strong as its members are organized and actively control union strategy and tactics. In contrast, OEA is is bureaucratic and undemocratic: it is run top-down by a small group of officers who are completely released from work (salaried from our dues), who have not taught in a classroom for years, and who have little interaction with the wider membership. The result is that most members have no idea what “the union” is up to and what their dues are spent on. Not only is there a paralyzing separation between leaders and members, leaders have repeatedly clamped down on attempts of rank and file members to organize collective union pressure on the district and state to make real changes in our schools. The officers have moved increasingly towards “partnering” with District bosses, while raising our dues in order to fund their release from work. 

Our leaders call OEA a “democratic union,” because it has elections. But elections do not equal democracy. How do we know our union is  bureaucratic? (A) numerous sites do not have reps and/or regular site meetings. (B) union elections have low turnout (typically less than 25%). (C) union activities are few and most members are not involved in them (committees, organizing campaigns, and actions). (D) There are no all-membership meetings. (E) OEA’s Representative Council (the monthly meeting of all site reps, which is supposed to decide policy and strategy) is completely disempowered and undemocratic, with meetings controlled top-down like webinars, lacking discussion and real organizing work. When Rep Council approved union resolutions by vote, these have been repeatedly ignored by top officials.

WHAT A STRONG UNION LOOKS LIKE

1. PROTECT ALL MEMBERS:  CTA takes the lion’s share of our dues money with the promise of legal protection. This promise is frequently broken. OEA must obtain legal and organizational support for all members under attack. This includes educating members and reps on how to navigate and interpret the contract, filing grievances and PERB complaints, publicizing attacks and organizing direct actions in solidarity with affected members. OEA should live up to the labor slogan: an injury to one is an injury to all!
2. RACIAL JUSTICE: OEA leadership has paid lip service to racial justice while doing very little to stop the disproportionate discipline and termination of educators and school staff of color.  Black and Brown students are systematically neglected in Oakland. Grades, graduation rates, and other metrics consistently show that working-class students are underserved by the education system, and that Black and Brown students are subject to the most criminal neglect. In addition, education workers of color are targeted by OUSD and pushed out on a regular basis. We cannot accept this status quo. This systemic racism should be treated by the union as a crisis calling for war – a reason to strike!
3. STOP CHARTERS AND PRIVATIZATION: OEA must organize the community to bring charter schools back into the public school system, bring outsourced education jobs back into the district, and bring students back into the district. All charters should be returned to the public system! Besides the charter industry, the corporate standardized testing industry is a major driver of privatization. High-stakes testing does not improve outcomes for students, but it does what it was designed to do: provide the state with excuses to close “failing” (underfunded) schools and replace them with charters. OEA should take action to ban high-stakes testing from the district.  
4. QUALITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOR ALL: We strategize and organize around a vision for what high-quality, liberatory education for all requires, especially for Black, Brown, and working-class students who are neglected by the current system. (In fact such a vision was approved by OEA Rep Council in 2007, only to be ignored by leaders since). We fight for high-quality learning conditions for all, including class sizes at least as small as in elite private schools, far more individual and small-group student support, far more teacher prep time and other material advancements within and beyond schools. To begin to address economic oppression outside campus, schools serving working-class kids (the majority of schools in Oakland) must also provide wraparound services on campus, such as healthcare, quality meals, community programs, etc. 
5. LIBERATORY, TEACHER-DRIVEN PEDAGOGY: The majority of students are working class, but are forced to learn material relevant only to the privileged few. We center our pedagogy around principles for social transformation through education based on opposition to systemic poverty and oppression. We aim to execute a teaching praxis that exposes and counteracts the capitalist system by empowering underprivileged students and in particular students of color. We aim to build an education system that addresses the needs of students of all social backgrounds, cultivating their ability to think critically about colonialism and capitalism, to protect each other and fight collectively for liberation. We know that a capitalist state will not simply grant these conditions. OEA needs to consciously fight for the adoption of curricula that centers the struggles of oppressed people, not just the exploits of the rich and powerful.
   
   Progressive education was invented and developed by practicing teachers and this cannot be done by anyone else. What we see, however, is non-teaching academic and non-profit “experts” who make their living creating useless “reform” plans for teachers to teach by rote. The result is a systematic underdevelopment of teaching as a profession. Pedagogy and curriculum design should be done by the teachers themselves! Educators’ unions like OEA must organize to take back ownership and decision-making around pedagogy and curricula. We must revive the tradition of teachers who collaborate on their own terms to design content and teaching practices based on their daily interaction with actual students. 
6. EDUCATOR- AND COMMUNITY-RUN SCHOOLS: Our higher-paid administrators (site Principals and higher-ups in central office) think this is “their” district to run without any input from the workers and families. OEA must build enough power to change that: we need to remind them that they are public servants. Admins should execute the plans of the educators and student families, not be strong “bosses.” We aim to make education a truly democratic institution, where those who are affected by policy are the ones who make it.

HOW TO MAKE OEA A STRONG UNION

1. TRANSPARENT AND MEMBER-LED OPEN BARGAINING: Secretive bargaining and backgroom deals have long been the norm in OEA, resulting in bad contracts time and again. OEA must insist on transparent bargaining sessions with the district (open to all members). The Bargaining Team should provide timely updates for all bargaining sessions. Members must have an opportunity to consider OEA proposals at all sites before they are presented to the district so we can collectively decide whether to approve a controversial proposal.
   
2. DEMOCRACY AND ACCOUNTABILITY: The function of elected officers is not to make decisions on behalf of the membership, but to execute decisions that are made democratically by the members themselves. Union democracy means much more than holding elections. It means that the majority of members are continuously involved in the struggle. For OEA to be truly democratic, most elected officers must remain at least 50% in the classroom and on the teacher salary schedule. Union officers must regularly meet with members at sites and hold all-membership meetings, so that their policies reflect what members want to see.
   
   Democratic unions must commit to and uphold transparency in every area of work: organizing, grievances, governance bodies, committees, bargaining, and all communications with the district and elsewhere. All committee chairs, cluster leads, and bargaining team members should be elected by the members (not appointed from above by officers). All meetings of union bodies, including meetings of cluster leads, bargaining teams, and committees should be open to all members and announced well in advance on the OEA website.
   
3. SITE-BASED POWER: A strong union must be organized site-by-site and cluster-by-cluster. Bullying and attacks on educators is currently rampant because OUSD knows that our union is too unorganized to respond effectively. We need to always be ready to show our bosses that if they behave like bullies, we will take collective work actions (and strike if we must!). However, site organizing is hard work, and reps may need union support, if only to get started. OEA leaders should spend union resources on providing reps with organizing tools on a regular basis, such as  presentations for site meetings, with the latest updates about attacks by OUSD and privatizers. Leaders must facilitate site meetings that are not just presentations but two way communication, so that all members can continuously shape union policy.
   
4. NO PEACE WITH ENEMIES OF PUBLIC EDUCATION: OEA should never tolerate labor peace, i.e. a cozy relationship between our union leaders and the bosses (district, state, and corporate education industry). Our union has campaigned for relatively friendly School Board members. But the real power in OUSD is in the hands of an unelected clique of managers, which is overpaid and hostile to public education (many of them connected to charter industry groups). Above them, the state and corporate privatizers continue to push austerity on our schools. OEA has been playing nice with these enemies for years. We should demand that the School Board fire the OUSD executives who attack OEA, and replace them with people having no prior connection to charters or any other corporate-ed neoliberal institutions, and with salaries not exceeding that of a senior teacher.
   
5. NO CTA PATERNALISM: OEA is a chapter of CTA, which is the education wing of the California Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street, charter schools and privatization. CTA has a shameful record of dampening workers’ power in its locals and promoting labor peace. We must put an end to the waste of our dues by CTA, which currently takes 55% of our dues money and offers little more than harmful meddling in return (similarly NEA takes 15% of our dues, and all we get from them is junk mail). These dues should be spent on legal representation for members who are under attack, and the rest should go into an OEA general fund that we have democratic control over. OEA should fight to cancel the loan from CTA for which OEA is still paying interest. CTA should be coordinating the many CA locals to strike together and demand an end to the private education scam that the charter industry has created, which is parasitic on the already–struggling public school system.
   
6. SOLIDARITY WITH OUR OUSD CLASSIFIED COWORKERS: District bosses repeatedly cut SEIU/AFSCME positions to “pay for” OEA raises, instead of cutting their own useless central-office positions. OEA must put an end to these imposed divisions between workers, and fight for better conditions for all our classified coworkers! OEA should organize regular meetings between rank-and-file organizers (not merely between the leaders) of both unions, so we can fight together against our common boss. For example: the 2019 strike was much weaker than it could’ve been because SEIU and AFSCME did not strike with us. It is high time we organize all education workers together!
   
7. SOLIDARITY WITH OTHER UNIONS AND COMMUNITIES: We must challenge the overall austerity of underfunded urban districts in California–one of the world’s wealthiest economies. This means thinking bigger than Oakland. OEA must build networks with other unions, to create a rank-and-file led movement of various urban districts (e.g., Richmond, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc.) that is ready to strike together and win more than crumbs. And this cannot happen simply by union officials meeting with each other (the current OEA leadership’s method). A wide movement can only be strong if it is led by rank-and-file union and community members. The Rank and File Caucus started this work by forming SLAP, which led the one-day strike against school closures in 2022. We must expand this kind of organizing so that OEA moves as one with all unions in our area and beyond.