A new direction for LA teachers?

IN UNITED Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)--the second-largest teachers union in the U.S., with 35,000 members--a crucial election for the union's top leadership positions is taking place this month.

As first-round ballots are mailed out on February 25, UTLA members will have experienced seven years without a salary increase, almost three years working under an expired contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), and a series of attacks from district officials determined to push through the billionaires' neoliberal "education reform" agenda.

The key question facing all candidates in the increasingly contentious election campaign is what strategies can give UTLA its best chance at fighting back against the powerful forces arrayed against us. With the union adrift under incumbent President Warren Fletcher, the challenge is being taken up by Alex Caputo-Pearl--a veteran teacher who has spent years working to build the union and strengthen its ties to community organizations--and his Union Power slate.

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy and his allies in the halls of corporate and political power have pursued a relentless campaign against UTLA members, including an increasingly punitive evaluation system, massive expansion of nonxunion charter schools, and a witch hunt against veteran teachers and UTLA activists, removing members from their school sites on flimsy charges of "misconduct" with the aim of getting them fired.

Deasy is a leading figure in the corporate-funded effort to restructure and privatize public education. As the former head of the schools in Santa Monica-Malibu--small cities that sit between LA and the Pacific Ocean--Deasy caught the attention of education reformers.

He's a graduate of the Broad Academy, a group funded by billionaire Eli Broad that specializes in churning out school superintendents who can further the reform agenda. Deasy also worked for the Gates Foundation to push punitive teacher evaluation schemes. And when a group of parents fronting for a corporate education reform group sued the state of California in a bid to overturn teacher job protections, Deasy enthusiastically testified on their behalf.

Such sweeping attacks should be an occasion for UTLA to issue an urgent call for action to its membership. UTLA President Fletcher, however, has pursued a strategy of piecemeal negotiations on single issues, with no member mobilization. He's also relied on electing UTLA-backed candidates to the LAUSD school board as the best way to stop Deasy.

Fletcher's approach has proven to be a disaster, leading to concessions at the bargaining table and increasing demoralization among the membership as ongoing LAUSD attacks go unanswered. The other shoe dropped on this failed strategy in November when the school board, despite having a UTLA-endorsed majority, gave Superintendent Deasy a three-year contract extension, even while a billion-dollar iPad boondoggle fueled rumors of his resignation.

WHILE THERE will be 10 candidates for UTLA president on the ballot, Fletcher's greatest challenge will come from the Union Power (UP) slate, led by Caputo-Pearl.

Caputo-Pearl has a two decade-long history of union and community organizing as a teacher in South Los Angeles schools, working with groups like Labor/Community Strategy Center, the Coalition for Educational Justice and Progressive Educators for Action (PEAC), a militant union caucus. Caputo-Pearl also serves as his school's UTLA chapter chair--the elected union representative for the school--and as a member of the union's House of Representatives and Board of Directors, UTLA's term for its executive board.

UP candidates and supporters want UTLA to wage a broad campaign for a fair contract and quality schools, linking demands that highlight the common interests of UTLA members, students and the communities our schools serve. UP seeks to restructure UTLA's resources to emphasize better member organizing, public relations, and community outreach.

An important model for UP's slate is the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Caputo-Pearl and other UP candidates have a longstanding relationship with leading members of the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators (CORE), which won leadership of the CTU in 2010 and led the successful CTU strike of September 2012. Under CORE, the CTU transformed itself by both building alliances with community allies and revitalizing contract enforcement and workplace activism.

The UP slate is headed by Caputo-Pearl, but draws together a number of veteran UTLA activists. The team includes several current members of UTLA's board of directors, rank-and-file members running for union office for the first time, and even three current officers who've broken with Fletcher.

The UP slate is united on the basis that Warren Fletcher is making it impossible to shift UTLA towards any kind of organizing and power-building like that which made the CTU a force capable of resisting Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's corporate agenda.

UP's message is gaining traction in phone calls and school site visits across the city. More than 230 chapter chairs have already endorsed the UP slate.

That's why, at a February 20 debate, the UP slate's Caputo-Pearl came under fire from all of the nine other candidates for UTLA president. They denounced Caputo-Pearl for taking unpaid days to visit schools to further his campaign--a practice that is fully within UTLA rules and LAUSD policy. In fact, for UP, Caputo-Pearl's effort to visit school sites is part of an effort to rebuild the union at the grassroots, whether or not the candidacy succeeds.

HOW DID UTLA arrive at this crossroads?

Warren Fletcher narrowly won the UTLA election in 2011, running on promises to strengthen UTLA members' pay, benefits and job security. Three years later, we still haven't had a raise. UTLA doesn't have an effective response to LAUSD's moves to use punitive evaluations based on standardized test scores and impose top-down school reorganization schemes.

Nor does the union have a strategy to deal with LAUSD's "teacher jail"--a system in which UTLA members who are the subject of misconduct complaints are sidelined in district offices for months, presumed guilty until proven innocent.

What's more, the demoralization and disorganization we suffered after the brutal cutbacks of the early years of the recession have only gotten worse as a result of the union's passivity under Fletcher.

Some UTLA leaders tried to mobilize resistance to district attacks, only to have Fletcher use the power of his office to thwart their efforts. For example, LAUSD's "Breakfast in the Classroom" program forced teachers at scores of elementary schools to use instructional time to serve their students breakfast and clean it up. UTLA Elementary Vice President Juan Ramirez, who is running for re-election on the UP slate, worked with rank-and-file members to create and distribute a survey to expose the problems with this program. But the surveys were stalled for months, because Fletcher directed UTLA staff not to produce them. Fletcher also stalled on hiring an organizing director, even though it was approved by UTLA's board of directors.

Tired of inaction like this, PEAC activists and other critics of Fletcher's strategy campaigned for a union-wide member referendum called the "Initiative for the Schools LA Students Deserve."

This effort called for UTLA to change course and launch a multi-issue mobilization campaign like the one UP is advocating. The initiative passed by an overwhelming majority of voting members, forcing the union to call the first two citywide rallies of the Fletcher administration last May and November.

But instead of heeding the initiative's democratic mandate to launch a serious contract campaign, Fletcher has undermined its implementation at every step, even while using tough-sounding rhetoric to posture for the election.

During the election campaign, official UTLA literature has raised the threat of a strike, demanded a 17.6 percent salary increase, and claimed Chicago as an inspiration for this newfound militancy. In fact, Fletcher has spent the last year and a half disparaging the CTU's strike victory.

Besides criticizing Fletcher, the UP slate has also had to take up a discussion of the two-term reform presidency of A.J. Duffy, who was first elected in 2005.

Duffy's United Action slate was able to make the union machinery more responsive, transparent, and socially progressive. Duffy also presided over solid gains in the first contract the union negotiated in his administration. But since then, UTLA has lost ground on many fronts in terms of wages, benefits and working conditions. That opened the door for the 2011 election victory of Fletcher, who campaigned on the promise of being a more effective negotiator.

DUFFY'S LIMITED effectiveness and Fletcher's failures have led to cynicism in UTLA. Thus, at a recent school site visit, one teacher asked a question that may be on the minds of many UTLA members: "Both Duffy and Fletcher came in promising change, but nothing was done. How will Union Power be different?"

To answer that question, UP slate members and supporters have had to take up a number of points.

The first issue is that neither Duffy nor Fletcher had an organizing agenda. To its credit, the Duffy administration took some steps in this direction by opening the door to greater involvement by the rank and file, which enthusiastically took up the one-hour strike in 2008. Even so, Duffy often used his authority as president to make decisions with little or no input from the other officers or the union's Board of Directors. Since leaving office, Duffy further alienated union activists by joining a charter school operator that, he said, would fast-track teacher dismissals for poor performance.

Moreover, the Duffy administration failed to undertake the structural changes in UTLA that could have enabled the union to build rank and file power--such as creating an organizing department, hiring researchers and parent-community organizers, gearing staff more toward member organizing, and holding trainings to broaden the leadership at school sites.

Fletcher, for his part, has been hostile to any call for such organizing efforts, relying instead on backroom bargaining with the school board. The proliferation of nonunion charter schools, moreover, has gone largely unchallenged by both administrations.

Fletcher's traditional form of unionism is incapable of withstanding the growing attacks on UTLA. What's needed is the development of a broad leadership across the union, including members of the Board of Directors and chapter chairs, who can transform the union at its base.

Fletcher has taken presidential power to an extreme, concentrating power in his office and shutting out the other officers and the board from any meaningful role. That's why other UTLA officers felt compelled to join rival slates to try and drive him from office.

In contrast to Fletcher, the Union Power slate is using its campaign to build a coalition that unites elected leaders of UTLA who are frustrated with Fletcher's stonewalling with rank-and-file members who are tired of their union seeming inactive and irrelevant to their lives. If they win, UP and Caputo-Pearl pledge to continue that organizing effort with the resources of UTLA. They aim to create a fighting union in alliance with parents, community organizations and the wider labor movement.

As the UP platform states, the slate pledges to "wage a campaign for a just contract, including a substantial and long-term pay raise, improved working/learning conditions, lower class size, expanded student programs and courses" while "reclaiming educators' status as curriculum, instruction, and school improvement experts."

The overall goal is to re-launch UTLA as an "active, organizing union" while working with allies to put forward "a collective vision for the schools our students deserve--based on excellence, equity, access, civil rights, and public management."

That's why UP and Caputo-Pearl deserve the support of every LA teacher who wants to defend their profession and take a stand for public education.