The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee is a network of educators, students, parents, and workers spearheading the fight to end the pandemic, and save as many lives as possible.
1. Join the rank-and-file committee in your area–or use the same form to reach out for assistance with getting one started. We will contact you immediately.
2. Join our Facebook group, and invite other teachers, school workers and parents.
3. Subscribe to the WSWS Educators Newsletter for the latest news, analysis and political perspectives for educators.
4. Send us a report about what is happening in your school or district.
5. Read the Open Letter to the Working Class from the Socialist Equality Party. Share it with everyone you know, and post it on social media.
Get the word out! Send the following message to your co-workers and acquaintances:
The working class must intervene to save lives and stop the pandemic! No one will do it but ourselves. I urge you to get involved by joining and building the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee. For more information, visit wsws.org/edsafety
Fill out this form to join the rank-and-file committee nearest you. If there is not already a committee in your area, we will help you get one started.
Don't wait! COVID-19 has spiraled out of control, but thousands of lives can still be saved through urgent action.
On October 24, the World Socialist Web Site and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees brought together a panel of leading scientists to explain how the virus that causes COVID-19 could be eliminated.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Workers in the United States and throughout the world must decide to act collectively and finally put an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2022 must not be another nightmarish year of mass infections, illness and death!
The implementation of a scientifically guided and progressive response to the pandemic is possible only to the extent that these policies find the necessary social foundation in a mass movement of the working class on a global scale.
Subscribe to our email newsletter to get the latest news, analysis, and political perspective for educators, in your inbox.
Join the discussion with hundreds of educators, students, parents, and other workers from across the country and around the world in the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee Facebook Group.
This statement was adopted by Michigan educators, parents and students to fight plans to reopen schools in Detroit and other cities despite the record-breaking surge in COVID infections and hospitalizations.
The decision by provincial governments across the country to reopen schools to in-person learning amid a tsunami of Omicron infections is criminally reckless. It must be resisted through walkouts and other forms of working class struggle.
Rank-and-file safety committees need to be formed in every school, independent of the unions, to organise the widest discussion on the necessary steps going forward to take up the fight for remote learning, as part of a global fight for the elimination of the virus.
The Southern Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committees adopted a resolution to support Chicago teachers and fight to close schools to save lives.
The fight in Chicago to close schools and save lives is far from over, but the development of this struggle requires a united movement of workers and student youth independent of the big-business parties and the corporatist unions.
The WSWS spoke to educators, parents and students nationwide about conditions in their schools and their thoughts on the most recent collective actions of educators and students across the US and globally.
Children, teachers, and school workers are being told to accept the risk of infection and serious health consequences in the interests of big business and finance capital.
The teacher, Ken, reported that he was made aware that a student with COVID-19 would be returning to his class today just five days after testing positive. “When I raised the concern that the kid is contagious for 10 days, I was told that the guidelines state he can come back after five days,” he wrote on Twitter.
“Rank-and-file” is originally a military term. It refers to the lower “ranks” of soldiers, who literally stand in lines or “files”. These soldiers have a different set of interests in preserving their lives than the officers or “brass” who prosecute the wars on behalf of the ruling elite.
Rank-and-file committees are of, by and for the rank-and-file workers, who have a different set of interests in preserving their lives than management, the bosses, the politicians, and the trade union apparatus, who send workers to die while defending the profits of the ruling elite.
Yes. The formation of rank-and-file committees is 100% completely legal under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
The right to freedom of speech means you can say whatever you like about what you agree or disagree with. Freedom of association, also covered under the first amendment, means you have the right to associate with others who share your views, for political ends. You also have the right to petition the government for redress, to make demands on the government and tell them what you want them to do.
No. HIPAA has an exception for disclosures to prevent and control the spread of disease, but the state is deliberately not invoking this exception in order to conceal information from workers, so that they can pretend that what they are doing is safe when it’s not.
Rank-and-file educators have the right to know who’s gotten sick, where, when, and what happened. Rank-and-file committees have to demand this information, and have to share it with other workers as a matter of collective self defense.
