The ERFSC is a network of educators, students, parents, and workers spearheading the fight to stop the spread of COVID-19 through schools and workplaces and save lives.
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• Essential reading for educators
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Saturday, April 10, 2021
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM US Eastern Daylight Time
Saturday, April 10, 2021
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM US Pacific Daylight Time
Sunday, April 11, 2021
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM US Eastern Daylight Time
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM US Eastern Daylight Time
Contact us now to join the committee nearest you. If there is not already a committee in your area, we will help you get one started.
In the US, we now have rank-and-file committees of educators in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Alabama.
We are also connected to committees of rank-and-file educators in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and Sri Lanka.
Don't wait! COVID-19 has spiraled out of control, but thousands of lives can still be saved through urgent action.
The meeting featured an international panel of speakers, who explained the committee’s demands for the closure of schools and all nonessential production, and the provision of full wages to all affected workers so they can shelter at home, to stop the spread of the deadly virus.
Amazon should reveal all information it has regarding the working conditions and potential exposure of former warehouse COVID-19 tester Poushawn Brown to the appropriate authorities and the Brown family.
The struggle by graduate student workers at Columbia University for a living wage shows the need to build a rank-and-file committee independently of the UAW and the Democratic Party that will unite with K-12 educators and other workers in a common struggle.
Our committee condemns Facebook’s decision to threaten teachers groups opposing unsafe school reopenings and calls upon educators to join our fight to halt all in-person learning until the pandemic is fully contained.
WSWS healthcare writer Dr. Benjamin Mateus answered critical questions about COVID and ventilation from teachers at a live Q&A organized by the Alabama Rank-and-File Safety Committee.
The 2018 West Virginia teachers strike indicated that the resurgence of class struggle would bring workers into ever more direct and open conflict with the trade unions, which exist to defend capitalism and police the working class.
All over the world the trade unions, including those which were founded through bitter struggles led by socialist-minded workers, now play the leading role in enforcing the dictates of management.
In this lecture, delivered in Sydney, Australia in January, 1998, David North explains this profound transformation through an historical examination of the trade unions themselves.
Red State Revolt, written by New York University doctoral student and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Eric Blanc, was published by Verso and Jacobin in April 2019. It purports to be a “behind-the-scenes” explanation of the causes and outcomes of the 2018 teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona.
However, as WSWS Educator Newsletter editor Nancy Hannover explains in this critical review, Blanc is unable to explain or even point to the fundamental origins of this movement, precisely because the struggle of teachers did not emerge as a limited rebellion against Republican-controlled (“Red State”) governments.
In reality, Hannover writes, “the strikes were part of an international resurgence of the class struggle against relentless austerity and the historic transfer of wealth to the rich, which governments around the world escalated after the 2008 global financial crash.”
The meeting featured an international panel of speakers, who explained the committee’s demands for the closure of schools and all nonessential production, and the provision of full wages to all affected workers so they can shelter at home, to stop the spread of the deadly virus.
Teachers from across the US spoke with the WSWS on the impacts of COVID-19 on children and the lies perpetrated by the ruling elite to in order to reopen schools.
Thousands of school students denounced the Labour Party-led government’s continued refusal to address the threat of catastrophic climate change.
The entire teaching staff at Mitchell High School is being fired at the end of the school year, with the union simply telling its members to look for work elsewhere.
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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.
The WSWS is the most powerful tool in history for the revolutionary education and organization of the international working class.
“The Chicago teachers are the voice of educators internationally. They want to go into remote learning, and that's exactly what should happen.”
“Because in this committee there's a bunch of other educators who are feeling the same way, not only in New York but on the national level. So what can we do as educators nationally to come up with a plan?”
“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.
