The ERFSC is a nation-wide network of educators, students, parents, and workers spearheading the fight to stop the spread of the COVID-19 through schools and workplaces and save lives.
On this page:
• Join the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee
• Statements of Rank-and-File Committees
• FAQs
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, San Diego, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas.
Don't wait! COVID-19 has spiraled out of control, but thousands of lives can still be saved through urgent action.
Our demands are based not on what the corporations and the politicians claim is affordable but what is necessary to protect the lives and well-being of children, educators and the entire working class.
● For the immediate closure of all public, private and charter schools to stop the spread of COVID-19!
● Full funding for public education, internet access and online instruction!
● Full income protection to all parents and caregivers who stay home with their children!
● No loss of income for educators who choose to stay home!
● For free speech and the protection of whistleblowers!
● Halt all nonessential production!
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.”
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.
“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.
