School privatization advocates have used the devastation of Hurricane Maria to close hundreds of public schools in Puerto Rico while pushing vouchers and charter schools. As we’ve seen again and again, chaos and destruction are favorite tools of privatizers, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the school year has started in Puerto Rico with massive problems.
More than 56,000 students projected to be enrolled in Puerto Rico’s schools this year haven't shown up and 18,000 were never enrolled. Some schools also have missing teachers after teachers have been repeatedly reassigned. Schools are in terrible shape:
Dozens of schools were still badly in need of repairs. A survey of the island’s 856 schools conducted by the Association of Puerto Rican Teachers the week before classes started found leaky roofs, mold and unusable bathrooms. One school had a rat infestation, according to the survey. Another was still littered with hurricane debris.
Many teachers told reporters they didn’t want to be identified by name due to fear of retaliation.
This is bad for the people who work in the schools and for the students who’ve coped with deprivation and power outages and instability for too long.
● Nice!
● Trump's NLRB is back in action after its ethics scandal, and that's not good for workers.
● Anti-worker big money has another attack on public unions in the pipeline.
● A majority of U.S. workers want paid family leave, with millennials leading the way.
● Unions brought black Americans into the middle class. They're now being decimated.
On the last Friday of May, Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders that dealt a blow to the ability of federal employees to organize.
The first order now reduces the time to fire “poor performers and employees under suspicion of misconduct”. The second order restricts union officials to using only 25% of their work hours on official time for the union, meaning it can’t be used for lobbying Congress or representing employees who file grievances. The last order empowers all agencies to renegotiate all collective bargaining agreements, under the watchful eye of a new “Labor Relations Working Group”.
Then, on 27 June, the US supreme court ruled that public sector unions can no longer compel employees to pay union dues.
On the surface, these recent developments may seem unremarkable – and outcries from labor may just sound like public sector workers unwilling to let go of a comfortable status quo. But between them they could represent one of the most precise injuries to the progress of people of color in history.
● An interview with the South Dakota labor leader who banned white supremacists from union leadership.
● After five years of fighting, Google and Facebook security guards finally have a union contract:
The news was announced on Monday in a press release from SEIU United Service Workers West, a labor union representing over 40,000 property service workers throughout California. As part of the agreement, security guards will see an hourly wage increase of up to $1.20 by January, improved healthcare and vacation plan, and paid holidays.