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By Chris Brady
Three North Shore Massachusetts communities recently agreed to tentative bargaining agreements won through heroic teacher strikes. The towns of Beverly, Marblehead, and Gloucester voted to strike in early November, each lasting 12, 11, and 10 school days, respectively. Beverly’s strike was the longest industrial action by educators in modern Commonwealth history.
The strikes won concessions on wages for teachers and paraprofessionals, and increased paid parental leave, among additional gains. The local unions persevered despite incurring an unprecedented sum of state fines for the illegal public sector strikes. The North Shore teachers built upon the recent wave of Massachusetts educators leveraging their collective power through striking in Woburn, Andover, Newton, and more localities in 2023. Although these concessions are not enough — teachers and paraprofessionals remain underpaid for the invaluable labor they provide — the message is clear – when workers organize, they win.
Communities around the Commonwealth remain largely consistent in their popular support of these actions. The notable exception is Governor Maura Healey and the corporate Massachusetts Democrat machine. Healey bucked the pro-teacher stance of the more progressive senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and decried the strikes as “unacceptable” in a recent statement, pressuring the teachers to yield “to ensure that students can return to the classroom.”
This is unfortunately in character for anti-labor Maura Healey. In 2023, she told the striking Newton teachers to “Get back to class”, and even argued for increasing the daily state fines levied against the Newton union. Indeed, Healey was quoted in an interview with WBZ News tas opposed to one of the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s (MTA) biggest priorities, legalizing strikes by public-sector workers in the Commonwealth, saying she is “not a fan” of any such legislation
It is clear that the corporate Democrats who run Massachusetts, namely Healey, State House Speaker Mariano, and State Senate President Spilka, do not represent the working people of the Commonwealth. So why do our labor unions consistently endorse Democrats who could not respect them less?
The dispute between the MTA and Healey on the North Shore comes just after Healey and the MTA butted heads during the educators’ successful referendum campaign removing MCAS as a graduation requirement. The MTA out-spent and out-organized the Massachusetts business apparatus to get Question 2 passed, despite Healey and other top state Dems viscerally opposing the measure. Notably, many of the ‘No-on-2’ campaign corporate backers are also Healey donors.
MTA President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy released a statement following Healey’s announcement, saying, “It’s disappointing that Governor Healey has chosen to side with the few corporate donors opposing Question 2 and against Massachusetts educators, parents and students.” The statement also noted that the opposition campaign was largely backed by wealthy CEOs and reactionary conservative organizations.
The MTA recommended Maura Healey for Governor in 2022. In their endorsement statement, then MTA President Merrie Najimy stated that “As governor, [Healey] will make public education — from prekindergarten through college — a top priority.”
Clearly that has not been the case. The labor movement in Massachusetts will be tokenized and ignored by Massachusetts Democrats for as long as we allow ourselves to be abused by them instead of standing firmly for labor values. The Democrat machine, which for too long has held our labor organizations hostage with sustenance-level concessions and lip service, can not be the sole representative of workers any longer. Our endorsements must be earned.
Massachusetts is uniquely positioned for educators to create change. High rates of teacher union membership and decades of struggle have contributed to the consistent ranking of Massachusetts being #1 in public education out of all fifty states – a fact that leaders are quick to note. The inflated value of housing here, at least in part, is due to the excellent school districts Massachusetts educators create and the access that residents have. This positioning reveals leverage – Massachusetts doesn’t work without teachers – and consequently, teachers are positioned to force elites to make Massachusetts work for us.
The MTA should seriously reevaluate the automatic endorsement the Massachusetts DNC seems to earn every cycle. The MTA represents 117,000 members, and AFT-MA represents 25,000. There is a vast network of people, financial resources, and willpower waiting to be activated, and it offers a credible framework for contesting the corporate hegemony on Beacon Street. Every moment that these resources remain committed to candidates like Healey is time wasted; the labor movement cannot win working-class concessions when the organizations which represent workers aren’t forcing concessions from the establishment machine.
Tami Gouveia was a recent example of a candidate for a major state political office that presented a potential deviation from the corporate class. MTA was correct to give her their recommendation in the primary and going forward, it would be right to endorse other progressive challengers committed to labor issues. Even better still, the MTA has the infrastructure to source and run their own candidates for these offices. The best representation for teachers will always be other teachers, and more importantly, the union provides a mechanism for accountability for candidates – insulating them from some of the corruptive elements of navigating the legislative apparatus.
The MTA has already proven its commitment to “bargaining for the common good,” using its leverage not only to secure improvements to wages and working conditions, but also to win broader social programs. But this logic must also be applied to the field of electoral politics. Our unions must have one foot in the negotiating room and one foot on the streets, drawing inspiration from heroic struggles from the North Shore to Chicago. This is the source of our real power. But it also takes trusted and allied elected officials to transform our power from below into legislation reforms and favorable political conditions. Building real power only to rely on corporate politicians to turn that power into results is a recipe for betrayal.
The path forward necessitates a bold, new political project, a party that combines the class interest of the specific group of workers they represent, the broader class struggle, and popular social movements into a cohesive, organized unit.
Governor Healey doesn’t respect teachers unions, and she won’t, until workers make her.
Chris Brady is a member of Boston DSA.
Featured image: Photo of Empty Classroom by Diana
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