Randi Weingarten Continues Her National Sell-out Tour

Weingarten Sells Out Detroit Teachers, following up on her work in NYC and DC. Does she dare set foot in LA?

The Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) called a meeting of all Detroit teachers on Tuesday to prepare them for concessions in pay and benefits as part of upcoming contract negotiations. Both organizations are actively collaborating with the city government and Obama administration to implement school closings and cost-cutting.

Teachers were required to gather in Detroit’s Cobo Hall, where they were addressed by union executives and school board officials before being sent to separate schools for workshops on “professional development.” The workshops are designed to prepare teachers for retrograde contract revisions, including some form of merit pay.

The central theme of Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was the need for a “labor management collaboration.” Her lengthy and demagogic speech cited the success stories of individual students from Detroit in order to promote the conception that every child in the city could succeed without any fundamental improvement in funding and resources for the public schools.

Weingarten made an explicit appeal for teachers to work with Democratic party politicians, including Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm and the Democratic Party. All these government officials are in fact pushing for cuts and school closures. Treasury Secretary Arne Duncan was in Detroit earlier this month to give Bobb the support of the Obama administration.

She made a special appeal to the school administration to “think of us as partners in this endeavor; to work with us rather than against us.”

Full story at World Socialist Website

Thanks to Susan Ohanian

Graphic by David Bellel