Sharon Cornu greeted the CFT convention delegates on behalf of the organized workers of the East Bay with the remarks below.
Good morning. Welcome to Oakland, to Alameda County and to our East Bay communities. I’m Sharon Cornu, executive officer of the 100,000 member Alameda Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and we are delighted to have you in the East Bay this morning.
I want to take this moment with you this morning to share our pride in the East Bay’s strong labor movement, as well as concerns we have about the future of our public schools and indeed our whole public sector.
We’ve got great AFT locals here in the East Bay. They’ve been winning big fights. Local 771, the adult ed teachers in Oakland Schools, teach ESL, computer literacy, basic skills and other essentials to the parents of school kids, to immigrants, and to low-wage workers. They fought the State Trustee and Superintendent of Public Instruction, who wanted to shut the program down. They worked in coalition with other unions and they won.
The Peralta Federation of Teachers at our community colleges, where I’m belong, has been teaching kids, adult students, and the Board of Trustees what transparency and accountability mean. The kids are doing great. There’s great stuff happening at Peralta in Trade & Logistics training that helps our warehouse workers – tens of thousands connected to this Port of Oakland and key industries – prepare for better jobs in tomorrow’s workplace.
Berkeley Teachers and Classified rallied just Wednesday night against state budget cuts. It’s supposed to be Berkeley, right? The home of every progressive cause. But they still have to fight for respect for teachers and classified employees. This union decided last year that it didn’t just want to win a Board election, it wanted the union candidate to finish first. They got the whole town’s attention. Of course, we gotta go back and do it again this year.
We’re proud of these locals and the great work they do in classrooms every day. We’re proud of the leadership they send to our Labor Council, people like Judy Bodenhausen, an executive committee member with us, just appointed to the Oakland Civil Service Commission, part of our Boards and Commissions project to take over the places where decisions are made.
We’re proud too of the non-teaching locals here, like the three unions at Waste Management we honored in this very room last week. These Teamsters, Machinists and Warehouse workers withstood a vicious 4-week lockout last summer – and they won. They won by sticking together and doing what union people do best – walking picketlines, yelling at politicians, and giving great tv interviews. They kicked off our long hot summer for 2008, because half of our members are covered by contracts that expire on June 30. We’ve got janitors and security guards, hospital workers, truck drivers, grocery workers, longshore, telecom, teachers and classified, about 50,000 total workers gearing up for fights that protect healthcare and retirement security, and help rebuild an American middle class. It’s going to be our second Oakland General Strike.
This fight is urgent. We’ll be there, on the picketlines and in the community, demanding justice.
The fight against state budget cuts is urgent. We’ll be there, too, demanding justice for kids, for Medi-Cal patients, for parks, for transit riders, for workers and everyone threatened by that small group of Republicans opposed to paying their fair share.
The fight to elect pro-worker candidates is urgent. We’ve endorsed a slate of terrific, committed, dedicated warriors for working people. Folks like Joan Buchanan, a school board member from San Ramon who has earned the respect of the parents and union members in her district and will take back the Bay Area’s only Republican Assembly seat this fall. Marty Hittleman told you yesterday about the statewide goal of mobilizing 1% of our members. In Alameda County, our goal is 3%. That means if you have 500 members, 15 need to come walk and phone with us. It’s a high goal, but we have hit it before, and with your help we will hit it again. We start phoning Monday night.
But in the midst of these urgent fights, for our contracts, for the state budget, for the elections, we must keep our eyes on the prize. The core of our public service mission is threatened.
Two generations of attacks on public service have left some people confused about the value and the benefit of public sector work.
Because corporations and rich people no longer pay taxes in America, decent, well-meaning elected officials have turned toward something called public private partnerships to maintain our civic infrastructure.
I think they started this with putting Coke machines and TV commercials in our public schools. That contributed in some measure to a generation of youth fighting obesity and juvenile diabetes.
But they’ve moved way beyond that. Outside education, we hear about public private partnerships – or P3’s – like the proposal to build an Oakland Airport Connector from BART. It’s a sham deal. For $450 million, it creates 30 non-union jobs. The public will put up 2/3 the capital and carry all the risk. The private sector will put up 1/3 of the capital and carry all the profit. Guaranteed profit! This is not a partnership, this is a robbery.
In the same vein, we hear private foundations and corporations lauded for their support of public schools. As a parent and former PTA president, I understand the value of community contributions and involvement. But let’s look at the strings attached to these contributions and the real consequences.
In our Oakland Schools, under the State Trusteeship and Superintendent of Public Education, private money has increased the number of downtown district bureaucrats, not classroom teachers not aides. Private money is used for an agenda to contract out classified employees and create “results based budgeting” that penalizes schools serving at-risk youth.
Private money has been used to drive a relentless program of experimentation, school closures and re-openings, restructuring, and chaos that drives parents, principals, teachers, counselors and aides out of the district. Under Jerry Brown and the State Trusteeship in Oakland, our district became the most charter-heavy district in the state, losing millions in ADA to schools where administrators forged grades, lied on transcripts, and cheated a generation of kids out of a real education.
How bad is it? FCMAT agrees with us! FCMAT says the District over-reformed and churned, and failed to evaluate one set of reforms before throwing another grenade on the fire.
Private money has been used to create “Expect Success” posters and marketing materials that put a pretty face and a cheerleading slogan on our dropout rate. Private money is being used by a right-wing conservative – a man who told us, yes, he thinks creationism belongs in the classroom – he’s trying to buy a seat on the Oakland School Board.
With your help, we’ll beat him. With your help, we’ll tell the public Coke is bad for kids, greed is bad for schools, and the private sector belongs in business, not in the classroom.
Thank you for your work every day in classrooms across California. Thank you for your leadership role in this year’s budget fights. Thank you for keeping your eyes on the prize – hope and opportunity and promise of public education.
