Capitalism’s worldwide crisis pushes reforms that hurt the working class. Some, like in education, are expanding here in Mexico. The relentless class struggle in the state of Oaxaca, led mainly by the union’s Section 22, is now facing a frontal attack: educational reforms promoted by the capitalists centered around the OCDE, “Mexicans First,” Televisa and TV Azteca.
These bosses’ main objective is to privatize education, to turn it into a profit-making business. U.S. educational reform has become a business reaping profits in the multimillions.
This privatization directly affects teachers’ labor rights, won through decade-long struggles: basic employment, health care, retirement, right to loans and housing and collective bargaining among others. It also affects other sectors of the working class, leading to massive layoffs. The restrictions on teachers’ social security will have an indirect effect on healthcare workers, increasing deficiencies in their social security.
Parents are affected by having to pay for their children’s education, eating into families’ income. The number of families unable to pay for education will grow, increasing the illiteracy of the population. The bosses’ fascist plan has already begun, with their repression directed at the CETEG teachers, to be followed by attacks against those in Chiapas, Oaxaca and other states.
We teachers should respond massively and militantly against these bosses’ reforms. If we unite with parents as well as other sectors, an indefinite strike at work sites combined with mass actions against transnational corporations and government offices could fight these attacks.
We must defeat the hopelessness pushed by the ruling class through its mass media which undermine our struggle and divide our class. We must build class consciousness. If teachers remain mired in trade union struggles, any gains will be limited to petty reforms which the bosses can always reverse when it suits their needs.
Teachers must organize and join a real communist party which unites all sectors of the working class, a party that fights for a communist revolution to take power, ushering in the dawn of a new worker-led society.
To organize against these many attacks by this criminal and decadent capitalist system, join Progressive Labor Party!