Politicize educational discontent

Last Wednesday, Joan Coscubiela published in ARA the article “Teacher Malaise and Unionism”. An alternative title could have been “70,000 strikers are wrong; I am right!”, but the paternalism would be too obvious.Questioning the 50,000 education workers who have signed the manifesto Let's Dignify or the 40,000 teachers who have voted against the agreement between CCOO, UGT, and the Government is a rather pathetic role. That is why the author chose to attack USTEC. Not their specific actions in the current conflict, but the model of “malestar unionism” – opposed to a supposed “responsible” unionism – and its “tone”. With this, he tried to shift the conflict to the ground of moral delegitimization in order not to address either the content of the agreement – manifestly insufficient – or the gestation of its signing, outside the legitimate space of negotiation, in which CCOO and UGT do not reach 25% of the representation. Coscubiela speaks with an argumentation in hand. Therefore, the best response is to go to the things themselves.Without conflict, there is nothing to agree on. Fortunately, the usual strategy of concertation unionism of picking fruits sown by others when they are still green and presenting them as their own victories has ended in bankruptcy. What caused the formula to fail this time? Two years of organization in which the campaign Let's Dignify the Profession has contributed significantly. How did we approach it?Defining demands collectively. To politicize malaise, diagnosis is first needed. Therefore, we conducted the study of educational malaise with 12,000 surveys followed by 6,000 interviews to determine the real demands of educational staff and incorporate them into the manifesto: recover purchasing power, reduce ratios, create resources for inclusive education, and eliminate bureaucracy.Achieving the majority. We collected 50,000 signatures to build legitimacy for transversal and clear demands, promoting assemblies in each center and mapping grassroots organization. Also planning: nine months in advance, the massive educational strike of February 11 was on the calendar within a structured plan, with tests of strength like the massive demonstration on November 15.Negotiating until the end. For six months and over thirty hours, we have not left the table and have led the negotiation, contributing a large part of the measures included in the agreement. And we have done so with transparency, broadcasting the meetings live to the Dignifiquemos Forum, which has over 4,000 followers.This has been our task until the department has given up convincing and has abruptly cut off dialogue to close the agreement with the leadership of CCOO and UGT in a political operation to save the Government and pressure for budget approval. A crude demobilization maneuver on the eve of the March strikes.At the March 9 meeting, everything was already cooked: news about the signing of the agreement published while we were still “negotiating”, videos selling its virtues within a minute, signing ceremony at Palau in the afternoon. Amateur theater. That is why it is especially cynical to claim that there are unions that “never sign”, when CCOO's tactic involves delaying so that signing cannot happen at the optimal point. Otherwise, victories would be collective and could not be sold as “useful unionism”.

What really bothers them is that we workers are subjects. That is why, when USTEC proposed a unified consultation in December on any agreement proposal, CCOO and UGT refused. However, 43,000 teachers were able to vote: 95% rejected their agreement.

It is sad to see how, in the face of one of the most important educational strikes in recent decades, Coscubiela's “responsible unionism” relies entirely on the failure of the struggle and pressures the Government for a worse agreement. Unionism against workers.

Educational deterioration has structural causes: underfunding, segregation, and privatization. That is why we are committed to alliances with families, to working with the housing movement, and to organizing within the Intersindical Alternativa de Catalunya as a national and class-based union. But this commitment only becomes real in moments like the current educational tide, when alliances take shape and we become the engine of a broader and deeper transformation.

There is no dichotomy between agreeing to what there is or limiting ourselves to fueling indignation. There is a third position: politicizing discontent and taking it as far as the majority decides. Our contribution is clear: to provide tools to collectively define demands, organize a majority in struggle, and democratize decisions. When discontent ceases to be a private impotence and transforms into collective strength, unionism once again becomes a tool at the service of workers, not a containment at the service of institutional stability.