Last Wednesday, Joan Coscubiela published the article “Teacher Discontent and Unionism”. An alternative title could have been “70,000 strikers are wrong; I am right!”, but the paternalism would have been too evident.Questioning the 50,000 education workers who have signed the manifesto Dignify or the 40,000 teachers who have voted against the agreement between CCOO, UGT, and the Government is a rather clumsy role. That is why the author chose to attack USTEC. Not their specific actions in the current conflict, but the model of “discontent unionism” – opposed to a supposed “responsible” unionism – and its “tone”. With this, he tried to take the conflict to the ground of moral delegitimization in order not to address either the content of the agreement – manifestly insufficient – nor 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. For this reason, 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 made the formula fail this time? Two years of organization in which the campaign Dignify the profession has contributed significantly. How have we approached it?Defining demands collectively. To politicize discontent, diagnosis is first needed. Therefore, we conducted the study of educational discontent with 12,000 surveys followed by 6,000 interviews to determine the real demands of educational staff and translate them into the manifesto: recover purchasing power, reduce ratios, create resources for inclusion, and eliminate bureaucracy.Reaching the majority. We collected 50,000 signatures to build legitimacy for transversal and clear demands, promoting assemblies in each center and mapping the grassroots organization. Also planning: nine months in advance, the massive educational strike on February 11 was on the calendar within a structured plan, with tests of strength such as 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 on the Dignify Forum, which has over 4,000 followers.This has been our task until the department has given up on 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 the approval of budgets. 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, a signing ceremony at the 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 holding back so that it cannot be signed 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's why, when USTEC proposed a unitary consultation in December on any agreement proposal, CCOO and UGT refused. However, 43,000 teachers have been able to vote: 95% rejected their agreement.
It's 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 against a better agreement. Unionism against workers.
Educational deterioration has structural causes: underfunding, segregation, and privatization. That's 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 wave, when alliances take shape and we become the engine of a broader and deeper transformation.
There is no dichotomy between agreeing to what exists or merely fueling indignation. There is a third position: to politicize discontent and take 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.
