The following is a letter from a member of the Chicago Educators Rank-and-File Committee to fellow educators facing the fight against Democratic Party austerity measures and Trump’s efforts to destroy public education. To join the growing network of educators rank-and-file committees, fill out the form at the end of this article.
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
As a member of the Chicago Educators Rank-and-File Committee and the growing movement of workers nationwide and internationally organized in the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), I write to you with a deep sense of urgency. Educators across the country are facing a critical turning point. Dozens of contract expirations are unfolding in major cities in California, Pennsylvania and other states under the shadow of monumental attacks on public education at the federal and state levels. We are at a crossroads where the future of our public schools, our jobs, and the very right to free, quality education for all hangs in the balance.
Having experienced firsthand the massive betrayal by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) bureaucracy—fully supported by the Democratic Party administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson--I urge educators everywhere to draw the hard but essential lessons of our experience. The CTU’s hollow promises and political deals led directly to mass layoffs, deep budget deficits, and the closure of schools, all while smothering the determination of teachers and staff who wanted to fight. What has happened here is not exceptional, but rather the sharpest warning for what is being prepared for you.
Under conditions of deep social and economic crisis, war, and the rise of authoritarianism, educators cannot afford to follow the dead-end perspective of union officials who seek to contain and isolate any real opposition. What is needed is an independent movement from below, led by rank-and-file educators committed to breaking from the suffocating grip of the bureaucracies and mobilizing the power of the working class.
A similar pattern is carried out time and again across the country—most recently in Philadelphia, where 9,000 city workers struck for higher wages and against punitive budget cuts. Their strike resonated across the region and inspired wide layers of workers—until they were stabbed in the back by their supposed representatives in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union. AFSCME District Council 33 ordered a return to work without even a ratification vote, settling for a deal barely better than one workers had already rejected. This was a conscious effort to kill the strike before it could grow and spread.
This betrayal was compounded by coordinated efforts to isolate the strike. White-collar workers in Philadelphia faced their own contract expiration, and school educators had just voted overwhelmingly to strike. But instead of uniting these struggles, the union bureaucracy intentionally kept them divided—a key service they perform for the Democratic Party and the capitalist state. Above all, they fear a strike sparking a broader working-class offensive beyond their control.
In response, workers in Philadelphia formed the Philadelphia Workers Rank-and-File Strike Committee to expose the treachery of the union leadership, begin organizing independently, and fight for real workers’ control. Their stand shows the way forward for educators and workers everywhere. Only through building independent, democratic rank-and-file committees can we seize control of our struggles, unite across sectors, and finally break the cycle of isolation and betrayal imposed by the union apparatus.
Our struggles are inseparable and we must build a unified offensive. The defeat of any group of workers prepares the ground for a wider assault and deeper austerity elsewhere. An injury to one is an injury to all!
The Chicago Teachers Union betrayal
As for educators here in Chicago, we were recently hit with a devastating betrayal by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) bureaucracy and its Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-aligned partners in City Hall. The so-called “transformative” contract touted as “Trump-proof” imploded almost immediately after ratification. Leaked plans revealed that Chicago Public Schools is seeking to lay off up to 1,700 school-based staff. Just this month, hundreds of layoffs have already been enacted, impacting 432 teachers, including 132 special education teachers. Also laid off were 311 paraprofessionals and 677 special education classroom assistants.
In a display of contemptible complacency, CTU officials sent members an email after the layoffs saying, “It is cold comfort, but these layoffs are lower than last year.” Laid-off educators were simply told to apply for unemployment benefits. This acceptance of mass job losses and school closures exposes the union’s real priorities—not defending members or public education but managing austerity on behalf of the administration.
Further, the CTU quietly approved the closure of two Acero charter schools serving working-class and immigrant families. Hundreds of students were displaced and nearly 100 educators were thrown out of these schools. The union helped implement the closures, advising teachers on how to bump colleagues with less seniority at Acero’s remaining schools or accept termination. At least five more Acero schools face closure in the near future.
Every effort has been made to suppress any genuine resistance among educators. The CTU leadership, in alliance with the DSA-backed Johnson administration, told teachers to publicly pledge allegiance to the mayor, assuring them of his supposed support, even as layoffs multiplied. National figures like American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten flew to Chicago not to rally support for genuine resistance, but to quash any talk of striking, urging educators to leave their fate to the courts and corporate-controlled politicians.
While anger and opposition boils over among teachers, staff, students, and families, the CTU continues to oppose any mobilization of teachers, let alone broader sections of city workers facing massive cutbacks. Rather, the CTU is co-sponsoring a rally this week with Mayor Johnson, AFT President Randi Weingarten, and other Democratic officials, under the slogan “Good Trouble.” Their so-called “Good Trouble” rally is designed not to pose any real resistance to the attacks on public education, but to deflect opposition and drum up support for the Democratic Party, the very political force that is enforcing austerity and Trump’s war on public education.
The CTU, together with its leadership caucus, CORE, and DSA allies, has operated as a political firewall tasked with keeping teachers tied to the Democratic Party and capitalist system. Their task is to contain growing anger among educators and prevent it from becoming an open rebellion—not just against Trump, but against the entire political and economic order. Their collaboration with the Johnson administration and business-aligned “austerity working groups” marks them as managers of austerity, not fighters against it.
A warning to educators in California, Philadelphia and beyond
Chicago is a test case for broader betrayals. In California, the California Teachers Association (CTA) bureaucracy is executing the same playbook. As 77,000 teachers across 32 districts enter critical contract confrontations, the same machinery of betrayal is being prepared. The California Teachers Association (CTA) is orchestrating its “We Can’t Wait” campaign with grand claims of a “historic, united fight,” while in reality refusing any genuine challenge to the destruction of public education driven by the Trump administration.
The CTA bureaucracy, hand-in-glove with Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democratic Party, peddles the illusion that “blue state” politicians pose a threat to the Trump administration and will defend our schools, even as those same Democrats have imposed catastrophic cuts at the state and local levels. The Democrats are a party of the Wall Street and the Pentagon too and fear a rebellion by workers from below far more than Trump’s fascist and dictatorial policies.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia educators voted by an overwhelmingly 94 percent to authorize strike action by the district’s 14,000 teachers and support staff. This a measure of their determination to overturn decades of PFT-backed concessions to the local Democratic Party machine and to wage a united struggle against Trump’s existential threat to public education and democratic rights. But this struggle cannot succeed if left in the hands of the PFT bureaucracy. The PFT has acted in open collusion with AFSCME locals—not only failing to unite teachers with city and sanitation workers, but actively collaborating in the isolation and suppression of workers across industries, further facilitating the suppression of the city workers strike.
This division is no accident. It is the conscious policy of the union apparatus, acting as an arm of the Democratic Party and the capitalist state to disorganize the working class, suppress mass opposition, and impose austerity from above.
Why Rank and File Committees are necessary
We are living through an unprecedented assault on public education—one part of a much broader effort by the ruling class to extract every ounce of surplus value produced by the working class to prop up a decaying capitalist system. This is what’s driving the push toward World War III, the bipartisan gutting of social programs, and Trump’s fascist campaign to establish a presidential dictatorship. It means mass layoffs, school closures, and the destruction of everything educators and generations of workers have fought to build.
But the mass “No Kings” protests on June 14—where millions of workers, educators, youth, and students flooded the streets in all 50 states—showed that the working class is not going to take this lying down. The ruling class saw the danger. And so did their tools in the union leadership. The response wasn’t to support this movement, but to downplay it, silence it, and prepare the next round of attacks. They know that any real strike or mass movement could rapidly ignite into a political revolt—against not just Trump, but against the entire system of capitalism and inequality.
That’s why the union apparatus functions not as instruments of struggle, but as a barrier to it. To every educator reading this: we can’t go down this road again. We can’t let them isolate us, divide us, and sell us out. We need to build rank-and-file committees in every school and district—independent of the union apparatus, united with workers in every industry, and committed to finally taking our struggles into our own hands.
They tell us to fight separately, district by district. We say: Unite the struggles. Build for a national general strike and indeed international counter-offensive.
This is a class war. On one side: a ruling elite of billionaires, backed by both parties, the courts, and the union bureaucracy. On the other: educators, students, workers—the vast majority—who produce all of society’s wealth but have no say in how it is used.
We are told our only options are “Good Trouble” or quiet despair. But there is another path: class struggle—conscious, organized, international.
The fight for public education is inseparable from the fight for democracy, for equality, for a future free from dictatorship and war. That is why we fight not just for better contracts, but for socialism: a society based on human need, not private profit.
The defense of education and its vast improvement requires a vast redistribution of wealth and the expropriation of the corporate-financial oligarchy, which controls both political parties. Instead of funding tax breaks for the rich, the expansion of the ICE gestapo and preparations for World War III, trillions must be provided to guarantee high quality public and secondary education to all, a vast expansion of the public health system, affordable housing and a future for the youth.
This will not be achieved through appealing to the conscience of the ruling class but in a massive industrial and political struggle against it, including the preparation of a general strike to drive Trump and his accomplices from office.
To every educator reading this—whether in California, Philadelphia, or anywhere else—we say: Organize a Rank-and-File Committee in your school. Contact us to link up with the IWA-RFC. Take the fight into your own hands—and join the struggle to defend public education and social equality.
In solidarity and struggle,
Joe Raymond
Chicago Educators Rank-and-File Committee
International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC)