[cs_edworkers] Brooklyn Friends School Union beats back union busting

From: Richard Bucci <rizzierobucci@xxxxxxxxx>
To: cs_edworkers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2020 14:25:26 -0400

A three-day strike by the Brooklyn Friends School Union (BFSU) shut down
the school and beat back the petition by the head of school to decertify
the union, UAW Local 2110. This small victory but meaningful victory was
accomplished with a great deal of union militancy on the part of all
education workers at the school, with the teachers in the lead.

We had solid mass picketing for two days, with hundreds assembling before
the doors of the lower school. Members of the Class Struggle Education
Workers, the Internationalist Group, and the Revolutionary Internationalist
Youth joined the picket. The class solidarity was much appreciated by the
BFSU members. The strike was popular with students and their parents, who
organized a strike fund. Parents also made their outrage against
union-busting known, loud and clear. They signed petitions and answered
surveys expressing support of the union and condemning head of school
Crissy Cárceras and her board of trustees. They were clearly incensed over
this arrogant attack on their children's education, in the midst of the
COVID-19 pandemic, when students and teachers already have to contend with
remote learning.

Cárceras had petitioned Trump's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to
nullify the union on religious grounds. To do this, she hired high-powered
Biden-family lawyer, Kirsten White at the union-busting law firm Schwartz
Hannam. White was previously the policy director for Jill Biden when Joe
Biden was vice president.

[image: image.png]
The bipartisan attack on the BFSU is another demonstration that the Bidens
and the Democratic Party are the enemies of labor.

In her petition, Cárceras and White outrageously claimed that the school
was a religious institution, and therefore management did not have to
tolerate unions. They were seeking a ruling from the Trump-appointed NLRB
that would align with recent rulings by that body that help management at
scabby religious institutions to deny worker representation.

Brooklyn Friends School is a historically Quaker institution. Though it no
longer has formal ties to the local Quaker Meeting, it does conduct
Quaker-style meetings in which participants can speak on any subject, if
they are moved to do so. But formal Quaker institutions, which have been
socially liberal since the days of abolition, sided with the union, not
with Cárceras and her board of trustees.

Cárceras, furthermore, is not a Quaker. But she does want a scab school and
tried to hire 100 substitutes and additional maintenance workers to take
the jobs of the strikers. She furthermore boasted that she was hiring more
security guards and notifying the NYPD that their services would be needed.
The problem was that the agency where she hoped to source the scabs refused
to cooperate once they heard of the strike. Cárceras
thought that she and her managerial staff could provide BFS's 900 students
with an education--typical arrogance of labor-hating managers.

"You can't dig coal with bayonets!" said the miners to the mining companies
after the New Deal government of FDR called out the National Guard against
the miners during the 1943 coal strike. Well, you can't have a school
without teachers!

Cárceras pulled another stunt on Tuesday night (October 6), claiming that
she would talk about rescinding her union-busting petition the next day if
the union withdrew the pickets. At the Wednesday talks she presented a
bogus 2-year contract drawn up by her labor-hating lawyers. It was full of
poisonous stipulations that would trigger a new union-busting petition at
every turn. The union bargaining committee told her to take a hike. Hours
later, unable to get her scabs she relented, and the decertify petition was
pulled.

Union members were elated after their solid strike forced Cárceras to back
down. But she and her shadowy trustees are liars. Cárceras herself floated
the insane but dangerous lie that her life and the lives of her children
were threatened. As contract negotiations begin again, militants must
remain vigilant, and must be ready to strike again! Victory to the Brooklyn
Friends School Union!

Follow-Ups:
- [cs_edworkers] Great news -- Brooklyn Friends School Union beats back union busting
  - From: Marjorie Stamberg

[cs_edworkers] Brooklyn Friends School Union beats back union busting

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