Full support to the sickout strike by Flint teachers!

As vice presidential candidate of the Socialist Equality Party, I fully support the stand taken by teachers today in Flint, Michigan. I call on educators and all workers across Michigan, the US and internationally to support their fight against poverty wages, overcrowded classrooms and relentless budget cutting.

On Wednesday morning, 119 teachers in Flint, or 95 percent of the educators, called in sick to protest the unilateral decision by the Democratic Party-controlled school district to overturn their labor agreement and renege on promised pay increases. The agreement, reached last October, included the first pay increase after a years-long wage freeze. However, it still left educators with salaries of $38,000, barely above the poverty level.

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Flint teachers face staggering challenges educating young people after the lead poisoning of the city’s water supply almost exactly 10 years ago. Large numbers of children suffer attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia or mild intellectual impairment as a result of lead ingestion. According to the New York Times, a staggering 70 percent of the students evaluated by the city’s Neurodevelopmental Center of Excellence have required school accommodations for learning disabilities.

The United Teachers of Flint (UTF) union, which is aligned with the Democratic Party and has accepted years of concessions, has refused to call a strike against the unprecedented abrogation of the teachers’ labor contract. This is what has forced rank-and-file educators to take matters into their own hands.

Flint, the birthplace of GM and the United Auto Workers union, once had the highest per capita income in the United States, along with Detroit. After decades of plant closures and mass layoffs, aided and abetted by the UAW bureaucracy, capitalism transformed Flint into one of the poorest cities in America. Even as state and city officials shower GM, Ford and Stellantis with billions in tax concessions, they insist that there is no money to pay teachers adequate wages.

This crisis is not limited to Flint. School districts across the country are implementing layoffs, budget cuts and other austerity measures. Teachers and school workers in St. Paul, Minnesota, are currently voting on a sellout contract backed by the teachers union which would maintain overcrowded classrooms and pave the way for massive cuts.

A chief proximate cause of the accelerating school cuts is the Biden administration’s decision to end all Federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, which expire in September 2024. The relief money, totaling roughly $190 billion, was meant to help schools address needs arising from COVID-19, including making up for learning loss during the pandemic.

At the same time, the Biden administration and both corporate controlled parties agreed to spend a record $886.3 billion for the US military. The White House is seeking tens of billions more to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza and to escalate US imperialism’s military conflict with Russia and China, which threatens the world with nuclear annihilation.

Joseph Kishore, the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for US president, and I are encouraging the expansion of every struggle to defend jobs, stop budget cuts and defend the social rights of the working class, including high-quality public education.

Workers around the world face the same fight, and these struggles should be coordinated through the expansion of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. We call on all workers throughout Flint, across Michigan and beyond to support the Flint educators.

The working class confronts a political fight against both Biden and Trump, and the two parties of austerity, war and dictatorship. The Socialist Equality Party is fighting for socialism, the expropriation of the financial corporate oligarchy and a vast redistribution of wealth to meet social needs, not private profit.