The following statement was adopted by the Network of Action Committees for Safe Education at its meeting last Friday. A report of the meeting is available here to find.
The corona pandemic has long since gotten out of control in Germany. New infections, deaths and positive rates of the tests are at record levels and continue to rise. It has been scientifically proven that companies and schools are major hotspots of the pandemic. Unless immediate action is taken, premature death and serious illness of hundreds of thousands are inevitable.
But governments of all stripes refuse to implement even rudimentary security measures such as changing classes, digital learning or air filtering. The schools and daycare centers should in any case be kept completely open in order not to endanger the parents’ ability to work and thus the profits of the corporations. While banks and corporations have been transferred hundreds of billions, the governments themselves are 100 euros per student for filter systems too much.
We strongly oppose this policy, which puts the interests of the rich before the health of people, and call on students, teachers, educators and parents to take their safety into their own hands. Independent action committees for safe education must be set up at all schools by the parties in the Bundestag and trade unions, which check the safety of their school and decide on necessary measures. If these are not met, the schools must be on strike and closed immediately. The same applies to daycare centers and other facilities.
The pandemic is an international phenomenon and requires an international response. We show solidarity with the school strikes and protests in Greece, Poland and France and welcome the creation of action committees in many cities in Great Britain and the United States. The action committees must work closely together and prepare a Europe-wide school strike.
The dangerous situation in schools and daycare centers cannot be separated from the problems in local public transport and in companies. While nurses, bus drivers and butchers risk their lives every day under the most adverse conditions, at the same time the largest mass layoffs in West German history are being carried out and wages are being cut. Government and corporations are using the pandemic for an unprecedented social redistribution from the bottom up.
Therefore the resistance in schools must be combined with the struggles of the workers for safe operations and to defend their jobs. It must be part of a broad mobilization for a general strike that asserts the needs and health of the people against the logic of profit. Instead of transferring billions to the corporations, the following demands must be implemented:
Close schools and daycare centers and prepare safe education! Lessons may only take place in small, fixed learning groups that are spatially separated and safely housed if the incidence value is below 50. Risk groups must be specially protected and immediately released from classroom teaching.
Billions invested in safe and good education! In order to ensure safe conditions when the number of infections has fallen, billions in investments are required in schools and daycare centers, in particular the hiring of thousands of new teachers and educators. Their wages must be increased significantly.
Full wage replacement for parents who have to look after their children! Parents must receive full wages for caring for their children. Workers, the self-employed and small business owners must also be compensated for any loss of income. Poor families in particular need special support and high-quality equipment for digital learning.
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