The San Francisco teacher strike that began on February 13, 2026, is a vivid illustration of the class struggle in the twenty-first century. Tens of thousands of educators, from kindergarten assistants to high school instructors, have walked off the job, demanding better wages, healthcare coverage, and working conditions. The strike has shut down public schools across the city for a fourth day, with Mayor Daniel Lurie intervening in negotiations and the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) limiting its demands to a modest 9 percent raise over two years for teachers and 14 percent for paraprofessionals. While the union’s demands may seem modest by the standards of a bourgeois democracy, they are a direct challenge to the capitalist order that exploits labor and seeks to commodify education.
Trotsky would see this strike not as an isolated labor dispute but as a symptom of deeper contradictions within capitalism. The teachers’ struggle is rooted in the fact that education, like all social services, is increasingly treated as a profit-making enterprise rather than a public good. The capitalist state, in alliance with corporate interests, seeks to privatize and undermine public education, using austerity measures and budget cuts to shift the burden onto workers and students. The UESF’s limited demands reflect the constraints of reformism—a strategy that Trotsky warned against in What Is to Be Done? and The Revolution Betrayed. Reformist unions often settle for piecemeal gains, leaving the fundamental structure of exploitation intact. Trotsky would argue that the working class must go beyond such compromises and demand the democratic control of education by workers and students, not just better wages for a privileged sector of the labor movement.
The strike also highlights the importance of revolutionary organization. Trotsky emphasized that spontaneous mass actions, like this teacher walkout, must be channeled into a disciplined, politically conscious movement capable of challenging the capitalist state. The UESF’s ties to the Democratic Party illustrate the danger of relying on bourgeois parties to advance workers’ interests. Trotsky would urge the teachers to break from such alliances and build independent working-class organizations that can lead a broader struggle for socialist transformation. The strike’s impact extends beyond San Francisco; it is part of a global wave of labor resistance against neoliberal policies, from the Bharat Bandh in India to the ICE Out general strike in Minneapolis. These actions demonstrate that the proletariat is awakening to its collective power and that the time for revolutionary organization is at hand.
In conclusion, the San Francisco teacher strike is a microcosm of the class struggle in the twenty-first century. It shows that workers, even in relatively privileged sectors like education, are forced to confront the exploitative logic of capitalism. Trotsky’s analysis remains as relevant as ever: the working class must not settle for reformist concessions but must organize independently, develop revolutionary consciousness, and ultimately seize state power to build a socialist society. The strike is a call to action for all workers and students to recognize their common interests and join in the fight for a world free from exploitation.