Across borders, educators build power

In May, a delegation from the CFT, the California affiliate of the AFT, arrived in London to the city’s iconic images: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the gothic spires of Parliament. But what felt most familiar was not the skyline. It was the struggle.

British educators were confronting many of the same issues facing educators here at home: dwindling school funding, inadequate pay, looming layoffs and the rapid spread of artificial intelligence in classrooms. All of it was set against a backdrop of broader battles over immigration, democracy and the rise of authoritarian politics.

Despite the gravity of the issues, Jeff Freitas, president of the CFT, left feeling buoyed.

“When you’re struggling, it’s so easy to feel alone,” he says. “But we are not alone. When you sit across from educators in another country and hear them describe the same pressures, you understand why these relationships matter. This is a global fight—protecting democracy, protecting education and protecting workers. Our solidarity extends so much broader and deeper than we realize.”

That realization is at the heart of the growing partnership between the CFT, the AFT and the National Education Union, the largest education union in western Europe. Their collaboration started over a shared concern about the impact of AI on education and the teaching profession. From there, the CFT’s Freitas and NEU Deputy General Secretary David Wilson began mapping out a bilateral exchange that quickly grew into a broader partnership designed to compare experiences, share strategies and strengthen each union’s response to challenges bigger than any single district, state or country.

That point became concrete when Freitas addressed NEU members on a picket line at London’s Henry Maynard Primary School, where teachers were striking over pay and funding. The setting was different, but the fight was the same: for fair compensation, adequate resources and respect for educators’ work.

Preserving education in the face of AI

Four months before the CFT delegation arrived in London, the CFT hosted an NEU delegation in California. Both trips included meetings with policymakers, from the California State Assembly to the House of Commons; school visits, from Culver City, Calif., to the London borough of Camden; and knowledge sharing, from tackling AI to the rise of authoritarian politicians.

Both visits revealed the same urgent issue capturing the attention of each union: AI in the classroom—an issue the AFT is also addressing on the national level, through its National Academy for AI Instruction, its call for guardrails and its 10-point “devices down, eyes up, hands-on” plan for learning. It is not a technology issue, they said. It is an education issue and a workers’ rights issue.

“We’re dealing with the global undermining of education and critical thinking for profit,” Freitas says. “We need legislation so that teachers are not replaced by AI, so that they are not evaluated by it and so that they make the decision on whether AI is used in the classroom. We need to maintain teacher agency so we can maintain an environment where students have to do the challenging work of learning.”

In California, teachers in Culver City talked about responding in real time to the rapid and sometimes unwanted integration of AI without consistent guidance or appropriate safety guardrails. In London, CFT leaders heard the British version of the same story: staff avatars being used to teach absent students, AI-powered robots that let students attend virtually, and educators navigating rapidly changing AI tools without sufficient training or support. The details differed, but the stakes were the same: mastery of foundational and critical-thinking skills, student privacy, educator autonomy, intellectual property and the future of the profession itself. The solution was also the same: Educators and unions must lead the way when it comes to developing and implementing AI in the classroom.

The global purpose of education

At a time when education is often boiled down to preparing for career or college, a story from Gospel Oak Primary School in Camden reminded the delegates of the core purpose of education: helping students become thinkers, citizens and human beings who understand their own dignity and the dignity of others.

Gospel Oak educators described a typical exchange between two students: A kickball was thrown, ending with more hurt feelings than physical injuries, and the student who was almost hit went to a teacher for help. But then the other student approached the teacher as well, apologized and acknowledged all students have the right to be safe.

Freitas was a little surprised by the story.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he says. “The immediate ownership, the apology, the acknowledgement that we all deserve to be safe. It’s a reminder of what gets lost when education focuses on producing workers instead of citizens.” 

Gospel Oak uses UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools program, which helps students understand children’s rights and apply them in their daily lives. The small exchange about the kickball was a result of what the students had learned, and a reminder that educators are responsible for more than reading, writing and arithmetic.

Protecting public education

The trips also revealed another familiar fight: the struggle to keep public education public.

At NEU headquarters, British union leaders drew parallels between California’s charter school fight and England’s academy system of publicly funded schools operated by independent trusts. Despite receiving government money, the trusts control staffing and school policy. The logic was familiar; the academy system was moving schools away from democratic accountability and weakening public oversight.

The funding picture was familiar too. Education spending as a share of national income in the United Kingdom fell from 5.6 percent in 2010 to 4.1 percent in 2024. British educators are bargaining over many of the same issues animating fights in the United States, including pay, staffing, workload and the resources students need.

In London, the CFT delegation also met with Department for Education officials, members of Parliament and labor allies. For Freitas, it was striking to see labor leaders and allies in positions of governmental power.

“That was inspiring,” he says. “It creates different opportunities to protect workers and public education.”

Fighting authoritarianism

The CFT delegates arrived in London the same day as a Unite the Kingdom rally in central London. A few days later, they spent time with leaders of the Together Alliance, a coalition of trade unions, faith communities, civil society groups and elected representatives working to counter the far right through community organizing, visible solidarity and voter registration.

For CFT leaders, the connection to their own work was immediate.

“Far-right extremism isn’t just a political problem,” Freitas said. “It’s a labor problem. It impacts schools, workplaces, families and the public services we depend on.”

Why international collaboration matters

There was a moment during the NEU delegation’s California trip when a state labor leader got a bit emotional at the end of a meeting with the NEU delegates.

“Now I understand why you do international work,” she said.

Being together in classrooms, government offices and picket lines builds a different kind of understanding. It allows union leaders and members to see that their struggles are connected and their strategies can be connected too.

For the AFT and its affiliates, that is the practical value of global labor solidarity. Technology companies operate across borders. Far-right movements borrow tactics across borders. When the challenge is global, unions must connect across borders too.

[Melanie Boyer]