Support the fight for trans rights in Singapore

• Please send your solidarity, particularly if you are an education worker or student. Sign or get your organisation to sign this international solidarity statement and retweet this thread by @kixes with the hashtag #FixSchoolsNotStudents

Over five hundred teachers, nurses, counsellors, and social service workers have signed a statement demanding that the Ministry of Education in Singapore give support to transgender students in schools.

The labour movement in Singapore is almost entirely co-opted by the National Trade Unions Congress (NTUC) – a confederation of trade unions that owes its existence to the ruling People’s Action Party, with which it has a cosy relationship. Strikes and independent unions in any sector are extremely rare.

This petition is significant because workers across sectors are speaking as workers, demanding that schools be a safe place for transgender students and staff.

This petition by "youth workers" follows a small illegal protest against transphobia in schools, which took place outside the Ministry of Education on 26 January (pictured above). The Ministry came under fire recently for interfering in the hormone replacement therapy of a trans student, telling her to reduce the treatment’s dosage or be expelled. Within a half hour of the protesters holding up their signs and flags, the police arrived. Three of the five protesters were arrested.

The ‘hothouse’ nature of the Singapore education system makes life incredibly stressful for both education workers and for young people. Children as young as 12 come under immense pressure to do well in the national exams. Mental health issues are common. In a society that sees academic achievement as social capital, parents come down particularly hard on teachers.

All this is well-known. But it was ultimately the issue of trans rights that led education workers to fight for the soul of the school system. It was the issue of trans rights that led education workers to articulate their vision for the school system – one that cares for its students.

While things have not so far produced in, say, a larger protest in the streets or a walk-out by education workers, already there is much for the left to learn from recent events in Singapore. For one thing, it is evidence as to why the left should not reduce the struggle of the working class to a purely economic or industrial struggle over working conditions.

There is no saying what social or political issue will cause workers to speak as workers, what will unite them across sections and industries, or what will lead them to realise that it is they who should run the show.

Schools are sites of social reproduction, drilling young people in labour discipline and producing future workers for the needs of capital. But imagine what schools would look like if they came under the democratic control of school workers – the people who actually teach young people and interact with them on a regular basis.

Workers would make decisions on the basis of what is socially good, not on the basis of profit or reproducing the capitalist mode of production. Education and social service workers in Singapore demanding support for transgender students is a wonderful example of that.