Salon.com > Chicago Teachers Strike

Why the Chicago teachers won

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:04:00 +0000

Consider the battle of Chicago’s teachers as a lesson for what’s ahead as the same struggle winds its way around the nation.

For the nation’s beleaguered labor movement, the six-day strike by the Chicago Teachers Union that ended on Tuesday is proof that a strike is not suicide, as has been the fate lately for most unions.

Indeed, as the end neared and they were heady with an apparent win, the teachers’ talk catapulted from standing up for teachers to standing up for organized labor and ultimately to speaking for bullied, and exploited, workers.

In the buildup to the dispute, it didn’t seem likely that the union would be able to walk away. Not after the Illinois Legislature required the union to win a strike vote by 75 percent of its members, and not after Mayor Rahm Emanuel fearlessly carried out a number of steps that only riled up the union. But it did, with the three-year deal that its 26,000 teachers will soon vote on.

Chicago teachers go back to school

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:07:00 +0000

It’s back to school Wednesday for 29,000 Chicago teachers after their week-long strike. Following a two-hour meeting Tuesday, 800 delegates representing the Chicago Teachers Union voted to end the strike, agreeing to a compromise deal with the school system. The agreement now awaits ratification from rank and file union members.

According to the firsthand account of one delegate, posted at the Daily Kos, “an overwhelming majority” voted to end the strike in the packed, “standing room only” meeting.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the deal an “honest compromise," CNN reported. Meanwhile an announcement from the CTU (which outlines how key contract issues fare in the deal) stated, “We have tremendous victories in this contract; however, it is by no means perfect.”

Chicago teachers’ strike in pictures

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:50:00 +0000

After a week on strike, delegates from the Chicago Teachers Union will meet today to consider a compromise deal and potentially go back to the classrooms. The strike, which began last Monday, pits thousands of teachers against Mayor Rahm Emanuel's sweeping education reform plans. As the New York Times reported Tuesday:

Though a tentative settlement was reached between the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools negotiators, it is anyone's call whether the deal will be accepted Tuesday afternoon by union delegates who chose not to do so when they were first presented with the plan on Sunday night.

This slide show takes you through the strike so far.

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Chicago teachers consider latest offer

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:15:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Teachers in the nation’s third-largest city will pore over the details of a contract settlement Tuesday as the clock ticks down to an afternoon meeting in which they are expected to vote on whether to end a seven-day strike that has kept 350,000 students out of class.

Some union delegates planned to take a straw poll of rank-and-file teachers to measure support for a settlement that includes pay raises and concessions from the city on the contentious issues of teacher evaluations and job security. But many warned the outcome remained uncertain two days after delegates refused to call off the walkout, saying they didn’t trust city and school officials and wanted more details.

Teachers’ strike: Chicago’s just the beginning

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:01:00 +0000

Seven days in, Chicago teachers are still on strike. Yesterday, elected delegates of the Chicago Teachers Union voted not to end the strike, opting instead to reconvene Tuesday after discussing a proposed contract deal with CTU’s broader membership. Soon after their meeting, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he’ll seek a legal injunction declaring the strike illegal and forcing the teachers back to work. So the next few days will bring either a resolution or a major escalation of Chicago’s immediate crisis, which pits a famously strong-willed mayor against a local union intent on defying the “education reform” consensus.

This much is already clear: At a moment when teachers unions are everywhere on the defensive – from legislatures, to bargaining table to Hollywood – the teachers have wrung major concessions from the mayor. In the process, they revealed – and began to reshape – divisions in the education debate, in the Democratic Party and within the labor movement itself.

Chicago teacher strike enters its second week

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:53:00 +0000

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago teachers uncomfortable with a tentative contract offer decided Sunday to remain on strike, insisting they need more time before deciding whether to end an acrimonious standoff with Mayor Rahm Emanuel that will keep 350,000 students out of class for at least two more days.

Emanuel fired back Sunday night by instructing city attorneys to seek a court order forcing Chicago Teachers Union members back into the classroom. "This was a strike of choice and is now a delay of choice that is wrong for our children," he said in a statement.

Presented with a choice on whether to ask members to vote on a contract that union president Karen Lewis had at one point called "a fight for the very soul of public education," the union's 800-member House of Delegates told their leaders they needed more time to talk to the rank and file before ending the city's first teachers strike in 25 years.

Teachers had only a few hours to review a summary of a proposed settlement worked out over the weekend with officials from the nation's third largest school district. That wasn't enough time, they said, to digest a complicated contract that addresses two issues central to the debate over the future of public education across the United States: teacher evaluations and job security.

Quote of the day: “Thugs”

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 22:21:00 +0000

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint joked around at the Values Voter Summit about how easily he gets confused by protesters:

“You know, we had a lot of bad news this week,” DeMint said. “On my way over, I was reading another story about a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets. And then I realized that was a story of the Chicago teachers strike. But we’ve got to think of good things.”

Via ThinkProgress.

Chicago teachers move toward resolution

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 22:04:00 +0000

After a few days of talks between the union and city officials, Chicago School Board president David Vitale announced today that a "framework" is now in place, and the "heavy lifting" is over. "Parents should prepare their children to return to school Monday," Vitale said. However, as CBS/AP reports, it's unclear what the framework entails, and if the union has accepted the district's proposal:

The union is trying to win assurances that laid-off but qualified teachers get dibs on jobs anywhere in the district. But Illinois law gives individual principals in Chicago the right to hire the teachers they want, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel argues it's unfair to hold principals accountable for their schools' performance if they can't pick their own teams.

The district has offered a compromise. If schools close, teachers would have the first right to jobs matching their qualifications at schools that absorb the children from the closed school. The proposal also includes provisions for teachers who aren't hired, including severance.

It wasn't clear if the union had accepted the proposal, but Lewis said it "did not intend to sign an agreement until these matters are addressed."

Union leaders and district officials were in talks for more than 15 hours yesterday, and union leaders held another meeting this afternoon. Though it was closed to journalists, CBS reports that "delegates could be seen through the windows cheering and applauding, some on them on their feet and pumping their fists in the air."

Teacher evaluations at center of Chicago strike

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:16:00 +0000

CHICAGO (AP) — Educators in Los Angeles just signed a new contract with the city's school district. So, too, did teachers in Boston. Both require performance evaluations based in part on how well students succeed, a system that's making its debut in Cleveland.

So what's the problem in Chicago, where 25,000 teachers in the nation's third-largest district have responded to an impatient mayor's demand that teacher evaluations be tied to student performance by walking off the job for the first time in 25 years?

To start, while Chicago's teachers have drawn the hardest line in recent memory against using student test scores to rate teacher performance, contract agreements in other cities — including those reached this week in Boston and Los Angeles — have hardly come quickly or with ease. They were often signed grudgingly, at the direction of a court or following negotiations that took years. And mayors and school officials have also won over reluctant teachers by promising to first launch pilot projects aimed at proving a concept many believe is inherently unfair.

Chicago teachers’ strike grinds into third day

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 19:00:00 +0000

The public exchanges between striking Chicago teachers and the school district grew more personal Wednesday as negotiators returned to the bargaining table on the walkout's third day.

A top district negotiator, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, criticized teachers union President Karen Lewis for using the word "silly" when describing the negotiations to a crowd of adoring teachers a day earlier.

"It is not silly that we spent over 10 hours yesterday attempting to bridge the gap," Byrd-Bennett said just before the talks resumed. "We take these negotiations incredibly serious."

The strike has canceled classes for more than 350,000 students.

Union officials continued to play down the chances of a quick resolution to the dispute, which centers on the district's proposed new teacher evaluation process and a policy on rehiring teachers that have been laid off. The district said it had presented the union with a new comprehensive proposal Tuesday and was demanding either a response in writing or a comprehensive counter-proposal.

"It's going to take time to work things out," Lewis said. "It's also going to take the will to make compromises. We have made quite a few. We would like to see more on their side."

Four key Chicago teachers’ strike questions

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:39:00 +0000

As if on a precisely calibrated timetable, Dean Singleton's Denver Post today published an overwrought screed cheering Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's anti-union efforts on, and urging him to pulverize his city's teachers union in order to send a nationwide message that the education concerns of teachers will no longer be tolerated in the schoolhouse. Singleton, as I documented in my recent Harper's magazine expose, had long used his media empire to denigrate organized labor, so it is no surprise that he's using the crown jewel of his vast MediaNews empire to try to nationalize a municipal dispute between educators and an investment-banker-turned-mayor. If every crisis is an opportunity, this is Singleton's chance to help crush the teachers union in specific and the labor movement in general.

Ed secretary is neutral in Chicago teachers strike

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 21:15:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — Education Secretary Arne Duncan isn't taking sides in the Chicago teachers' strike that is keeping more than 350,000 students out of the classroom.

Duncan says he hopes the union and school board will come together quickly to get kids back in school.

Duncan is also the former chief of Chicago's public school system. He says he's confident both sides are working in the best interests of students.

Duncan says as teachers and school districts have done in elsewhere in the country, they should collaborate at the bargaining table to find a solution that puts kids first.

A spokesman for President Barack Obama said he hasn't taken sides in the dispute. Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney, said teachers were turning their backs on students and that Obama was siding with the strikers.

Stand against Rahm!

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:45:00 +0000

CHICAGO — I was awoken by honking car horns yesterday morning, and couldn't have been happier for the fact. Chicago's public schoolteachers are on strike against the city government and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. And while no one likes the budget crisis that forms the strike's fiscal context, nor the fact that 350,000 students aren't at school, much of Chicago is finding joy in the municipal impasse — which is why, anywhere within earshot of the schools where the Chicago Teachers Union's 25,500 members are picketing in front of their workplaces, solidarity car horns are blasting away.

Since Rahm Emanuel's election in the spring of 2011, Chicago's teachers have been asked to eat shit by a mayor obsessed with displaying to the universe his "toughness" — toughness with the working-class people that make the city tick; toughness with the protesters standing up to say "no"; but never, ever toughness with the vested interests, including anti-union charter school advocates, who poured $12 million into his coffers to elect him mayor (his closet competitor raised $2.5 million). The roots of the strike began when Emanuel announced his signature education initiative: extending Chicago's school day. Overwhelmingly, Chicago's teachers support lengthening the day, which is the shortest of any major district in the country. Just not the way Rahm wanted to ram it down their throats: 20 percent more work; 2 percent more pay.

Romney disappointed by Chicago teachers

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:40:00 +0000

CHICAGO (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney says Chicago teachers are turning their backs on thousands of students and President Barack Obama is siding with the striking teachers.

Romney, in a statement released Monday hours before he was set to land in Chicago for fundraisers, says he is disappointed by the Chicago teachers' decision to walk out of negotiations. Romney says he sides with parents and students over unionized teachers.

Thousands of teachers walked off the job in Chicago's first schools strike in 25 years. The walkout by 26,000 teachers and support staff in the nation's third-largest school district affects almost 400,000 students.

Romney has been critical of public employee unions, including teachers. Romney says union interests run counter to students' education.