2012-10-21 "Labor's Loss in Chicago: Rahm Machiavelli"
by ELLIOT SPERBER [http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/21/rahm-machiavelli/]:
Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and contributor to hygiecracy.blogspot.com. He lives in New York City and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com
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A considerable degree of confusion appears to be attending the ostensible conclusion to the Chicago Teachers’ strike. Indeed, with various interests proclaiming victory, it is difficult to arrive at a clear understanding of just what the outcome portends. Before addressing the facts, however – which are indispensable in any effort to evaluate a situation – a word ought to be given to the context in which the strike unfolded. Among other things, it is important to note that, beyond the talking points regarding school choice, accountability, and teacher and student performance, we must recognize the key austerity impetus subtending the efforts of Rahm Emanuel, and his ilk, to push forward their plan to privatize public schools in Chicago and elsewhere. Like most things that pass for social policy considerations these days, the purpose of shutting down schools and so-called education reform is not the improvement of education so much as it is an effort to convert public schools into private, charter schools.
Whether advanced by the Koch Brother-funded Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, or the no less business-friendly Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel, the ongoing attack on labor and public sector employees and unions is at its root just this effort to transform public education into private education. Just as the privatization of public utilities created and continues to create new markets – creating new sources of profits for businesses and further polarizing wealth – the privatization of public schools is a bonanza for businesses, while its benefit to most people is questionable at best. Confronted by this, unlike the public transit workers’ strike waged in London earlier this summer, in which London’s transit workers’ pushed for better working conditions and pay, the Chicago teachers’ strike must not be seen as an offensive strike. Rather than striking to secure better working conditions and better pay, per se, the Chicago teachers’ strike is a defensive, conservative strike, one in which labor is merely attempting to hold onto not only the wages and benefits that were gained through decades of struggle and which are now under threat, but to their jobs themselves.
Under the familiar call for accountability, which masks the push for of austerity (accountability which, it should be noted, is rarely invoked to rein in corporate criminals) Emanuel demanded that Chicago’s teachers concede some of their benefits in the negotiations over the renewal of their labor contract. Among the things that Rahm Emanuel, and the privatizing classes, demanded were longer working days, greater power over the firing of teachers granted to school principals, and teacher performance evaluations that are tied to standardized test scores – the latter two allowing the mayor and his constituency to more easily shutter public schools, and to replace them with private, charter schools. Initially resisting these efforts, the Chicago teachers soon found themselves facing Rahm Emanuel’s threat of a court-ordered injunction. Cowed by this, the teachers’ union agreed to a compromise.
Among the concessions the union agreed to were just what Emanuel asked for: more rigorous teacher evaluations (though they are only partially, rather than wholly determined by standardized test scores), the aggrandizement of the power of principals to hire or fire teachers based on performance – with layoffs now for the first time being determined by teacher performance – and a lengthening of the school day (an increase of half an hour a day for high schools, 75 minutes a day for elementary schools, and two weeks added to the total school year).
Even a cursory look at these concessions must yield the conclusion that rather than achieving a victory, or even a stalemate, the contract under consideration represents a loss for labor in the ongoing class war of attrition. For, among other things, the lengthening of the school day and the school year alone amounts to something close to four extra weeks of work for high school teachers, and considerably more for primary school teachers. Such an extension of the time teachers are expected to work is hardly remunerated by the raises under negotiation. To be sure, when factoring in the extra time they will have to work, teachers won’t receive much of a raise at all. For the first few years of their new contract, when their work load increases by close to 10% and their pay increases by only 3%, they will be taking a loss. And while the teachers did attain some of their demands – books will be more readily available to students – and stave off a more forceful attack by the forces of privatization, they ultimately lost rather than gained ground.
As it is highly relevant, it is worth reflecting for a moment on the legal argument that Rahm Emanuel advanced in favor of seeking to enjoin the teachers to end their strike. In addition to arguing that their strike was illegal because they were demanding more than mere wages, Emanuel argued that the strike was illegal because it threatened public health and safety. Such an argument (which Bloomberg, by the way, invoked in order to eject demonstrators from Zuccotti Park last year) requires a tremendously narrow-minded and shortsighted conceptualization of public health, one which has long been employed as a pretext for power’s designs. Intimidated by this threat, and vilified by the mainstream press, the teachers backed down. Rather than submitting to his power play, however, and ending their strike, the teachers should have counter-argued that it is not they, but Emanuel himself who is harming the public health by creating social conditions that are objectively harmful to not only teachers and students, but to society in general. For if in the short-term the teachers’ strike is conceivably harmful to the public health, Emanuel’s long-term designs pose a substantially greater harm.
Beyond the fact that public health requires a reasonably well-educated public – a public possessing not only a basic understanding of such health issues as the importance of nutrition, sanitation, and exercise, but also an awareness of the prevalence and transmissibility of communicable diseases, not to mention the environmental issues that determine our public health, or lack thereof – such an education must itself be afforded in conditions that are conducive to learning. Crammed into overcrowded classrooms, Chicago’s students and teachers alike are consigned to operate in facilities that are neglected and decrepit to such an extent as to pose serious risks to the public health. Beyond their other deficiencies, many of the classrooms in the Chicago public schools lack basic air-conditioning. In Chicago’s torrid heat, such conditions alone can severely challenge students’ health, and the public health in general, not to mention the more serious problems attending a generally dilapidated infrastructure.
In addition to the conditions that teachers and students encounter within the schools themselves, however, who can reasonably maintain that it is not in the interest of public health to provide decent living conditions to the sizable portion of the public represented by school teachers? For, as much as those who vilify them argue otherwise, teachers are not gluttons so much as the victims of those very gluttons championed by their detractors. Not only is it well-documented and well-known that nearly all teachers eke out a fairly modest living, if the opponents of teachers, and of the working class, have their way the result will be an even greater number of people living in conditions of precarity – conditions which, it should be noted, have been demonstrated by a mountain of studies to be a contributing cause of illness. Beyond the health problems attending poor nutrition and poor housing, for instance, the stress accompanying the inability to make ends meet is itself a significant cause of disease. Producing such conditions can not possibly be in the interest of the public health.
But Rahm Emanuel is not interested in the health of society so much as he is interested in the health of a mere segment of society. This is hardly new; appealing to health is an old trick of such political types. And though he may not be referring to it by name, in arguing that the teachers’ strike is a public health concern, and therefore justifies his putting it down by force (by violence, which is the opposite of health), in many respects Emanuel is invoking the ancient Roman maxim Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto – the health of the people is the supreme law.
Attributed to the Roman statesman and orator Cicero, the maxim has long been used to justify the machinations of the State and coercive power. Modernly, one of the first political theorists to employ the ancient Roman maxim was none other than the Renaissance political-theorist Niccolo Machiavelli. Titling one of the final sections of his Discourses on Livy with the above maxim, Macchiavelli argued that what was necessary for the health of the people was the supreme law, to which all other laws had to yield. Of course, Macchiavelli’s notion of what comprised ‘the people’ was limited, pretty much, to the prince. Then as now, the people in general were considered something more like a resource from which profit could be extracted. But the maxim’s use is not restricted to princes and their followers.
Fighting against the Royalists in mid-seventeenth century England, and resisting the enclosure, privatization and sale of commonly owned lands, the so-called Levellers appropriated the maxim that the health of the people is the supreme law. Earning their name from their practice of leveling the hedges used to divide the commons, the Levellers argued that the maxim applied not to tyrants and oligarchies, but to the people in general. As such, the Levellers gave the maxim an emancipatory interpretation. Maintaining that it granted people certain rights against the crown, including an extension of the suffrage, the Levellers repeatedly employed the maxim in their struggle for self-government and collective control of lands that had historically been held in common. But the Levellers were not alone in deferring to the maxim. Around the same time, Thomas Hobbes, the great theorist of absolutism, employed the maxim that the health of the people is the supreme law. Rather than the Levellers’ interpretation, however, in his treatise Leviathan Hobbes’ gives the maxim something closer to a Machiavellian reading.
Around the time of Hobbes’s death, John Locke – whose thought was to exert a significant influence on the thought of the North American colonists of the eighteenth century – referred to the maxim in his Second Treatise of Government. And though Locke’s thought is deeply problematic, and he attributes the designation ‘people’ to only a narrow segment of humanity, it is not only important that he employs it against the crown, but his liberatory interpretation of the maxim would be imparted to the North American colonists fighting the British for the ability to govern their own lives. Playing a significant part in the articulation of justice in the years leading up to and beyond the American Revolution, the maxim is appealed to repeatedly as an authority limiting coercive power. Not only did it appear again and again in the writings and speeches of John Adams, among other Founders, the sensibility that the health of the people is the supreme law finds expression in the Declaration of Independence. It is especially noteworthy to remark that in the period following independence from the British, around the time that Shay’s Rebellion was being fought in New England by soldiers and farmers whose homes were seized when they were unable to pay the debts they had accrued while fighting in the war, in the south other debtors challenged their debts as well. Invoking the maxim Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto, they sought to discharge their debts completely. Arguing that high debts are onerous and against the health of the people, the debtors prevailed. Much to the chagrin of their creditors, their debts were forgiven. If the health of the people is the supreme law, the argument goes, that which is hostile to the health of the people is invalid. As such, contracts that would harm the health of the people were nullified – something debtors today might want to consider.
These two interpretations of the maxim, the emancipatory and the dominating, were employed again and again throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Overriding contracts and property law where these infringed on the health of the people, the maxim was used to shut down slaughterhouses and tanneries, as well as to regulate food production, and other industries. And while the maxim did nothing to liberate people from slavery, and excluded Native Americans, African-Americans, and women, not to mention disabled persons as well as the poor from the designation ‘people,’ it nevertheless possessed an emancipatory content in relation to the harms spread by business – one that, today, ought to be expanded. As the 20th century progressed, however, its emancipatory interpretation gave way to a reading more favorable to dominating power. In referring to the health of the people as the supreme law, this latter type of interpretation favors the health of the State and business interests. That is, it possesses a narrow understanding of health that views the people of the world as a population to be managed, a workforce from which to extract profit, and a resource to employ to further its own particular well being. Indeed, according to this reading, the health of the people is for the wealthy what the health of the horse is to the farmer. The horse, whose job’s to drag and haul and otherwise support the lavish carriages of plutocrats, is not to enjoy health for its own sake. It is this reading of the maxim that Michael Bloomberg referred to in clearing out Zuccotti Park last November, and which now Rahm Emanuel appeals to in breaking the Chicago teachers’ strike.
But while Rahm Emanuel may have learned this tyrannical reading of the maxim from Machiavelli, his hostile treatment of his political opponents leads one to wonder whether he ever learned Machiavelli’s chief insight: that a society cannot function without popular support. Indeed, such support is the only thing preventing a given society from wholly collapsing. And though teachers may be announcing that they’re happy to be returning to work, and Emanuel appears to have won this battle, given the state of the economy and the environment, it may very well be that the next strike won’t be a conservative one like this. Rather, it may be a total, permanent strike. For not only has it become apparent that Rahm Emanuel is an abusive person, it is becoming increasingly obvious that that which he advances – that is, the policies of the Democrats as well as the Republicans, of Romney as much as Obama, of capitalism – is abusive. These are not only abusive to people in general, throughout the world, and to animals as well, it wreaks its abuse upon the entire ecosystem. And just as dignity from time to time compels people to quit abusive work relationships, walking out with no intention or desire of ever returning, the next strike might very well see the people of the world simply quit this abusive system for good. The health and dignity of the people of the world demands it.
2012-09-09 "CPS FAILS TO NEGOTIATE FAIR CONTRACT TO PREVENT FIRST LABOR STRIKE IN 25 YEARS; More than 29,000 teachers and education professionals will not report to work today 9/10" press release from "Chicago Teacher's Union":
CHICAGO - After hours of intense negotiations, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent the first teachers strike in 25 years. Pickets are expected to begin Monday at 675 schools and the Board of Education as early as 6:30 a.m. Teachers, paraprofessionals and school clinicians have been without a labor agreement since June of this year.
Union leaders expressed disappointment in the District's refusal to concede on issues involving compensation, job security and resources for their students. CTU President Karen Lewis said, "Negotiations have been intense but productive, however we have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike. This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could avoid. Throughout these negotiations have I remained hopeful but determined. We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve.
"Talks have been productive in many areas. We have successfully won concessions for nursing mothers and have put more than 500 of our members back to work. We have restored some of the art, music, world language, technology and physical education classes to many of our students. The Board also agreed that we will now have textbooks on the first day of school rather than have our students and teachers wait up to six weeks before receiving instructional materials.
"Recognizing the Board's fiscal woes, we are not far apart on compensation. However, we are apart on benefits. We want to maintain the existing health benefits.
"Another concern is evaluation procedures. After the initial phase-in of the new evaluation system it could result in 6,000 teachers (or nearly 30 percent of our members) being discharged within one or two years. This is unacceptable. We are also concerned that too much of the new evaluations will be based on students' standardized test scores. This is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator. Further there are too many factors beyond our control which impact how well some students perform on standardized tests such as poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues beyond our control.
"We want job security. Despite a new curriculum and new, stringent evaluation system, CPS proposes no increase (or even decreases) in teacher training. This is notable because our Union through our Quest Center is at the forefront teacher professional development in Illinois. We have been lauded by the District and our colleagues across the country for our extensive teacher training programs that helped emerging teachers strengthen their craft and increased the number of nationally board certified educators.
"We are demanding a reasonable timetable for the installation of air-conditioning in student classrooms--a sweltering, 98-degree classroom is not a productive learning environment for children. This type of environment is unacceptable for our members and all school personnel. A lack of climate control is unacceptable to our parents.
"As we continue to bargain in good faith, we stand in solidarity with parents, clergy and community-based organizations who are advocating for smaller class sizes, a better school day and an elected school board. Class size matters. It matters to parents. In the third largest school district in Illinois there are only 350 social workers-putting their caseloads at nearly 1,000 students each. We join them in their call for more social workers, counselors, audio/visual and hearing technicians and school nurses. Our children are exposed to unprecedented levels of neighborhood violence and other social issues, so the fight for wraparound services is critically important to all of us. Our members will continue to support this ground swell of parent activism and grassroots engagement on these issues. And we hope the Board will not shut these voices out.
"While new Illinois law prohibits us from striking over the recall of laid-off teachers and compensation for a longer school year, we do not intend to sign an agreement until these matters are addressed.
"Again, we are committed to staying at the table until a contract is place. However, in the morning no CTU member will be inside our schools. We will walk the picket lines. We will talk to parents. We will talk to clergy. We will talk to the community. We will talk to anyone who will listen-we demand a fair contract today, we demand a fair contract now. And, until there is one in place that our members accept, we will on the line.
"We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters throughout the state and country who are currently bargaining for their own fair contracts. We stand with those who have already declared they too are prepared to strike, in the best interests of their students."
"This announcement is made now so our parents and community are empowered with this knowledge and will know that schools will not open on tomorrow. Please seek alternative care for your children. And, we ask all of you to join us in our education justice fight-for a fair contract-and call on the mayor and CEO Brizard to settle this matter now. Thank you."
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The union is not on strike over matters governed exclusively by IELRA Section 4.5 and 12(b).
The Chicago Teachers Union represents 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in the Chicago Public Schools, and by extension, the more than 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third largest teachers local in the United States and the largest local union in Illinois. For more information please visit CTU's website at www.ctunet.com .
2012-09-19 "CTU delegates vote to end strike" by George N. Schmidt from "Substance News"
[http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3630§ion=Article]:
After receiving lengthy reports from each of the union's four officers and from the union's attorney, the members of the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates voted by a large majority to suspend the seven-day-old Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012. The teachers and other school workers who have been on strike will be back in their classrooms at the city's more than 600 real public schools by nine o'clock in the morning on September 19, 2012, ending, for a time at least, the first strike called by the CTU in a quarter century.
The meeting was held according to the traditional structure for the House of Delegates. Each of the officers reported to the members of the House, who stretched, standing room only, from wall to wall in the cavernous hall.
The first report was from Recording Secretary Michael Brunson, who reminded the delegates that the union's officers, attorneys, and "Big Bargaining Team" has begun negotiating in November 2011, but that it was only after the May 23 rallies and march that CPS officials even began paying attention to the union's demands. Following the strike authorization vote of June 6 - 8, some aspects of the negotiations improved, but not many. Brunson pointed out that the majority of the people on the Board's side of the table during the negotiations came from corporate America and had no knowledge of teaching or learning in the real public schools of Chicago.
The longest report came from Financial Secretary Kristine Mayle, who walked the delegates through all 49 Articles of the contract. For the first time, Mayle told the delegates, holding up a loose leaf binder, the union's officers and attorneys had the full 200 pages that had been negotiated. A summary of the changes in the contract was distributed to the delegates.
During the financial secretary's report, it became increasingly clear to delegates that significant changes had been made in the processes that the union would be able to implement inside the schools once the contract was in place. These ranged from increasing powers to the Professional Problems Committee (PPC) to the now-famous "anti-bullying" clause of the Agreement (which was later read in full to the delegates by President Karen Lewis).
One major focus of Kristine Mayle's report was the changes that were made in special education and clinicians sections of the contract. She is a former special education teacher whose award winning school (De La Cruz Middle) was closed down at the end of the Arne Duncan era and given briefly to a charter school (a fight that helped promoted her union activism and work with CORE). She noted that the union had secured many changes in special education procedures that will enable teachers and others helping children with special needs, Numerous teachers were noting that the city's charter schools simply exclude the most needy students with disabilities, then proclaim their superiority over the real public schools that must serve those children.
While there was a lengthy narrative of the changes to improve services for children with disabilities, one of those that stuck out for veteran teachers was that for the first time in the contract, special education teachers will not be required to perform duties outside their assigned duties. For decades, CPS officials have utilized some special services teachers as if they were substitutes to be worked at the whim of the principals.
Jesse Sharkey, CTU vice president and a former history teacher (Senn High School) treated the delegates to a brief history of American unions and place the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012 in that context. He reminded the delegates that every contract results in compromises and that unions cannot strike forever, pointing out that the proposed contract makes the union members much more powerful in the schools.
After the lengthy reports which covered every article of the new contract, questions began, with more than 70 delegates lined up at four microphones in the huge hall. Once again, the meeting was standing-room-only.
But the questions had barely begun when the associate delegate from Steinmetz High School, Sharon Schmidt (Substance editor) asked if a motion were in order. When Karen Lewis responded that it was, Schmidt read from the agenda proposed by the leadership: "The Officers recommend that the Chicago Teachers Union suspend the ongoing strike at the close of this House of Delegates meeting. The strike, picketing, and job actions will cease, and Chicago Teachers Union members will return to work on Wednesday, September 19, 2012."
Earlier in the meeting, the delegates were told that CPS Chief Executive Officer Jean-Claude Brizard (who did not take part in any of the more than 70 negotiating sessions, despite the fact that his annual salary is $250,000, the highest of any public school official in Chicago history) will speak at Trinity United Church, 400 W. 95th Street at 7 PM on Wednesday, September 19, 2012. The teachers were told that Rev. Moss, the pastor of the church, would like to see a sea of red shirts (CTU members) there to ask CEO JC Brizard questions.
Within a few hours after the meeting had adjourned, delegates and leaders of CORE began answering questions about what the contract fight and the strike had "won". According to an email from Sarah Chambers, a teacher and member of the CORE steering committee:
What we won for the kids in this contract:
1) Books on day 1
2) Private rooms for clinicians and security for the kids' files
3) Subs to help students while teachers are testing 1 on 1 or while testing students with modifications and accommodations.
4) Reduced emphasis on standardized testing because merit pay was removed.
5) Reinstated class size article and added that the class size committee with have an LSC member
6) Fewer missed instruction with special education students because IEP meetings can be before and after school
7) Recess
8) Added art, music and world language positions open
9) Potentially more clinicians and social workers when money is available.
10) More stability for students moving to new schools from closed schools because teachers from the closed schools when receive top priority in open positions at the new schools.
11) More resources for the students, since supply money has increased to $250.
12) More preparation time designated to planning instruction since paperwork is reduced.
13) More security for good experienced teachers.
14) Increase in diversity of teaching staff
15) Potentially class size reductions for special education
16) Potentially reduction in class size in library due to lack of tables and seats.
"Why We Strike" message from Teacher Xian B.:
"When you make me cram 30-50 kids in my classroom with no air conditioning so that temperatures hit 96 degrees, that hurts our kids. When you lock down our schools with metal detectors and arrest brothers [siblings] for play fighting in the halls, that hurts our kids. When you take 18-25 days out of the school year for high stakes testing that is not even scientifically applicable for many of our students, that hurts our kids. When you spend millions on your pet programs, but there’s no money for school level repairs, so the roof leaks on my students at their desks when it rains, that hurts our kids. When you unilaterally institute a longer school day, insult us by calling it a 'full school day' and then provide no implementation support, throwing our schools into chaos, that hurts our kids. When you support Mayor Emanuel’s TIF program in diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of school funds into to the pockets of wealthy developers like billionaire member of your school board, Penny Pritzker so she can build more hotels, that not only hurts kids, but somebody should be going to jail. When you close and turnaround schools disrupting thousands of kids’ lives and educations and often plunging them into violence and have no data to support your practice, that hurts our kids. When you leave thousands of kids in classrooms with no teacher for weeks and months on end due to central office bureaucracy trumping basic needs of students, that not only hurts our kids, it basically ruins the whole idea of why we have a district at all. When you, rather than bargain on any of this stuff set up fake school centers staffed by positively motived Central Office staff, many of whom are terribly pissed to be pressed into veritable scabitude when they know you are wrong, and you equip them with a manual that tells them things like, 'communicate with words', that not only hurts our kids, but it suggests you have no idea how to run a system with their welfare in mind. When you do enough of this, it makes me wonder if you really see our students as 'our kids' or 'other people’s children'."
"Rahm Emanuel picked the wrong union to try to bust"
2012-09-23 "Opinion From the picket line: Why a teacher feels she had no choice but to strike" by Leslie Russell [http://secondcityteacher.webs.com/politicalnews.htm]:
Leslie Russell is a Chicago Public Schools teacher.
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I literally almost had a stroke Sunday night when Mayor Rahm Emanuel got on television and said that as a result of the longer school day, Chicago Public Schools students were getting an hour of reading and an hour of writing each day.
Well, I am the reading and writing teacher for most of the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at my school and based on what is happening where I teach, that is plainly a lie. I have one hour to teach both reading and writing. One of my classes is broken into two sections — 30 minutes in the morning and 25 minutes at the end of the day. There are 41 seventh-graders in one classroom, and since I have only 31 desks in my room, we start the period borrowing chairs from two or three different classrooms. And the solution to an overcrowded class of 41?
It is not to hire a new teacher. It is to take 10 seventh-graders out of their seventh-grade homeroom and add them to my eighth-grade homeroom, making a seventh-/eighth-grade split class. That essentially means teaching four different classes in the same hour. If reform is the order of the day, start with the radical reforms of reducing class size to 20 students, provide enough teachers so that each grade level has its own instructor and provide an instructional period for every subject.
Let's not even talk about the fact that I cannot give each student a literature textbook because I do not have enough of them, or the fact that many of the books I distribute are missing covers. I will spare you the details of the email I received from my principal telling me that I am required to use nonfiction books on the Industrial Revolution in my instruction.
Last year my students had a reading and a writing class. This year there is just a reading class. Last year my students had Spanish three days each week. This year they have it once. Last year my students had physical education two days each week. This year they have it once. My students are definitely getting a longer day, but I am hard-pressed to see how it is a better one. To add insult to injury, my classroom was a blazing inferno last week, I was not even given accurate lists of the students in my five classes, and did I already tell you that one of my classes is broken into two discontinuous sessions?
This strike is a strike of no choice. When the mayor gets on television spinning fairy tales about the conditions in our schools and does so with conviction, when my professional judgment is pre-empted by illogical instructional mandates, when my students and I are given challenges to overcome in the place of the resources we need to excel, and when the Chicago Board of Education sets me up for failure and then evaluates my performance based on test scores, I have been left with no choice.
Rahm Emanuel picked the wrong union to try to bust. I will be shouting that from the picket lines for as long as it takes to get teachers a fair contract and for as long as it takes to get students the schools they deserve.
2012-09-09 "Why I'm Striking, JCB- Hyatt Billionaire Owner, Union Busters, Obama Supporter and Chicago School Board Member Penny Pritzker Diverting Hundreds of Millions To Developers" [http://chiteacherx.blogspot.com/2012/09/why-im-striking-jcb.html]:
CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard is on record saying both that CTU leadership is deciding whether or not to strike, and that “everyone knows that a strike would only hurt our kids.”
I just wanted to educate my boss a little on the history of Chicago, as he is relatively new to the area. Chicago is founded on the hard daily struggle of working people. It is the birth of the labor movement—not a movement just for wages and benefits, but a movement that stopped child labor so that each of the kids in CPS schools could attend school instead of working. It was a movement that stopped the practice of working conditions so unsafe that consumers were eating the actual workers who fell into the mix while they were making hot dogs. It was a movement that fought so that workers could have some tiny measure of time with our families rather than spending all waking hours working for the enrichment of their bosses.
But even more importantly, I wanted to educate Mr. Brizard about what it means to “help or hurt our kids”.
When you make me cram 30-50 kids in my classroom with no air conditioning so that temperatures hit 96 degrees, that hurts our kids.
When you lock down our schools with metal detectors and arrest brothers for play fighting in the halls, that hurts our kids.
When you take 18-25 days out of the school year for high stakes testing that is not even scientifically applicable for many of our students, that hurts our kids.
When you spend millions on your pet programs, but there’s no money for school level repairs, so the roof leaks on my students at their desks when it rains, that hurts our kids.
When you unilaterally institute a longer school day, insult us by calling it a “full school day” and then provide no implementation support, throwing our schools into chaos, that hurts our kids.
When you support Mayor Emanuel’s TIF program in diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of school funds into to the pockets of wealthy developers like billionaire member of your school board, Penny Pritzker so she can build more hotels, that not only hurts kids, but somebody should be going to jail.
When you close and turnaround schools disrupting thousands of kids’ lives and educations and often plunging them into violence and have no data to support your practice, that hurts our kids.
When you leave thousands of kids in classrooms with no teacher for weeks and months on end due to central office bureaucracy trumping basic needs of students, that not only hurts our kids, it basically ruins the whole idea of why we have a district at all.
When you, rather than bargain on any of this stuff set up fake school centers staffed by positively motived Central Office staff, many of whom are terribly pissed to be pressed into veritable scabitude when they know you are wrong, and you equip them with a manual that tells them things like, “communicate with words”, that not only hurts our kids, but it suggests you have no idea how to run a system with their welfare in mind.
When you do enough of this, it makes me wonder if you really see our students as “our kids” or “other people’s children”.
And at that moment, I am willing to sacrifice an awful lot to protect the students I serve every day. I am not hurting our kids by striking, I’m striking to restore some semblance of reasonable care for students to this system. I’m doing to tell you, “No, YOU are the one hurting our children, and you need to STOP because what you are doing is wrong, and you are robbing students of their educational opportunities.
I ask anyone who does remotely care about the kids we teach and learn from and triumph and cheer and cry and grow with., to stand with us and fight for a better future for our kids.
See you on the picket line, my friend.
2012-09-15 "CTU Strike 2012 First Week Video"On YouTube: [www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlG5R0zcOY4]
The first week of the historic September 2012 Chicago teachers strike. Interviews and scenes from the picket lines at Amundsen HS, Kenwood Academy, Steinmetz HS, Lawndale Elementary Community Academy, Reilly Elementary, Burley Elementary, Marsh Elementary, Marshall HS, Lane Tech HS, Kelly HS, Monroe Elementary -- all of which are only a small fraction of all the schools on strike in the City.
Also scenes from the massive 30,000-strong teacher rally and march in the Loop on Monday, followed by another massive march on Tuesday. After this rally, a crush of TV cameras and reporters, desperate to get more interview footage, tag along with CTU President Karen Lewis as she leaves the event -- a scene which dramatizes the tremendous importance of this story for the City as well as for National media.
On Wednesday, huge CTU protests and picket lines targeted schools called by the union "scab schools" where parents were encouraged by the Mayor to send their children. Striking teacher Steve Pearson said that Lane Tech "typically can hold 4,000-5,000 students. On Monday [the first day of the strike] we were told to expect 4,200 kids to come here. We had 20. And yesterday it was down to about 10. And today [Wednesday] I'm not sure there are any kids here."
On Saturday, September 15, the time of the completion of this video, the CTU announced that it had reached a "framework for an agreement" but that the strike has not been suspended as of yet. The union negotiating team pointed out that if specific language would be ready for the House of Delegates meeting to consider on Sunday, they would be able to vote on it then.
A unique and essential document on the most important week for the fate of Chicago's and the country's public school system. Length - 26:45
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Part of the mass 30,000-strong rally in Chicago's Loop on first day of strike, Sept. 1. photo: Gary Brooks / Labor Beat
Kenwood Academy HS: Picket lines go up throughout the nation's 3rd largest school system.
photo: Michael S. Elliott / Labor Beat
It was the top story in Chicago day after day. Karen Lewis, Pres. of CTU, encircled by journalists hungry for one more comment. photo: David Vance / Labor Beat
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Rebel Diaz - "Chicago Teacher" by Rebel Diaz
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yN7cRZP58k]:
Salute to the CTU (Chicago Teachers Union)
FREE DOWNLOAD: [http://rebeldiaz.bandcamp.com/track/chicago-teacher]
Performed By: Rodstarz and G1 of Rebel Diaz
Produced By: DJ Illanoiz of Rebel Diaz
[www.RebelDiaz.com] [www.RDACBX.org] [Twitter: @RebelDiaz / @Rodrigostarz / @G1nderful / @illanoiz]
Dir: Dayv Cino [www.MALAandMENTAL.com] [Twitter: @MALAandMENTAL
2012-09-15 "Puerto Rico FMPR Solidarity with CTU Teachers Strike"
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw0_6DgwSnk]
Message of Solidarity from de Puerto Rico Teachers Federation to our colleagues from Chicago
2012-09-12 photographs from "Chicago Tribune" newspaper [http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-120907-teachers-union-strike-public-schools-pictures/]:
Neighbors cheer on Chicago Teachers Union members as they rally near Marshall High School on the West Side of Chicago. — E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 12, 2012
CTU members rally near Marshall High School on the West Side of Chicago. — E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 12, 2012
Betsy Mensah, a physical therapist at 19 CPS schools, pickets with Chicago Teachers Union members outside the CPS headquarters in Chicago on Wednesday. — Heather Charles, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 12, 2012
2012-09-10 "More than 50,000 people surround Chicago Board of Education in support of teachers' strike" by George and Sharon Schmidt
[http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3590§ion=Article]:
By the end of the afternoon of the first day of the Chicago teachers strike of 2012, more than 50,000 people, most of them wearing the now famous "CTU Red", were in downtown Chicago surrounding the headquarters of Chicago Public Schools a few blocks south of the offices of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who currently has overall power and control over the schools.
The arrival of the sea of people, many of whom had spent the beginning of the day on picket lines at real public schools across the city, began after the pickets were taken down late in the morning of the first day of the strike, September 10, 2012.
CTU members and supporters march by City Hall on LaSalle St. on Sept. 10, chanting "Hey Ho, Hey Ho, Rahm Emanual has got to go." Some estimated the crowd at the 3:30 - 6:00 p.m. rally as many as 50,000. Substance photo by Sharon Schmidt.
The massive September 10 Loop rally in the afternoon followed the early morning picketing at all of the schools.
Southwest side art teachers on Monroe St. (east of the crowds on Clark St.), carry homemade and "On Strike" signs. Substance photo by Sharon Schmidt.
O. A. Thorp students and teachers Ms. Lopez, Josh Schmidt, Mr. Alverez, Ms. Carrie Lah, and Sam Schmidt were part of the passionate crowd. Substance photo by Sharon Schmidt.
In response to the nasty comments by Chicago's mayor and his appointed officials, the Chicago Teachers Union issued the following statement WHY WE STRIKE:
[begin statement]
Mayor Emanuel Continues to Insult Public School Educators; This is not a “Strike of Choice.”
Why The Chicago Teachers And School Personnel Have Called A Strike:
Teachers already accepted a much longer day—and now are not being treated with respect. We are on strike for a fair contract that includes the following:
* Pay Fairness. The parties are not far apart on overall compensation, CTU seeks a fairer distribution of pay and to preserve the schedule for career advancement established 45 years ago in the Union’s first labor contract.
* Protect our benefits. Maintain our existing benefits and sick days without increasing the contribution rate.
* Fair Evaluation Procedure. After the initial phase-in period, CPS’s proposed evaluation procedures could result in 6,000 teachers, or nearly a third of all CPS teachers, facing discharge within one or two years. It places too much emphasis on standardized test scores, which diminishes children’s education and punishes teachers unfairly.
* Teacher Training. CPS is imposing a new curriculum at all schools and a strict, stringent evaluation system. Teachers have asked for more training, but CPS proposes no increase, or in some cases decreased, teacher training.
* Timetable for air conditioning. Teachers insist that CPS agree to a reasonable timetable to install air conditioning in student classrooms. In July and August, students sit in sweltering 98-degree heat, and many classrooms also need air conditioning.
Other issues of importance -
CPS-sponsored legislation bars teachers from striking over certain issues, but we nonetheless expect to include the following in our next labor contract:
* Fair recall procedure for laid off teachers. This summer, CTU agreed to the Mayor’s longer school day, and the agreement included a fair recall procedure for laid off teachers. The new labor contract must include a fair recall procedure.
* Fair compensation for a longer school year. If teachers are expected to work a longer school year, they should be fairly compensated for the extra work. Neutral Fact Finder Edwin Benn ruled that teachers should be paid for their extra work.
The union is not on strike over matters governed exclusively by IELRA Section 4.5 and 12(b).
The Chicago Teachers Union represents 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in the Chicago Public Schools, and by extension, the more than 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third largest teachers local in the United States and the largest local union in Illinois. For more information please visit CTU’s website at www.ctunet.com .
2012-09-11 "Teachers in Chicago strike over pay and evaluation changes" from "Education International"[http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/news_details/2284]:
As many as 6,000 US teachers are facing potential dismissal due to recent education reforms that were passed in Chicago, a city which houses the third-largest public school district in the country.
Chicagoan teachers' jobs will now be subject to an evaluation based on their students' standardised test scores. This, among other issues such as teacher benefits and pay increase freezes, triggered the largest education strike in 25 years on Sunday, 9 September, by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which represents around 30,000 teachers state-wide.
Failed negotiations -
The strike, which has left as many as 350,000 students out of school, was deemed a reluctant, but necessary, choice by CTU President Karen Lewis after several negotiation attempts between the union and school administrators had failed over a period of eight months. "This is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator," Lewis said.
"There are too many factors beyond our control which impact on how well some students perform on standardised tests such as poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues," she said.
Following Sunday's strike, the union entered immediate negotiations with Chicago legislative officials and Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday, but a collective agreement has not yet been reached.
US unions' support -
EI's affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has issued a letter of support for its affiliate, the CTU.
In it, AFT President Randi Weingarten states: "The American Federation of Teachers and our members across the country stand firmly with the CTU, and we will support its members in their efforts to secure a fair contract that will enable them to give their students the best opportunities.
"CTU members - the women and men who spend every day with Chicago's children - want to have their voice and experience respected and valued. They want to be treated as equal partners in making sure every student in Chicago succeeds. That has been the CTU's guiding philosophy throughout these negotiations, and it remains so on the picket lines. The students, teachers and educational support staff - and the city of Chicago - deserve a school system that works for everyone. In the end, that is what this strike is all about."
EI's affiliate, the National Education Association (NEA), also issued a letter of solidarity with the CTU. "On behalf of over three million National Education Association members across the country, I am writing to express our solidarity with you and your fellow Chicago Teachers Union members," wrote NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. "The fact that more than 90 per cent of your membership participated in the strike authorization vote is incredible. This level of participation illustrates how deeply your membership cares about providing the best possible atmosphere for learning and student development, and we salute you. You are on the frontlines - giving students the tools they need to succeed in school and in life. I hope for a quick resolution so that you can get back to doing what you love - providing great public schools for the students of Chicago."
Education International (EI) solidarity -
EI stands in solidarity with both the CTU and our affiliate unions, the AFT and NEA. EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen stated: "EI represents the voice of teachers worldwide, and Chicago's teachers need to be heard; teachers' job security should not suffer as a result of poor education reforms. Quality education is contingent upon quality, effective teachers, whose rights should not be infringed. The quality of teaching cannot be assessed on the basis of standardised tests of students. Chicago's teachers deserve a fair system of evaluation as well as appropriate pay and benefits."
[http://www.laborfightback.org/]
Support Chicago Teachers! No to Strikebreaking by Injunctions!
Trade unionists and defenders of public education were outraged to learn that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has called for a court injunction to end the one-week strike of the 26,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU)
Emanuel’s late-night announcement on September 17 came immediately after the CTU’s House of Delegates, with representatives from all the city’s 600 schools, voted to continue the strike for at least two days, so that they could seriously review the complicated and lengthy proposed settlement agreed to earlier in the day by CTU and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
The House of Delegates felt they needed more time to discuss the tentative agreement and clarify all the details before deciding to end the strike. In addition, according to reports, many delegates were dissatisfied with aspects of the proposed agreement and felt that the bargaining team could still do better. The House of Delegates voted to meet again on Tuesday, September 18.
Emanuel’s injunction threat raises the stakes in this struggle to a new level. Emanuel is now claiming that the “continued action by the union leadership is illegal on two grounds — it is over issues that are deemed by state law to be non-strikeable, and it endangers the health and safety of our children.”
Both of these claims are without merit: The teachers are striking over multiple issues in the contract that are strikeable and have not been resolved. Moreover, one of the major complaints from teachers and parents in Chicago is precisely about the unsafe and unhealthy conditions in most public schools.
Emanuel’s call for an injunction will no doubt infuriate the teachers, who have constantly denounced the mayor’s “bullying tactics” against their union. The mayor’s latest move shows clearly that he and the school board, acting overtly on behalf of corporate interests hell-bent on privatizing and dismantling public education in Chicago and across the country, will stop at nothing in their drive to weaken and if possible destroy the union.
This is why it is more necessary than ever to ratchet up effective labor-community support for the embattled Chicago teachers to beat back this attack and win this struggle in defense of public education.
Should the Chicago Teachers Union decide on Tuesday, September 18 to continue their strike, we in the Emergency Labor Network urge labor, student, and community organizations to organize mass mobilizations — up to and including walkouts, occupations, and job actions — in solidarity with their struggle.
An injury to one is an injury to all!
---
Solidarity Can Help Ensure Victory for the Chicago Teachers Strike!
The strike is undeniably one of the most significant labor struggles in decades. What is at stake is not only the working conditions of Chicago teachers but also their job security and preservation of their union. Moreover, the teachers are fighting for the survival of public education in the face of the campaign being waged by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, formerly the head of the Chicago public school system, to Charterize and Privatize the nation’s school system
Under his plan and the one being pushed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago School Board — an appointed group made up of corporate CEOs, real estate magnates and bankers — “failing schools” would be closed and turned over to private interests or made charter schools employing non-union teachers and free from state supervision.
As this historic fight continues, the corporate-driven propaganda mills are working overtime to demonize teachers and especially their leaders. During the September 11 widely watched “Morning Joe” MSNBC program, Joe Scarborough, a former member of Congress, repeatedly castigated the teachers’ union leaders as “stupid.” The Washington Post denounced them as well and was joined by both of Chicago‘s major newspapers — the Tribune and Sun Times — in placing the blame for the inevitable disruption of life in the city squarely on the teachers. But as Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis explained, “The teachers had no choice.” And the 98% vote authorizing the strike proved conclusively that the rank-and-file were at one with their leaders — in fact, the rank-and-file are the leaders.
According to Lewis, the city’s proposed evaluation scheme — basing teachers’ advancement and job security on students’ standardized testing — could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs. She called the plan “unacceptable.” How could any union worth its salt not agree?
We live in the age of austerity, and unfortunately too many unions across the country have bought into the employers’ demands for cutbacks, concessions and “shared sacrifices,” resulting in massive layoffs, cuts in wages and benefits, and worsening working conditions. Now, at last, the Chicago Teachers Union has stepped forward and said, “Enough!” Their fight is our fight, and we in the Emergency Labor Network urge all unions throughout the country, joined by defenders of public education, parents, students, and community allies, to join this historic struggle and demonstrate solidarity with the embattled teachers, including providing financial support.
There is plenty of money available to meet the needs of all of the Chicago teachers and provide students with a quality education. For starters, the big banks and corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars, having been bailed out by the same federal government that refuses to pour more money to improve and reinvigorate the public school system. Taxes on the wealthy, scandalously low even when compared to the Clinton years, need to be substantially increased. But this is not what is on the table in Chicago. Instead, ruling circles are demanding that the teachers, not the millionaires or billionaires, assume the burden of the debt and deficit.
If there is one thing that this strike should clarify for anyone who still believes that the Democratic Party is the party of the U.S. working class, just consider: Democrat Rahm Emanuel is leading the charge against the CTU, Democrat Arne Duncan is behind him 100%, and Democratic President Obama, who famously said in a message to labor, “I’ll walk with you on picket lines as president of the U.S.,” appointed both of the above to high office and supports their policies.
Isn’t it time for labor to organize independently of both major corporate parties and do what unions have done in other countries and that is establish a party that genuinely represents workers and the great majority?
2012-09-18 "Chicago you are not alone... World-wide support grows for Chicago Teachers Union strike" by Rich Gibson from "Substance News"
[http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3627§ion=Article]:
Rich Gibson is an emeritus professor of education at San Diego State University and co-founder of the Rouge Forum.
---
The already historic Chicago school workers’ strike is still on. As I write this, my understanding is that support for the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012 from around the USA and around the world continues to grow, and that readers can learn more about that at the CTU website. This true class war brought to the forefront nearly all of the realities of US schooling today:
*the coming nationally regimented curricula,
*anti-working class high-stakes exams which don’t measure learning but do deepen segregation between teachers and students, and divides each group against itself,
*merit pay, akin to piece-work bonuses using fudged up science as proofs,
*the vital role of school as a baby-sitting backup for employers,
*the relationship of schooling and cruel poverty,
*the attacks on tenure, seniority, school closures, and, especially, ruthless layoffs in a time when more than 20% of the nation is jobless and 2 million, mostly poorly educated, people are in jail.
Moreover, the strike highlights the unity of the wings of the US ruling class on issues that are absolutely critical to them: mis-education, wars, bailouts, and torture. The direct line from Rahm Emanuel and his appointed school board composed of Chicago's elites, to Arne Duncan, to Obama, and Mitt Romney heaping praise on the Rahm regime is proof enough.
The courage of Chicago's school workers also shattered more than three decades of demoralization in the working class.
The strike went far beyond the massive, but hollow, Occupy Wall Street movement in showing without question that this is class war with the government acting as an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich, a real corporate state.
That is more than matched by an organized Chicago Teachers Union which has a broadly democratic hierarchy and knowledgeable, and acknowledged, leaders. In short, while the strike has many ideas (respect, justice, jobs, income, anti-racism and more) its moving idea, imputed or known, is class war.
In that context, direct action at a critical workplace, indeed the centripetal organizing place of de-industrialized American life, school, shows that nothing moves when labor, in solidarity, walks away and defends the jobs of united members and their allies.
The strikes' many valuable lessons for students and the entire US population are far more important than another week of drudgery: teaching to the new tests attached to the not-so Common Core.
The strike united tens of thousands of Chicagoans across lines of race, age, industry... those divisions being some of the Achilles' heels of every workers' movement.
Despite the deception of the for-profit media, surveys say that a majority of Chicagoans support the strike as well, a result of persistent patient organizing, true organizing, that appeared suddenly in the eyes of the for profit press, but that Substance editors knew would come to fruit long ago. It's a qualitative leap, a philosophy lesson in how things change: quantity becoming quality. Chicago support is so powerful that even Fox News felt compelled to report it.
As the strike enters week two and the arrogant, also brittle, Rahm Emanuel stages another of his predictable middle-school fits, we can also see what is, and is not--happening, but could happen anyway.
NEA's convention passed a motion to support the strike last July, as reported in Substance.
AFT sent President Randi Weingarten to the strike. She mouthed support.
Joe Biden who spoke enthusiastically to both the NEA and AFT conventions this summer said nothing although his stump speech, "Follow the Money!" seems appropriate these days. (http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3392§ion=Article)
Rahm Emanuel insists that Obama backs him: "I want you to understand, the president has weighed in," Emanuel said. "Every issue we're talking about regarding accountability of our schools, quality in our schools to the education of our children, is the core thrust of Race to the Top."
Little could be more glaring than the fact that Obama single-handedly conducted the second, elephantine, auto bailout without congressional support, but he won't bail out the schools.
What is not happening is the two big school workers' unions, the National Education Association and the parent body of Chicago's Local One, the America Federation of Teachers, moving fast to support this heroic job action.
NEA has not sent its rank and file leadership, the NEA Representative Assembly delegates, a single word of support for the strike. Rather, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel ($465,000 a year) travels the nation on a bus tour with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and, sometimes, Obama, to back the Democratic candidate who ratcheted up the Bush No Child Left Behind project in schools with the meth-inspired Race to the Top.
Now, with the threat of an injunction dangling, the leaders of NEA and AFT who declared a historic partnership in San Diego four years ago (reported in Substance) are not doing what should be done: organizing to spread the strike to other urban areas that AFT represents and, in NEA's case, to areas like LA where a merged local is in place and New York where Weingarten's caucus still runs the show.
This is not an unknown tactic although, granted, few people in either union remember how to actually lead a real strike. NEA's Local One, the first a la Chicago, a Michigan local north of Detroit, formed as a multiple association bargaining organization. When one local went on strike, as often happened in the 60's, 70's, and 80's, local leaders routinely responded to threats of injunctions with the reality of a much larger strike.
Be clear: the only illegal strike is a strike that fails. When judges meet masses of organized workers, determined to control their work places, able to take the reins of the value they alone create, the definition of an "illegal strike" can quickly become a legal "Job action against unfair labor practices."
In addition to backing the strike with spreading direct action, NEA and AFT could take away a prime element of boss' power, hunger and foreclosures. With about 4.3 million organized school workers on the AFT and NEA rolls, even a dollar from each of them, perhaps each adopting a Chicago teacher or family, could erase that threat in 48 hours.
But NEA and AFT top bosses are not doing that. Why?
Just as there is a direct line from the strike to the reality of class warfare, so is there a direct line to empire's wars.
The education agenda is a war agenda: class war and imperialist war.
Part of the ideological drive to sharpen control over the nation's schools is the very real promise of perpetual war in the midst of an empire that even former dedicated cold war hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his book "Strategic Vision," says is in rapid decay, now organizing chaos.
Any country engaged in the US's numerous wars, where more than half the total US budget goes to warfare (the known budget, setting aside the unknown, like the Central Intelligence Agency, the President's private army) would want, to one degree or another, to use schools as human munition factories promoting witless forms of patriotism and, especially, in the words of Chalmers Johnson, teach so little history that “Americans cannot connect cause and effect.â€
To a degree, that worked, and to an equally powerful degree, the strike counters that, blows back hard.
What does that have to do with the NEA and AFT lack of support for the school workers marching on picket lines when, as we know, nearly every teacher-strike has this in mind: "I Don't Want to Strike, But I Will"?
Everything.
NEA and AFT tops are determined to elect Obama, above all else. The electoral campaign is disrupted by the "embarrassing" strike. Teachers, who typically give Democrats tens of thousand of volunteer hours--the unions give them hundreds of million of dollars--might decide not to vote Obama.
Why this devotion to electoral work? Because it keeps the members, who commonly believe in it, busy, it creates a spectacle, and serves as a reason for the labor leaders to exist. Nobody, however, ever voted the rich out of their money as the wife of Chicago's Albert Parsons, Lucy, said again and again.
The last thing NEA and AFT's upper national ranks want is a mass, class conscious movement, a la Chicago, growing up around them.
Why? Because it would make them irrelevant. Their job depends on selling labor peace, the work of their members to employers (who these leaders describe as partners) in exchange for dues income. That is precisely the historical exchange: domesticated labor for the life of a contract for money (the money that in part pays Van Roekel that $465 thousand and probably made former NEA president, Reg Weaver a millionaire) $696,949 in his last year of office.
That, however, is not their only source of income and they know it. While they sell neutralized schooling, they also sell, and get paid for, the empires wars.
NEA and AFT's heads serve on bodies like the National Endowment for Democracy, little more than a front for the CIA. Substance editor George Schmidt's book on that, "The AFT and the CIA" would be a useful primer for doubters.
NEA's Reg Weaver retired at another connected group, Education International, the inheritor of the cold war's CIA run international teacher union. He was joined there by other former NEA and AFT presidents, their salaries unknown.
Why do that? Why be Quislings and sit in friendly circumstances with ruthless killer spies of the empire?
For the same reason the American Federation of Labor has done it for a hundred years and more: The idea that if other nations' workers do worse, US workers will do better. It is something of an extension of the old AFL idea that excluding workers from the craft jobs they controlled, like black workers and women especially, those who had the jobs would do better.
It's never worked, but it worked well for those exploiting the idea (those labor bosses who deny the contradictory interests of employers and employees and, instead declare their unity) shattering the very reason most people think unions exist.
So, the structures of NEA and AFT, or the entire AFL-CIO, are not going to do us much good.
But, Chicago, you are not alone.
We have learned from each of you and your solidarity. It’s the best pedagogy in the country now. We have seen that it is possible, and right, to rebel. We know that to develop real solidarity, united workers with clear ideas will need to boil up within the unions, as organizing boiled over in Chicago. Your battle has been inspiring, heartening, and if you choose to fight on, there are millions of school workers, professors, students, and community people who are behind you–if necessary with money. We know paychecks run out very soon. The one thing we can, certain, do is pony up and send you some cash. Just show us how.
And, we will know, if not now, in the future, that the way to support strikers is to spread the strike.
---
Some of the community leaders speaking during the rally in Chicago's Grant Park at the time of the march on the Regency Hyatt Hotel. Last winter, as Substance reported then, Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered the arrest of Occupy Chicago people, including nurses, from the site where the above speeches were being given. Substance photo by Kati Gilson.
"The Chicago Teachers Union Calls First strike in 25 Years; Solidarity with the Chicago Teachers Urgently Needed!" message from The Editorial Board of "The Organizer" Newspaper:
The Chicago teachers are on strike. The struggle of the public school teachers in Chicago, the back yard of President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has nationwide implications; in fact, it has already begun to shape up as one of the most important labor struggles in many years, with a powerful corporate anti-teacher lobby pulling out all stops in their effort to defeat the Chicago teachers.
It is now time for every AFT local in the country to organizing solidarity resolutions and financial support for the embattled Chicago unions.
Statements from international teachers' unions are also urgently needed and should be sent directly to the CTU. For their contact information, please visit CTU's website at www.ctunet.com.
For other unions, central labor councils and community organizations, steps to back the CTU can start with resolutions of support, pledges of financial assistance, and commitments to walk picket lines. In Chicago, CTU members are available to speak at union meetings in Chicago, and could call or Skype into meetings elsewhere.
The Chicago teachers need -- and deserve -- everyone's support!
For more background on this battle, please click the link below: [http://socialistorganizer.org/kilha]
"Chicago AFT Local 1 CORE Candidate for Financial Secretary Kristine Mayle Speaks Out On Privatization"
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqX3KhGgXlc]:
Privatization of Chicago public education is a central issue according to AFT Local 1 teacher and candidate for Secretary Treasurer Kristine Mayle. She spoke recently in Detroit at the Labor Notes conference about these issues in Chicago schools. For more information on CORE go to [www.coreteachers.org]
Additional videos from Labor Video Project [P.O. Box 720027, San Francisco, CA 94172] [laborvideo.blip.tv] [www.laborvideo.org]:
* "AFT Pres Weingarten Taking Money From Walton Foundation Controlled by Wal-Mart: Washington DC AFT Local 6 VP Nathan A. Saunders Speaks" [http://blip.tv/file/3547715]
* AFT Pres Weingarten On The Crisis In Education, Privatization & The Obama Administration
[http://blip.tv/file/3519531]
Vermont AFL-CIO Resolution Supporting Chicago Teachers Union,
Adopted unanimously by the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO's convention on 9/9/12:
Submitted by the Green Mountain Labor Council & United Academics (AAUP/AFT Local 3203)
Whereas all students deserve the right to a quality public education in their neighborhood school, and
Whereas all students deserve smaller class sizes to receive adequate attention from teachers, and
Whereas all students deserve access to a broad and diverse curriculum that includes art, world languages, computer literacy, and physical education, and
Whereas all students deserve support including fully-staffed libraries in all schools, access to social workers, school nurses, therapists and psychologists, and
Whereas teachers deserve to be adequately compensated for their work, and
Whereas the revenue necessary to fund a quality public education can be substantially realized by reallocating resources that go to mostly non-union charter schools and other allocations which currently siphon revenue from public schools, and
Whereas teachers deserve protection against arbitrary dismissal and a fair recall procedure so that the talents and expertise of experienced teachers can be put to the best use serving the students of Chicago, and
Whereas the Chicago Board of Education, among other concessions, is demanding “merit pay” for teachers based on student test scores, despite a consensus among researchers that such scores do not reliably measure a teacher’s ability, and
Whereas the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is standing up for the children of Chicago and for all public employees and unions in this time of budget cutting and union busting, and
Be it resolved that the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO supports the Chicago Teachers Union in its fight to negotiate a contract that addresses all of these issues with the Chicago Board of Education.
Be it further resolved that we will help raise funds towards assisting CTU and their members during a strike.
Be it further resolved that the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO endorses local solidarity events in support of the CTU.
Be it further resolved that the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO communicate such support to its members, including asking them to sign petitions and communicate their support for CTU and its demands to the Chicago Board of Education and Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
2012-09-11 "Why We're Striking in Chicago" by Karen Lewis from "Common Dreams"
[http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/274-41/13414-focus-why-were-striking-in-chicago]:
Teachers, paraprofessionals and school clinicians in Chicago have been without a labor agreement since June of this year. Following the inability of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to reach an agreement over benefits, the role of standardized tests in teacher evaluations, and physical improvements to schools that teachers say are harming both teacher and student performance, the CTU has announced that a city-wide stirke will begin today - the first teachers strike in 25 years. Pickets are expected at 675 schools and the Board of Education. The following are remarks from CTU President Karen Lewis.
Negotiations have been intense but productive, however we have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike. This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could avoid. Throughout these negotiations have I remained hopeful but determined. We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve.
Talks have been productive in many areas. We have successfully won concessions for nursing mothers and have put more than 500 of our members back to work. We have restored some of the art, music, world language, technology and physical education classes to many of our students. The Board also agreed that we will now have textbooks on the first day of school rather than have our students and teachers wait up to six weeks before receiving instructional materials.
Recognizing the Board's fiscal woes, we are not far apart on compensation. However, we are apart on benefits. We want to maintain the existing health benefits.
Another concern is evaluation procedures. After the initial phase-in of the new evaluation system it could result in 6,000 teachers (or nearly 30 percent of our members) being discharged within one or two years. This is unacceptable. We are also concerned that too much of the new evaluations will be based on students' standardized test scores. This is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator. Further there are too many factors beyond our control which impact how well some students perform on standardized tests such as poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues beyond our control.
We want job security. Despite a new curriculum and new, stringent evaluation system, CPS proposes no increase (or even decreases) in teacher training. This is notable because our Union through our Quest Center is at the forefront teacher professional development in Illinois. We have been lauded by the District and our colleagues across the country for our extensive teacher training programs that helped emerging teachers strengthen their craft and increased the number of nationally board certified educators.
We are demanding a reasonable timetable for the installation of air-conditioning in student classrooms - a sweltering, 98-degree classroom is not a productive learning environment for children. This type of environment is unacceptable for our members and all school personnel. A lack of climate control is unacceptable to our parents.
As we continue to bargain in good faith, we stand in solidarity with parents, clergy and community-based organizations who are advocating for smaller class sizes, a better school day and an elected school board. Class size matters. It matters to parents. In the third largest school district in Illinois there are only 350 social workers-putting their caseloads at nearly 1,000 students each. We join them in their call for more social workers, counselors, audio/visual and hearing technicians and school nurses. Our children are exposed to unprecedented levels of neighborhood violence and other social issues, so the fight for wraparound services is critically important to all of us. Our members will continue to support this ground swell of parent activism and grassroots engagement on these issues. And we hope the Board will not shut these voices out.
While new Illinois law prohibits us from striking over the recall of laid-off teachers and compensation for a longer school year, we do not intend to sign an agreement until these matters are addressed.
Again, we are committed to staying at the table until a contract is place. However, in the morning no CTU member will be inside our schools. We will walk the picket lines. We will talk to parents. We will talk to clergy. We will talk to the community. We will talk to anyone who will listen-we demand a fair contract today, we demand a fair contract now. And, until there is one in place that our members accept, we will on the line.
We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters throughout the state and country who are currently bargaining for their own fair contracts. We stand with those who have already declared they too are prepared to strike, in the best interests of their students.
This announcement is made now so our parents and community are empowered with this knowledge and will know that schools will not open on tomorrow. Please seek alternative care for your children. And, we ask all of you to join us in our education justice fight-for a fair contract-and call on the mayor and CEO Brizard to settle this matter now. Thank you.
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, right, tells reporters at a news conference outside the union's headquarters that the city's 25,000 public school teachers will walk the picket line. (photo: Sitthixay Ditthavong/AP)
2012-09-12 "Janitors plan one-day solidarity strike for teachers; In a show of solidarity, some janitors may be joining Chicago teachers on the picket lines" by Linda Lutton[http://www.wbez.org/news/janitors-plan-one-day-solidarity-strike-teachers-102363]
In a show of solidarity, some janitors may be joining Chicago teachers on the picket lines.
Tom Balanoff, president of SEIU Local 1, says many of the 1,500 janitors who work in Chicago public schools have wanted to join striking teachers. Balanoff says he’s now filed a notice that could make that possible.
"On Friday, there very well may be Local 1 members—janitors—who will stand outside and support the teachers instead of go to work."
Balanoff was among more than a dozen union leaders, representing everyone from nurses to electricians to police, who voiced support for striking teachers yesterday. State and national teachers union officials were there as well, including Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the Chicago Teachers Union. They spoke outside Chicago Public Schools headquarters.
Robert Kelly is head of the CTA rail workers’ union.
"Although our teachers are not in the classroom today teaching, they stand here today teaching all of us what is right when they fight for what is right—what is theirs!"
The leaders said the labor movement had to fight to get free public education for every child, and now has to fight to protect it.
Call to action from the Chicago Anarchists:
Four Star Anarchist Organization call for solidarity
Come meet up with Four Starz and Wobblies for a Day Without a Teacher!
Look for this banner and our red-n-black contingent. :)
Location: Plaza Tenochtitlan (18th and Blue Island) Time: 1:45 Rally, March begins promptly at 2:15
2012-09-10 "Payback time: Occupy, Anarchist groups return favors to Chicago Teachers Union" by Anne Sorock
[http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/09/payback-time-occupy-anarchist-groups-return-favors-to-chicago-teachers-union/]:
I've been documenting the presence of the Chicago Teachers Union at non-education-related, radical protests over the past year. From Occupy to Anarchist, gay pride, and anti-NATO protests, the union deploys its members not on the basis of "for the children" but rather for political solidarity.
On the first day of the strike as teachers refuse to accept merit pay and a 16 percent raise over four years [http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/09/11/heartland-institute-reacts-strike-chicago-teachers-union], those groups that the Chicago Teachers Union supported are repaying the favors.
Today, an Anarchist march in Chicago rallied the Four Star Anarchist Group members in support of the teachers:
Occupy Chicago, which already conducted a march on labor day in conjunction with the Chicago Teachers Union, is bringing its members to this afternoon's Chicago Teachers Union rally:
Flashback to this past June, at the Chicago Gay Pride parade, the Chicago Teachers Union's float featured the President and Vice President of the Union partying while members in red shirts marched in the parade:
In the meantime, some groups are calling on President Obama to join the picket line, citing his statement in 2007 [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/have-president-obama-come-home-and-walk-picket-line-chicago-teachers-union-he-promised-2007/r084LdlB]: "And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the (USA). Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner."
[ ... ]
"CTU Strike, Day One: Two Reports" from Labor Beat (Committee for Labor Access):
CTU Strike, Day 1 - Amundsen High School [http://youtu.be/HNCTdwJQLQk]:
On the first day of the historic 2012 Chicago Teachers strike (Sept. 10), picket lines went up all over the city. Labor Beat sent out camera crews to a number of locations, and here are the first short reports from just 2 of those schools: Amundsen High School and Steinmetz High School pickets in the early hours of Monday morning. At both locations, many motorists honked their horns in solidarity as they drove by, showing their appreciation for the teachers' organizational strength and courage.
Striking Amundsen H.S. teacher Colleen Murray (photo: Labor Beat)
Monday morning commuters going to work happily greeted Steinmetz strikers with honking horns. (photo: Labor Beat)
Brief report from Amundsen High School picket line at 7 am Monday morning, the first day of the historic Chicago Teachers Union strike.
CTU Strike, Day 1 - Steinmetz High School [http://youtu.be/HyYatvriZMw]: On the first day of the historic 2012 Chicago Teachers strike (Sept. 10), picket lines went up at Steinmetz High School. Many motorists honked their horns in solidarity as they drove by, showing their appreciation for the teachers' organizational strength and courage.
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2012-09-10 "Four Reasons Chicago’s Teachers Are On Strike" by Miles Kampf-Lassin
[http://occupiedchicagotribune.org/2012/09/four-reasons-chicagos-teachers-are-on-strike]:
A picket line outside Gale School in Rogers Park on the morning of Monday, September 10. (Photo: Sarah Jane Rhee/Chicago Indymedia)
Across mainstream media and through the megaphone of city government, Chicago public school teachers have been consistently demonized and criticized for everything from self-serving greed, to negligence of their duties, and lack of care and respect for students.
Mayor Emanuel and his hand-picked school board—stacked with millionaires and former charter administrators—along with CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, have continued to use their dominion over the school system to apply a corporate model of school reform to the Chicago Public Schools.
This type of “reform” has allowed private operators to take control of public schools, undermine the teachers union, close and turn around neighborhood schools rather than invest in them, and over-test students rather than provide them a comprehensive and nurturing education.
Meanwhile the Chicago Teachers Union, numbering nearly 30,000 members, is demanding that CPS cease this drift toward putting control of schools in private hands, and provide the necessary conditions for effective and equal public education—putting the needs of students ahead of corporate and government powerbrokers.
So what are the teachers fighting for?
A better school day: A comprehensive education including not only curricula in math, science and history but also art, music, physical education and foreign languages in all Chicago Public Schools.
Wraparound services and adequate staffing to support students in need: This includes counselors, social workers, librarians and school nurses with defined job descriptions as well as preparation and break time.
Recall rights for educators and school staff: Hundreds of teachers have already been displaced by school closures across the city and more will be by the planned closing of at least 100 more schools in the coming years.
Fair compensation: No merit pay, less reliance on standardized tests and pay commensurate to increased time in the classroom as well as inflation. CPS reneged last year on the contractually obligated 4 percent pay raise negotiated in 2007 and is currently offering annual 2 percent raises over the next four years. An independent fact-finder’s report released in July recommended pay raises of 15-18 percent next year.
Picket outside Darwin Elementary in Logan Square on September 10. (Photo: Matt McLoughlin)
There are of course many other points of contention in negotiations, but these demands represent the core reasons that 98 percent of the CTU membership voted to authorize a strike. They represent the contours of a larger struggle against the neoliberal model of corporatized education being pushed by Emanuel, Brizard, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and their ilk.
As CTU President Karen Lewis proclaimed to a massive crowd of thousands of teachers and their supporters at a Labor Day rally in Daley Plaza, “This fight is for the very soul of public education, not only in Chicago but everywhere.”
The American Federation of Teachers—the nation’s 1.5 million-member education labor union, which has been complicit in corporate education “reform” in the past—has come out with a statement of support for Chicago teachers. President Randi Weingarten says: “Chicago’s teachers want what is best for their students and for Chicago’s public schools… The AFT and its members stand with the CTU.”
2012-09-09 "Chicago teachers strike for first time in 25 years; contingency sites ready, charters remain open" by ROSALIND ROSSI and LAUREN FITZPATRICK
[http://www.suntimes.com/15041317-761/union-calls-press-conference-to-update-strike-status.html]:
“Negotiations have been intense but productive, however we have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike,” Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said at a dramatic 10 p.m. Sunday press conference. “Real school will not be open [Monday]. ... No CTU member will be inside our schools.
“Please seek alternative care for your children.”
The announcement was quickly blasted by Mayor Rahm Emanuel as “a strike of choice” that didn’t have to happen if talks continued. He repeatedly declared: “My team is available now.”
But Lewis, just before the midnight strike deadline, said talks wouldn’t resume until Monday. She said she texted School Board President David Vitale and they agreed to meet Monday.
A “disappointed” Emanuel said the latest deal offered to the teachers was “very respectful of our teachers and is right by our children.”
“The issues that remain are minor,” Emanuel said. “This is totally unnecessary. It’s avoidable and our kids don’t deserve this. ... This is a strike of choice.
“It’s down to two issues — finish it.”
Although union officials say more topics are still being debated, the mayor said the two remaining stumbling blocks involve re-hiring laid off teachers from schools that get shut down or shaken up and a new teacher evaluation process that the union says puts far too much weight on student test scores.
“The kids of Chicago belong in the classroom,” the mayor said during a late-night press conference at the Harold Washington Library, flanked by his negotiators.
Vitale said as talks wound down at the union’s Merchandise Mart offices, he tried for two hours to meet one-on-one with Lewis. But he said couldn’t reach her. He later described the negotiations as “the most unbelievable process I’ve ever been through. I don’t quite know how to explain it.”
Lewis said she never got Vitale’s message until late. “I was on phone calls with national and other labor leaders,” she explained.
Other key union leaders were still talking with Beth Swanson — Emanuel’s deputy mayor for education and his representative in the talks — during Vitale’s attempts to reach Lewis, said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey.
Sunday night’s drama was a roller coaster for teachers, parents and students wondering whether school was on Monday morning — whether students would be greeted by teachers in classrooms or on picket lines. Teachers have been asked to picket outside their own schools.
Progress had been made over the weekend regarding teacher pay, but not enough on teacher evaluations, job security or classroom conditions to entice union members to sign a contract, Lewis said.
“We do not intend to sign an agreement until all matters of our contract are addressed,” Lewis said. “We are committed to staying at the table.”
The school board’s last offer included a three percent raise the first year and two percent raises the next three years — a slight increase from an earlier offer of two percent raises in each of the next four years.
The package, which would cost $400 million, keeps increases for experience and credentials with some modifications.
Vitale said the contract amounted to a 16 percent raise over four years for the average teacher when factoring other increases. And the raises could not be rescinded for lack of funds — which is what happened this past school year, angering teachers and helping to set the stage for Monday’s strike.
“This is not a small commitment we’re making at a time when your fiscal situation is really challenged,” Vitale said. A $1 billion deficit awaits the system at the end of this school year, officials have estimated. And the district drained its reserve funds to plug this year’s budget.
Chicago Teachers Union delegates had been told to stay up late in case the two sides reach an accord. But no House of Delegates meeting was ever called — and Lewis said her members would be outside their schools Monday walking the picket line.
The strike will not impact charter schools, which rely on non-CTU teachers.
CPS set its “Children First” plan in play after the union’s decision, referring parents without other childcare options to 144 schools it would keep open with non-union personnel from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. starting Monday for as long as the strike lasts.
Churches and other not-for-profit organizations also stepped up to ensure that children would not be left on Chicago’s streets, already plagued this year by an onslaught of violence.
“The response has been extraordinary, truly extraordinary,” Vitale said Sunday night. “Chicagoans should be proud of how their city has responded to the needs of kids.”
Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), the mayor’s floor leader and the former longtime chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee, said the economic issues are not the hangup.
“They’re close on the economic parts — but there are other issues that are holding it up and preventing them from signing off on the economic package,” he said.
But he did allow that he doesn’t think a short strike would be “hugely devastating.”
“We’ve been talking about it for weeks,” O’Connor said. “Everybody has been steeling themselves for it. That being the case, you just hope that if they go out they keep bargaining and working to get it done.
“If it’s a protracted strike, it may be something that has a lingering effect. If it’s not, people in Chicago have seen this coming. The idea that it’s here — nobody should be surprised. I don’t think it’s the end of the world or that it will have long lasting repercussions.”
Key disputed issues in the talks were teacher cost of living raises, additional pay for experience, job security in the face of annual school closures and staff shakeups, and a new teacher evaluation process that ties teacher ratings in part to student test score growth.
“Evaluate us on what we do, not on the lives of our children we do not control,” Lewis said Sunday, denouncing the online process by which teacher evaluators were being trained.
CTU officials contend that CPS’ offer of raises over the next four years does not fairly compensate them for the 4 percent raise they lost this past school year and the longer and “harder” school year they will face this school year, with the introduction of a tougher new curriculum.
The union also has pushed for improved working conditions, such as smaller class sizes, more libraries, air-conditioned schools, and more social workers and counselors to address the increasing needs of students surrounded by violence — all big-ticket items. CPS officials contend they are seeking a “fair” contract, with raises for teachers, but are limited by funding and the threat of a $1 billion deficit at the end of this school year.
In front of Chicago Teachers Union strike headquarters Sunday afternoon at the corner of Marshfield and Van Buren, a steady stream of teachers picked up picket signs and T-shirts.
“I’m optimistic but at the same I’m realistic,” said Ollie Allen, a fifth-grade teacher at Mount Vernon elementary school. “I would like to see a fair contract. I want to see fair pay, job security and a better classroom environment that’s fair to students and teachers.”
Tracy Baldwin, who has a 6-year-old at Coonley School, said she thinks several parents had accepted the strike as inevitable. She said she thinks their frustration will really boil over if the strike lasts longer than a couple of days.
“I think it’s going to divide our city,” Baldwin said, “and it’s going to get ugly.”
2012-09-10 "Teacher Strike Begins in Chicago, Amid Signs That Deal Isn’t Close" By STEVEN YACCINO and MONICA DAVEY from "New York Times"
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/education/teacher-strike-begins-in-chicago-amid-signs-that-deal-isnt-close.html]:
CHICAGO — Teachers in the nation’s third-largest school district went on strike Monday morning after negotiations for a new contract collapsed, giving some 350,000 students an unexpected day off but leading to frustrations among parents and indications that a settlement may not be close.
Chicago Public Schools and the union representing teachers have been embroiled for months in a bitter dispute over wages, job security and teacher evaluations.
Coming as the school year is in only its second week after the summer break, the strike will affect hundreds of thousands of families, some of whom spent the weekend scrambling to rearrange work schedules, find alternative programs and hire baby sitters if school is out for some time.
At Lane Tech College Prep, on the city’s North Side, most of the high school’s 250 teachers had already assembled by early Monday morning as they prepared to staff picket lines. They wore red union T-shirts and carried signs saying “Honk If You Love a Teacher.” Many passing motorists responded with incessant horn blowing.
“We’re ready to stay out as long as it takes to get a fair contract and protect our schools,” said Steve Parsons, who teaches Advanced Placement psychology.
Schools officials, visibly frustrated after talks broke off late Sunday, expressed concern for the students the strike will affect.
“We do not want a strike,” David J. Vitale, president of the Chicago Board of Education, said late Sunday as he left the negotiations, which he described as extraordinarily difficult and “perhaps the most unbelievable process that I’ve ever been through.”
Union leaders said they had hoped not to walk away from their jobs, but they said they were left with little choice.
“This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided,” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union.
The political stakes now may be highest for Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic mayor in a city with deep union roots. He took office last year holding up the improvement of public schools as one of his top priorities, but now faces arduous political terrain certain to accompany Chicago’s first public schools strike in 25 years.
Late Sunday, Mr. Emanuel told reporters that school district officials had presented a strong offer to the union, including what some officials described as what would amount to a 16 percent raise for many teachers over four years — and that only two minor issues remained. “This is totally unnecessary, it’s avoidable and our kids do not deserve this,” Mr. Emanuel said, describing the decision as “a strike of choice.”
For days, even as talks went on, Chicago had been bracing for the possibility of a teachers strike — the first since a 19-day stoppage in 1987. In recent days, hundreds of people have called the city’s 311 system and the Chicago Public Schools central offices with questions about whether a strike was coming, and what it would mean. A strike was not expected to affect the 45,000 students in the city’s charter schools, officials said.
The school system, which employs about 25,000 teachers, announced contingency plans in the event of a strike, including a program to open 144 of its 675 schools with half-days of activities supervised by people other than unionized teachers. Officials said that program would also include meals — no small concern since 84 percent of the city’s public school students qualify for the free and reduced meals program.
Ms. Lewis deemed the contingency proposal, which was expected to be able to accommodate at least 150,000 students, “a mess,” and suggested that school officials were expecting families to “put their children with random folks.” For its part, the union on Saturday opened a strike headquarters where members could begin collecting picket signs and other materials to prepare for a walkout.
Negotiations have taken place behind closed doors since November, concerning wages and benefits, whether laid-off teachers should be considered for new openings, extra pay for those with more experience and higher degrees, and evaluations. District officials said the teachers’ average pay is $76,000 a year.
School officials, who say the system faces a $665 million deficit this year and a bigger one next year, have worked to cut costs even as Mr. Emanuel has pressed for what he considers much-needed “comprehensive reform,” including a longer school day.
Teachers have said they are being neglected on issues like promised raises, class sizes and support staff in the schools. By June, about 90 percent of teachers voted in favor of authorizing a strike if a new agreement could not be reached during the summer.
While negotiators handled the private talks, Chicagoans watched what appeared to be a contentious, sometimes personal fight between two blunt and resolute personalities: Mr. Emanuel and Ms. Lewis, who has described the mayor in recent days as a “bully” and a “liar,” and in a recent interview added, “I think the whole idea of an imperial mayoralty where you wave a magic wand or cuss someone out and things happen is untenable.”
Some parents said they were ultimately hopeful about the prospect of improvement in their children’s schools and eager for the changes advocated by Mr. Emanuel, whose own children attend private school. But others said that they thought teachers had been pushed hard, and that a standoff seemed inevitable.
“He has a vision for what he wants,” Jacob Lesniewski, a parent, said of Mr. Emanuel, “and he’s not going to let anything get in his way.”
Though students have suddenly found themselves at the start of what may become an extended vacation, not all of them were pleased about the prospect of a day — or more — without school.
“It’s my first weeks of high school, and I don’t get to go,” said Autumn Schroeder, a 14-year-old freshman at Lane Tech. Instead, she said she would spend the day bowling with friends.
Sitthixay Ditthavong/Associated Press
Members of the Chicago Teachers Union distributed strike signs as the deadline approached.
2012-09-09 "Charter schools in session despite strike; Nonunion teachers holding classes, to parents' relief; number of charters expected to grow in next 5 years" by Jennifer Delgado from "Chicago Tribune"[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-charter-school-strike-20120910,0,3133187.story]:
Leslie Daniels enrolled her son in a Chicago charter school three years ago because she didn't like the education he was getting in his local neighborhood school.
In the back of her mind, she also knew the school was less likely to be affected by labor problems because its teachers are not members of the Chicago Teachers Union. That's an added benefit now that the union has called for its first walkout in 25 years. All of the city's charter schools will remain open Monday.
"I'm glad I made the switch," said Daniels, 55. "I feel for the other parents because a lot of them are working. What are their children going to be doing?"
Charter schools, which are independently run but largely rely on public funding, have been growing steadily in Chicago over the last decade. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley pushed a major expansion of charter schools in the mid-2000s, promoting them as options for parents frustrated by low-performing public schools in their neighborhood.
As a result, the city's charter enrollment has nearly doubled in the last five years, reaching about 52,000 students this fall, according to Chicago Public Schools figures. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, like his predecessor, wants to see charter options expand even further, and there are plans for 60 more charter schools in Chicago over the next five years.
The Chicago Teachers Union has fought the growth of charter schools because the majority of teaching staffs are not members of unions and none belong to CTU. Union leaders argue that charters devalue the profession by paying their teachers less, and that public money is diverted from struggling neighborhood schools to support charters, even when charters don't perform significantly better.
Charter operators said more parents have been asking about the schools in the last several weeks since union teachers first threatened to strike, and charter supporters are capitalizing.
"I just see charter options and opportunities growing in any event (but) if there's a strike the pace might accelerate," said Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools.
"It's not because the mayor supports us or we do a great job, it's just that parents recognize that charter schools are providing quality education options in many neighborhoods that currently don't have them," Broy said.
If teachers strike, parents will become disenchanted with traditional public schools and look for other options, like charter schools, said Juan Rangel, CEO of the United Neighborhood Organization charter network, or UNO.
"If this strike happens, it will awaken parents' interest in terms of 'Why can't we have more choice' (and) 'Why do we have to be stuck without having a voice,'" he said. "I think parents are going to be frustrated when they see 50,000 kids having an education, going to school without interruption and their kids" are not.
For the 8,850 children at the Chicago International Charter Schools, the city's largest charter network, Monday will be "a normal day with normal after-school programming," said CEO Beth Purvis.
Yolanda Bowers, 57, supports teachers who want more money for working longer days but was relieved last week when she found out the strike wouldn't affect her three grandchildren. They attend Sizemore Academy, which falls under the Betty Shabazz International Charter School network.
Bowers said her grandchildren, ages 6, 10 and 11, need to be in school, especially one of her grandsons, who she said is slower to pick up on material.
"A lot of people lose when there's a strike, but it's mostly the parents and the children," she said.
2012-07-15 "'All the news that fits...' as The New York Times profiles Penny Pritzker and leaves out the teacher bashing, privatization juggernaut of Rahm Emanuel's Board of Education" by George N. Schmidt from "Substance News"
[http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3409§ion=Article]:
For generations, critics have parodied the slogan of The New York Times, which is "All the news that's fit to print." It's the news itself, critics have pointed out, where the propaganda is most slick. Professors are allowed to quote stories that appears as "news" in The New York Times without thought, fact checking or contradiction. As a result, the retort from critics (left and right, by the way) has always been "All the news that fits, we print."
The problem has been dramatic in the coverage of the Obama presidency, from the day in 2008 when the original "definitive" story appeared on Obama's Chicago roots (and left out the main role played by the Chicago Teachers Union in putting Barack Obama into the United States Senate) to the hagiographic coverage of "Race to the Top" that began in December 2008 with the carefully staged Page One story (set at the AUSL "Dodge School of Excellence") profiling Arne Duncan as the incoming U.S. Secretary of Education.
Nowhere was the problem of New York Times "news spin" better illustrated for Chicago teachers and union members during the end of the first year of Rahm Emanuel's attacks on teachers and public schools than in the Page One story on Barack Obama and Penny Pritzker that appears on Page One of The New York Times Sunday edition (circulation in print, more than one million) on July 15, 2012. The story manages to leave out the main work Penny Pritzker has been doing to bust unions during the past 14 months. Given how much can be accumulated by any reporter using Google, it's a tour de force that Jodi Kantor and Hicholas Confessore manage to leave out Penny's role in pushing Rahm Emanuel's agenda against the largest teacher union between the east and west coasts — and the strike that is now looming!
Substance photo by George N. Schmidt: Chicago Board of Education member Penny Pritzker (left) huddled low with CPS "consultant" Christina Herzog (right) prior to the June 27, 2012 meeting of the Board. Herzog, who told Substance that she is not on the CPS payroll, is the school system's former budget director, and is seated regularly during the meetings with CPS financial executives, all of whom have been hired since Herzog went on maternity leave two years ago. At the July 11, 2012 hearings on the budget at Malcolm X College, Herzog told Substance that she was not being paid by CPS, but by an independent party. She refused to say who.
Substance photo by George N. Schmidt: Chicago Board of Education member billionaire heiress Penny Pritzker prefers to call herself an "entrepreneur" rather than be known as the heiress she is, according to The New York Times and her own public relations stuff. During the meetings of the Chicago Board of Education, which she has been a member of since June 2011, Penny routinely shows her disdain for the leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union during the time they try to bring important matters before the Board. Above, Penny was pretending to fall asleep when the Substance camera caught her while CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey spoke during the June 27, 2012 meeting of the school board of the third largest school system in the USA.
A "news" story in The New York Times discusses problems between Penny Pritzker and "labor" and leaves out the biggest confrontation of all between Penny Pritzker and unions in Chicago: her role as one of seven voting members of the Chicago Board of Education, appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel one year ago, or her ongoing role in the teacher bashing and union busting agenda of the former White House Chief of Staff that will come to a major confrontation in the next eight weeks. Yet that lengthy New York Times story manages to miss the elephant farting in the Times's pup ten: Chicago Public Schools and the Pritzker agenda against real public schools, and on behalf of massive privatization, union busting, charter schools, and vastly expanded outsourcing, including in public education administration.
Penny Pritzker's role as one of the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education has been prominent since Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her in May 2011. As one of her first acts on the school board, she spoke in favor of the controversial (and since proved mendacious) decision by the Board of Education to vote that it was facing a "fiscal crisis" and therefore did not have to honor the fifth year of the labor contract with the school system's unions. That vote rescinded the four percent raise that the unions had negotiated four years earlier with the previous school board. Two months after that vote, Pritzker voted quietly to transfer an additional $70 million to the City of Chicago for police services in the schools, a scandal that has lately been exposed by researchers (including this reporter) at the Chicago Teachers Union. The school system had a valid contract with the city requiring it to pay $8 million per year for police services, but after breaking the unions' contracts, the members of the Board voted to transfer the additional money to Rahm Emanuel's city budget. As with most decisions of the Board since Pritzker became a member, the action was taken in August 2011 without discussion or debate.
The most prominent public activities of Penny Prtizker during the past year have not been the occasional soiree with rich people (and Rahm Emanuel) at her Ochard Street mansion on Chicago's north side, but her monthly attendance at the meetings of the Chicago Board of Education, where she has spoken openly in favor of the union busting privatization policies of Rahm Emanuel's appointed Chief Executive Officer, Jean-Claude Brizard. The New York Times has refused to cover the school board meetings and obviously didn't bother to research Penny Pritzker's actions during the 14 meetings she has participated in.
2012-07-15 "Leading Role in Obama ’08, but Backstage in ’12" by JODI KANTOR and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE from "New York Times":
Kitty Bennett contributed research. A version of this article appeared in print on July 15, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Leading Role in Obama ’08, but Backstage in ’12.
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At first glance, the party that Penny Pritzker hosted last month in Chicago could have passed for an Obama reunion. Her modernist home and sculpture garden had been the site of Obama fund-raising events over the years, and the guests that night included presidential allies like Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff turned Chicago mayor, and Warren E. Buffett.
But the party was for a Goldman Sachs-sponsored small-business program, not the Obama campaign, and much of the political chatter focused on Mr. Emanuel. By night’s end, some guests wondered: had Barack Obama’s most important donor, the true believer whose support had helped power him to the United States Senate and the White House, moved on?
Ms. Pritzker’s commitment has become a matter of mystery and consternation among some Obama supporters struggling to recreate the success of the 2008 finance team that she led as chairwoman. Though she is assisting with the re-election campaign in a number of ways, Ms. Pritzker — whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain and is active in charitable and Jewish causes — is less visible, has cut back on fund-raising and has told friends that she is intentionally doing less.
Some donors have taken that as a signal — or used it as an excuse — to scale back, according to those involved in fund-raising, even as the president’s fund-raising pace lags behind that of his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.
“Donors have asked, ‘Where’s Penny?’ ” said Andy Spahn, a Democratic consultant in Los Angeles who works with prominent Hollywood supporters. “We have called her and not gotten callbacks.”
Ms. Pritzker is engaged in new business ventures, and fellow Obama donors say she could not be expected to repeat her tireless efforts from 2008. But interviews with dozens of donors, friends, and campaign and former White House officials show that virtually from the moment of Mr. Obama’s election, the golden relationship between the two became more complicated.
For Ms. Pritzker, her high-profile backing of Mr. Obama came at an unexpectedly bitter cost. Their relationship made her a punching bag for the labor movement, which targeted her for what union officials call exploitative practices toward housekeepers by the Hyatt hotels.
She had drawn business and Jewish leaders to support Mr. Obama, but when many of them turned hostile toward the president because of his policies, some directed their ire toward her, even though she had her own criticisms, too.
The anger amounted to a “triple assault” on Ms. Pritzker, said William M. Daley, who succeeded Mr. Emanuel as chief of staff. “She’s borne the brunt of a lot of the attacks,” he said.
“Often the big picture is not understood on where the president wants to go,” Ms. Pritzker said in a telephone interview. “That’s frustrating.”
For Mr. Obama, Ms. Pritzker’s wealth and business experience are huge assets but also potential liabilities. He considered nominating her for commerce secretary but did not, because her fortune risked making her radioactive. She does plan to join him on the campaign trail this month, but that could prove awkward, given that the president is pounding Mr. Romney for some of the same practices of which Ms. Pritzker or her family business is accused — housing significant wealth in offshore trusts and treating workers poorly.
Ms. Pritzker is still loyal but weary, those close to her say, and she has learned a tough lesson: it is extremely difficult for the president of the United States to be a good friend.
“There is a huge unresolved set of issues in the Democratic Party between people of wealth and people who work,” said Andy Stern, a labor leader. “Penny is a living example of that issue.”
Crucial Help -
Without Penny Pritzker, it is unlikely that Barack Obama ever would have been elected to the United States Senate or the presidency. When she first backed him during his 2004 Senate run, she was No. 152 on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. He was a long-shot candidate who needed her support and imprimatur. Mr. Obama and Ms. Pritzker grew close, sometimes spending weekends with their families at her summer home.
Ms. Pritzker, 53, is an heiress who hates being called an heiress, friends say, a woman who wants to be known for more than her family’s fortune. She has earned law and business degrees at Stanford, steered her family’s hotel, real estate and financial businesses while starting new ones, participated in too many Chicago civic charities to name, and for fun, run triathlons (she sprained her ankle early in one Ironman race but still finished).
In 2008, she poured that energy and grit into putting Mr. Obama in the White House. Democrats often have rocky relationships with corporate interests, but Ms. Pritzker helped forge an unlikely bond between Mr. Obama, a former community organizer, and bankers, entrepreneurs and executives. For most of 2007, Mr. Obama trailed Hillary Rodham Clinton in polls, and yet his candidacy survived in large part because of the money collected by Ms. Pritzker and her team.
She wanted to be commerce secretary, friends say. But shortly after Election Day, while she was still raising money for Mr. Obama — more than $53 million for his inauguration, on top of the $745 million for the campaign — she withdrew from consideration. (She and campaign officials say it was her choice; others say the president-elect had no interest in a confirmation fight at a time of public anger over the advantages of wealth.)
A bank owned in part by her family had been so mired in toxic subprime loans that the Pritzkers and other owners eventually paid a $460 million settlement to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And her nearly $2 billion fortune exploits a network of trusts, including some held offshore, to minimize tax liabilities.
“Penny is realistic” and understood the political realities, said Laura D’Andrea Tyson, a former chief economist to President Bill Clinton.
Still eager to contribute, she traveled to Washington for even minor White House events and served on two economic advisory boards. Her most successful contribution was to foster partnerships between community colleges and businesses.
But some other projects she took on made her “frustrated beyond belief,” in the words of a friend.
“Penny experienced what most people experience when they come from the outside,” Mr. Daley said. “If it doesn’t originate in the bowels of the White House or somewhere else in government, there’s an aversion to it.”
To counter accusations that Mr. Obama was unfriendly to business, she quizzed White House officials for updates and statistics. “Penny masters the facts,” said Marty Nesbitt, a close Obama friend who started a business with Ms. Pritzker.
Even as she served as emissary, she expressed private frustration with what she called the White House’s lack of responsiveness and harsh tone about wealth and corporate greed, according to friends.
A Target for Labor -
Ms. Pritzker never complained publicly, but she delivered the message to White House officials. She tries to give “the president or his advisers a perspective — what I’m hearing, what I’m seeing, how people are reacting — so that they can take that into consideration,” she said. In an e-mail, David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser, emphasized how much the president valued her counsel and friendship.
To fellow Obama allies back in Chicago, she would sometimes roll her eyes, saying she was trying to break through. “Well, I’ve tried,” she told them.
Ms. Pritzker would also have liked a connection with the president beyond economic policy and fund-raising, several friends said. Mr. Obama has invited only a handful of friends to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland; when asked if she was among them, she said she had all the attention she needs.
“Personal time with a president of the United States could be a five-minute sidebar conversation,” Ms. Pritzker said. “The idea that we’re going to hang out — it’s certainly not my nature, nor is it his.”
As far back as 2007, Mr. Obama recognized that his relationship with Ms. Pritzker could be tricky; when he asked her to be his national finance chairwoman, he called labor leaders to alert them, they later said in interviews.
A standoff between labor and Hyatt hotels had been brewing for years over working conditions for housekeepers. By 2009, union officials decided to target Ms. Pritzker because of her ties to the president.
“We thought that a person who would spend so much time raising money for a person who cares about working people as much as Obama” would treat low-level workers better, said John Wilhelm of Unite, the group that has led the fight.
Henry Tamarin, a longtime organizer, helped create a devastating campaign against Ms. Pritzker, even though she was just one member of the family and organization. He hired an impersonator who walked the picket line handing out plastic coins and shouting “Get back to work! Penny needs her billions!” according to The Chicago Tribune.
In September, after Hyatt fired 100 housekeepers at nonunion hotels near Boston and replaced them with low-wage subcontractors, labor organizers flew a fired worker to confront Ms. Pritzker at a public appearance in Chicago. As she served on White House councils alongside Richard L. Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, his organization released a video that cast her as a villainess who hurt rather than helped the economy.
Hyatt defends its labor practices, saying that the average tenure of its housekeepers is 12 years and that Unite has refused to settle.
“I feel a personal connection with the employees at the hotel company,” Ms. Pritzker said in the interview. “The union attacks — it hurts. I don’t like it. It should be an issue between Hyatt and the unions, not become something personal to me.”
The architects of Ms. Pritzker’s troubles are not strangers to the president. Mr. Obama benefited from Mr. Tamarin’s early endorsement in the Senate and presidential campaigns and walked a picket line with him at a non-Hyatt hotel in 2007. Mr. Tamarin’s son Nate works at the White House as a liaison to labor. Even as the elder Mr. Tamarin was waging his campaign against Ms. Pritzker, he sat at the president’s table at a White House state dinner.
Labor leaders say the White House never asked them to ease up on Ms. Pritzker. Some of her Chicago friends complain that he could have encouraged a quiet resolution, but others say that any such intervention would have been inappropriate.
New Pressures -
Now that Mr. Obama is in danger of being outspent by Mr. Romney and his allies, the pressure on Ms. Pritzker to increase her efforts is mounting. Some potential donors want to speak only to her, other fund-raisers say. She and a handful of others recently began recruiting high-ranking business executives to serve as Obama surrogates, writing opinion articles and speaking to the news media about the president.
Like many of Mr. Obama’s wealthiest donors, she has not given to the “super PAC” supporting him, saying she objects to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which paved the way for unlimited fund-raising by outside groups.
Many in the party now believe that Mr. Obama’s fate could turn on checks from Ms. Pritzker and others like her. And even some of her friends believe she may yet find herself pulled into the money race at an entirely new level.
“Penny wants to win,” Mr. Nesbitt said.
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