CTU President Sharkey expressed that the proposed contract did "not have adequate enforcement mechanisms on staffing. It is also important to identify some underexplored aspects of the CTU experience, such as the limitations of strikes, the dilemma of sustaining power, and electoral organizing in the wake of strike action. [27] Fewkes had been the most prominent leader of "Voluntary Emergency Committee" (VEC), a male-dominated group that formed in 1933 and gained prominence by advocating and coordinating militant action. [38], The CTU intensified its campaign for collective bargaining rights in the 1960s, staging huge demonstrations at the Chicago Board of Education. [31], The union, urged on by Fewkes,[27] participated in the AFL's anti-communist purges, and in 1941 voted 5,258 to 892 to expel the New York City Teachers Union, the New York College Teachers Union and Philadelphia Teachers Union from the AFT. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. [9] Faced with ineffective educators unions and looming health care increases in West Virginia, Charleston teacher Jay ONeal began reading everything he could about CTU and the 2012 strike, including Micah Uetrichts Strike for America and a book published by Labor Notes, How to Jump-Start Your Union. 1973: Two strikes, of 12 and 11 days, yield improved salary, benefits, preparation time, supplies, and class sizes. Their courageous actions helped CTU begin to incorporate educational equity into its demands. After decades of declining strike rates and union risk-aversion, activists and scholars inspired by CTU have emphasized the power of workplace disruption as a means of wresting concessions from employers, transforming workers, and revitalizing unions. It asked the Chicago Police Department to station an officer in each of Chicago's 43 high schools; CPD refused. Unless otherwise noted, all educator quotations in this article are from semi-structured interviews conducted by the author between March 2018 and May 2019. Following the departure of Sharkey, Stacy Davis Gates assumed the role of President on July 1, 2022. May 19, 2022. Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot speaks at the U.S. Conference of Mayors 88th Winter Meeting in Washington, January 23, 2020. "[81] After negotiations had ended Tuesday evening, several issues remained unresolved, such as class-size caps, the duration of the contract, salaries, and health benefits. 14% of Chicago Teachers Uni [2] The CTU won collective bargaining rights in 1966 and conducted several strikes during the 1970s and 1980s. Micah Uetricht, Strike for America: Chicago Teachers against Austerity (London: Verso Books, 2014), 98. Leftist scholars, journalists, and organizers tend to gloss over the tension between the dramatically increased expectations generated by militant work stoppages and the resulting contractual outcomes. 5. CTU won recognition in 1966 as the official bargaining agent for Chicago teachers, negotiating its first contract in 1967. No less important, educator strikes organized or inspired by the CTU have played a significant role in making the public more favorable to organized labor.[12]. In September 2016, union members voted overwhelmingly to strike if an agreement could not be reached, setting a deadline of October 11. [18][19] The strike was averted hours before it was scheduled to begin, when the school board approved a new budget and announced that the checks due to the teachers had been mailed with all possible haste. It's a bitter end to a tumultuous tenure for Lightfoot, who quickly developed an image as a national lightning rod for conservatives and repeatedly clashed with institutional interests, from the Chicago Teachers Union to the media to the police rank and file. Underfunding, low pay, high class sizes, and excessive standardized testing remain endemic. 4. Studies show better academic and social-emotional outcomes when students have a teacher from a similar cultural background, especially black and Latino students. On the Los Angeles strike, see Jane McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2020). But in various ways, the roots of these recent upsurges can be traced back to Chicago. But that support is hardly unanimous among the 27,000 rank-and-file members of the union, which some said is more ideologically diverse than leadership lets on. [7] The Chicago Teachers Federation played an active role in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and retained their status as Local 1. Download reports to your device below. On September 27, 2019, CTU members voted to authorize a potential strike starting on October 17 if a contract deal is not reached. This comes despite plenty of evidence to the benefits. Only 1% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees stay at the company for 8-10 years. [84] The following day, on Thursday the 24th, teachers returned to the picket lines at 7:00a.m., and the president of the Flight Attendant's Union, Sara Nelson, was expected to join the striking teachers to show support. Some teachers opposed to being ordered back to class in the pandemic have the power of the union behind them. After unseating the old leadership of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) in 2014, Union Power began to revitalize their union through systematic deep organizing in the schools and the broader working class. [72] CTU delegates officially voted to go on strike hours afterwards. Some teachers opposed to being ordered back to class in the pandemic have the power of the union behind them. Ideologically, the choice between Vallas and Johnson is stark. Elizabeth D. Steiner and Ashley Woo, Job-Related Stress Threatens the Teacher Supply: Key Findings from the 2021 State of the U.S. All Rights Reserved. As he put itwhen he resigned in 2013We severely underestimated the ability of the Chicago Teachers Union to lead a massive grassroots campaign against our administration. [24][25] It also called attention to a mounting teacher shortage, citing over a hundred classrooms without regular or substitute teachers. In the summer of 2017, ONeal organized a democratic socialist educators study group around the book, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey, a manual and manifesto for working-class strategy in which the story of CTU and the 2012 strike plays a major role. It was the largest and most active AFT Local until the 1960s. Garelli leaned on her CTU experience to help AEU build up a site-liaison network of 2,000 rank-and-file teacher leaders across the state of Arizona in the spring of 2018, envisioning and coordinating an ambitious plan of escalating actions to involve educators and win over wavering parents: I knew from Chicago that we had a lot of work to do before we were ready for something like a strike, particularly a statewide action. The work paid off. They battled an early plan to factorize public education. We were so inspired and uplifted by CTUthey were really the first major teachers unions to bring back the strike, to expose the privatizers, to develop authentic parent-community coalitions to win the schools our students deserve, and to call out the racism of school closings in communities of color. A plurality of of employees at Chicago Teachers Uni earn $40k-60k. Of the 10 biggest school districts in Illinois by enrollment, Chicago has the lowest percentage of white teachers, about 52 percent. In 2016, 95 The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) won a 17 percent pay raise and increased resources for students, and it stopped a 40 percent increase in health care 2021-2022. National Center for Education Statistics, Charter School Enrollment, available at nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=30. Some elementary school teachers were paid less than janitors, and more teachers came to agree that they experienced discrimination because they were female. Probably the easiest-to-understand aspect of the Chicago Teachers Unions contract demands is the cap on class size. [32] The three expelled Locals were large, representing about one quarter of the AFT's members, but the CTU was larger, and its votes were decisive in accomplishing the expulsion. They are more likely to be identified by black teachers, according to the research. [41] The city averted a strike by agreeing to negotiate,[42] and, after long delays (including litigation from a rival union, the Chicago Education Association),[43] the CTU became the official bargaining agent of Chicago teachers in April 1966. CHICAGO Election day in Chicago has come and gone. . It has more than 25,000 members. (Meanwhile, male teachers felt shortchanged and emasculated.) [21] The CTU continued to pursue the school violence issue, insisting that teachers were being attacked by dangerous youths. Matt Lyons, chief talent officer at Chicago Public Schools, acknowledged the district faces major challenges in shifting racial balances, the biggest being that fewer people are training to be educators. 2022-2023. Another suit claims that a round of layoffs in 2011 that shed more than 900 classroom teachers disproportionately impacted African-Americans. Research Summary. [T]he 2018-19 educator offensive was thrown backwards almost overnight by the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020. During the Great Depression, Chicago, at times, paid teachers with IOUs, or not at all. During the civil rights movement African American students walked out protesting overcrowding and discrimination in education, especially against the segregated temporary trailers known as Willis Wagons (named for the superintendent of Chicagos schools). This is an important strategic corrective. The most common race/ethnicity at Chicago Teachers Uni is White. Johnson received about $1 million from the Chicago Teachers Union for his campaign and had support from several other progressive organizations, including United Working Families. Revitalizing labor may begin with risky actions like work stoppages or insurgent unionization drives, but it cannot end there. 41% of employees earn a salary of $40k-60k a year. On December 4, 2018, CTU members at the Acero charter school network initiated the first strike at a unionized charter school in US history. CTU activist and teacher Debby Pope explains that as the insurgent educators movement has spread, it in turn has given back to us in Chicago and sustained us as a short-term struggle morphed into a national movement for educational justice. Testifying to this reciprocal dynamic, Chicago educators struck again in 2019this time together with support staff and park workers of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73. Defend workers rights. The Chicago Teachers Union has become recognized as vibrant, democratic, and militant in a country where many unions are more likely to be engaged in the organizational equivalent of curling up into the fetal position. WebThe Chicago Teachers Unions deep roots inform our fight for teachers and staff today. With districts returning to in-person instruction, K-12 strikes have also returned; Minneapolis and Sacramento educators walked out earlier this year for better pay and increased student resources. In 1937, Local 1 battled New York's Local 5 over whether the AFT would remain in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) or join the newer and more inclusive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It behooves labor academics and activists to pay more attention to the processes and dilemmas of sustaining bottom-up power through the governance of militant workers institutions. [64][65] Students began their return to the schools on Wednesday, September 19, 2012. CTU also scheduled civil disobedience training for its members at the CTU headquarters at 3:00p.m., suggesting a prolonged strike.[85]. Chicagos Democratic Party machine under Mayor Rahm EmanuelBarack Obamas former chief of staffwas promoting a sharp uptick in closures of neighborhood public schools in Black and Brown communities, for the benefit of privately run, publicly funded charters. Margaret Haley, often dubbed Chicagos Lady Labor Slugger is the figure who put Chicago teachers on the labor map. Theres something about these folks who use little black and brown children as stage props at one press conference while announcing they want to fire, lay off, or lock up their parents at another.[8]. [17], In 1948, amid small-scale sickouts and walkouts, the CTU authorized a strike when teachers experienced still more 'payless paydays' due to city neglect. Chicago Teachers Union 1901 W. Carroll Ave. Chicago, IL 60612. Blame for the crisis in K-12 schools began to get directed at systematic underfunding and low pay, rather than at alleged inefficiencies of trade unions and the public sector. 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