NEWS RELEASE
FOR
IMMEDIATE
RELEASE CONTACT: Stephanie Gadlin 312/329-6250
September 10, 2013
CTU MARKS ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF HISTORIC STRIKE
Teachers ‘changed the conversation’ about the quality of public education in Chicago
CHICAGO –
One year
ago, nearly 30,000 public school educators took to the picket lines to
fight for the neighborhood schools their students deserve. They also
wanted to secure a strong labor contract and regain respect for their
profession. It was the first teachers strike in
the city’s history in 25 years and it took the city by storm. Led by
Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis, a former chemistry
teacher, the colorful demonstrations, which began September 10, 2012 and
lasted nine days, garnered national and international
headlines as the “sea of red,” flooded the streets of downtown Chicago
in a unified show of force.
The
2012 teachers strike was perhaps the first time in the city’s history
that a labor action of its kind garnered
widespread support from the public, including parents of Chicago Public
School (CPS) students. After weeks of dramatic labor negotiations,
protests, news conferences and rallies at the Board of Education
teachers walked away with one of the strongest labor
contract in recent history, a more unified workforce and the
distinction of haven taken on a powerful, media-savvy mayor and won.
For
weeks leading up to the strike, teachers and other school employees
organized internally, trained its leaders
and began an outreach campaign for parents. Lewis and other CTU
leaders showed the public that a ‘good contract’ was paramount in having
high-quality, neighborhood schools. The union consistently pushed the
narrative that proved that poverty and severe racial
disparities had significantly impacted the school district. It
released its ground-breaking education platform, “The Schools Chicago’s
Students Deserve,” and advocated for reforms to the TIF program,
additional wrap-around services for students, quality school
facilities and more access to pre-school and kindergarten for
low-income students. The union pulled the curtain off the charter
movement’s marketing campaign and called on the school district to hold
the privately-held, publicly funded operations accountable
for poor student performance and high teacher turn-over rates.
The events leading to the strike were equally dramatic. On May 23rd,
more than 12,000 CTU members, parents and students took to the streets
of Chicago
in a dynamic display of solidarity. Weeks later on June 11, the CTU
revealed that 90 percent of its members voted to give their labor
organization the authority to call a strike.
A
new state law had required a 75 percent of all eligible CTU voters to
vote in the affirmative in order to provide strike authorization. The
law proved useless as
the city’s public school educators responded to a barrage of
coordinated attacks from the mayor’s office, school CEO and the city’s
wealthy, out-of-town corporate school reform assassins. After all night
labor negotiations with the Board failed to produce
an agreement, the union called a strike at midnight on Sept. 10 and
teachers, clinicians and paraprofessionals walked the picket lines until
they returned to the classroom just over a week later; this despite,
the mayor’s unsuccessful attempt to have a court
force an end to the strike.
“This
Union had survived an all-out attack on our very existence and our
ability to advocate for our members, our students and their communities
from a well-funded,
well-orchestrated group of extremely wealthy people who saw themselves
as the authorities on education,” Lewis reflected. “We were vilified in
the press and on paid radio ads which attempted to paint us as greedy
and unknowledgeable. Our contractually agreed
to raises were stolen to goad us into acting rashly. Our members have
been laid off, terminated and publicly humiliated all in attempt to turn
public school educators and the public against us. None of it worked.”
Added
CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey, “The odds were not in our favor. The
state legislature had been conned by the corporate reformers into
passing Senate
Bill 7 which was nothing more than an attempt to bust our union and
further decimate our public school system. Our members were angry but
worn out from fighting their principals over the years; and, the public
had not been given the whole story. People believed
that teachers were lazy and were to blame for everything that’s wrong
in our system. No one wanted a strike, but we had to exercise our right
to strike in order to strengthen our school district. This was bigger
than taking on the mayor or the Board—this
was about fighting for our students, and people finally understood
that.”
For
the first time in CTU history, the union was able to secure a number of
gains for its members including, blocking the use of merit pay and
standardized test
scores in teacher evaluations; a principal anti-bullying clause;
freedom to develop lesson plans; the hiring of art, music and physical
education teachers to create a “better school day” for students as the
year grew longer; significant cost of living increases;
and short-term disability leave for pregnant teachers. In addition,
for the first time in nearly two decades, Lewis, Sharkey and the other
officers, Recording Secretary Michael Brunson and Financial Secretary
Kristine Mayle, were re-elected by 80 percent
of its members following a contract negotiation. Previous contracts
had led to past CTU leaders being thrown out of office.
“We
also gained international respect for our resistance to the struggle
for equitable education. We won the right for professional autonomy in
lesson plans;
we won a more reasonable evaluation system which was intended to use up
to 50 percent for student test scores,” Lewis said. “We gained the
ability to finally have due process in all discipline issues and the
right to appeal evaluations. We also won a real
right for teachers to follow students when schools close—which proved
significant when CPS closed 50 schools in a single year.”
Some
critics believe the strike did little beyond addressing the bread and
butter issues impacting teachers. However, the school district announced
recently that
last year’s test scores went up; the longer school day was a success
and the overall quality of education improved in just a short year. This
was due to the visible and vocal advocacy of rank-and-file teachers,
paraprofessionals and clinicians who fought for
change the conversation about public education in the city.
While
the CTU strike sparked similar labor protests throughout the state,
including about eight teacher strikes in the region, the organization’s
leaders say
there is still much work to be done. The group will continue to expose
the contradictions in public policy as well as broaden its base of
support by working with parents, students, clergy, community-based
organizations and others.
“Since
the strike we have strengthened our ability to build power through a
significant change in the political landscape including increased voter
awareness,
registration and candidate preparation,” Lewis said. “We’ve done
remarkable work towards equitable funding by changing the conversation
about revenue but now our focus is on securing fair taxes, closing
corporate loopholes and holding the unelected, unaccountable
school board to making budgetary decisions that do not destroy
traditional public schools.”
###
