With a weeklong strike, Chicago teachers deliver a blow to a corporate agenda for schools
PORTLAND — Any doubts that the seven-day Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike could have an impact thousands of miles away were dispelled Sept. 20 in the basement of the Portland teachers union office. There, about 100 union activists gathered the day after the strike ended — to celebrate, and to discuss what it meant.
The walkout by 26,000 teachers in the nation’s third largest school district wasn’t principally about pay, benefits, or perks. It was a strike for basics, like air conditioning in classrooms, getting more school nurses and counselors, and restoring art, music, physical education classes. And it was a strike against corporate-style education reforms that subject students to heavy testing and blame teachers when students score poorly.
“Education workers,” said American Federation of Teachers-Oregon Executive Director Richard Schwarz, “have been the pincushion for sticking every new idea that some grandstanding business or political leader, talk show host, or newspaper editorial writer dreams up about what to do with children.” [CTU is an affiliate of American Federation of Teachers.][pullquote]We stood up, and we are stronger today than when this struggle started.” — Chicago teacher Kirstin Roberts[/pullquote]
With the Chicago school board proposing that student test scores account for 45 percent of teacher evaluations, and demanding that teachers accept a longer school day with no commensurate increase in pay, Chicago teachers voted 98 percent to authorize a strike. The strike began Sept. 10, and drew support statements and solidarity fund donations from labor organizations around the country.
“It was going to be a make-or-break moment for public sector unions and the labor movement in general,” said retired letter carrier Jamie Partridge, who helped organize the Sept. 20 solidarity meeting in Portland. “A win for the teachers and the people of Chicago would push back the privatization agenda.”
“We knew that we had to stand up to a big bully,” said CTU member Kirstin Roberts, referring to Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. Roberts, a member of the strike committee at her Northwest Chicago public preschool, joined the Portland forum via Skype. Emanuel — dubbed “Mayor 1%” by striking teachers — is associated with the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Long before the one-time investment banker became Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel twisted arms to win Congressional passage of NAFTA, as President Bill Clinton’s political director.
“We didn’t know if we could win against him,” said Roberts. “But teachers around Chicago were sure that if we didn’t stand up and fight, we were going to lose everything. So we took that risk, and if you look at our contract, you can see things that we won, you can see things that we lost. We stood up, and we are stronger today than when this struggle started.”
In the tentative agreement, subject to teacher approval in an Oct. 2 vote, the Chicago Board of Education backed off demands for a merit pay system, for major increases in worker contributions to health insurance, and for student test scores to make up 45 percent of how teachers are evaluated. Chicago teachers will still be subject to the state requirement that the test scores make up 30 percent of teacher evaluations, but that will be treated as a trial run in the first year, and teachers will have the right to appeal bad ratings to a neutral board. The Board also, in the agreement:
- agrees to hire 512 art, music, physical education and language teachers
- guarantees that students will have their textbooks when classes begin
- gives laid off teachers 10 months of “recall rights” for the first time, provided they had good evaluations
- commits to fill at least half of all new openings with laid-off teachers
- provides annual raises of 3, 2, and 2 percent
- gives break time for nursing mothers
- gives teachers the right to “follow” their students when school is closed; and
- reimburses teachers up to $250 a year for school supplies.
The tentative agreement contains union concessions too: It increases the length of the school day. Laid-off teachers will get six months severance, down from the current 12, and poorly rated teachers will not have seniority protection when layoffs take place.
The Board of Education had wanted a five-year contract, but agreed to teachers’ proposal for a three-year contract, meaning it will come up for renewal in the middle of the 2015 mayoral campaign.
At the Sept. 20 forum in Portland, speakers described the strike as an inspiration.[pullquote] What we’re seeing is the birth of community and unions coming together and creating something that’s powerful enough to push back against the 1 percent.” — Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain[/pullquote]
“Something’s happening in this country that’s very exciting, and it’s not the union movement: It’s a workers movement,” said Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain. “What we’re seeing is the birth of community and unions coming together and creating something that’s powerful enough to push back against the 1 percent, powerful enough to push back against the mayor of Chicago.”
Gwen Sullivan, president of the Portland Teachers Association, said the same corporate reform movement that targeted Illinois teachers unions is at work in Oregon. “This is just the beginning,” Sullivan said. “Keep your eye on some similarities with what’s happening with our own governor, and what’s happening with some of the people we call our friends.”
Roberts, the Chicago teacher, attributed the strike’s success to rank-and-file, building-by-building organizing of union members … and the union’s careful work building community support for several years leading up to the strike.
“We’ve had a perspective that our fight is not our fight alone,” Roberts said. “We made common cause with the entire community to fight for equitable funding, to fight against school closures, against the really unequal distribution of resources inside our school system.”
It paid off: Polls showed support for striking teachers from a majority of Chicago voters — and even higher support — two-thirds — from parents with kids in the struck schools. It helped that CTU didn’t just say no to the reforms Emanuel was demanding; it articulated an alternative vision of what a good education could look like in a white paper entitled, “Schools Our Students Deserve.”
“None of us in Chicago view this as a Chicago Teachers Union struggle by itself,” Roberts said. “Unions across the country have been under attack. They’re telling us the only alternative is to roll over and let corporate America have its way.… We’ve just been through round one of a very long prize fight. We gave ‘Mayor 1 percent’ a bloody nose in this round, but we have to keep coming back and fighting.”
Lead-up to the strike: A Portland connection
Chicago public school teachers walked off the job Sept. 10, but the stage was set for that showdown more than a year before.
In 2010 and 2011, a coalition of “reform” groups with close ties to hedge fund managers and billionaire philanthropists organized in Springfield, Illinois to pass a state law. The law weakened teacher seniority rights and job security, and required that at least 30 percent of every public school teacher’s evaluation be based on student test scores. It also required a three-fourths vote before teachers can strike, and barred the Chicago teachers union specifically from bargaining over things like class size.
Heading up that coalition was the group Stand For Children, which is headquartered in Portland, Oregon.
In a remarkable video that became famous on YouTube, Jonah Edelman — Stand for Children executive director — talks for 14 minutes about how he and his allies were able to pass the law. Thanks to a “breach” between Democratic politicians and unions — Edelman tells a friendly gathering at a Aspen Institute conference — they were able to divide, outmaneuver and defeat teachers unions during a lame duck session of the Illinois Legislature.
“I can tell you there was a palpable sense of concern if not shock on the part of the teachers unions … that we had clear political capability to potentially jam this proposal down their throats the same way pension reform had been jammed down their throats six months earlier.”
In the video, Edelman describes how Emanuel helped his group split teachers unions, and he gloats that CTU president Karen Lewis made a “tactical miscalculation” when she fought “to preserve her members right to strike.” “In effect,” Edelman says, smiling, “they wouldn’t have the ability to strike … they will never be able to muster the 75 percent.”
How wrong that prediction, made in June 2011, proved to be.
