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 costs as well as a proposal to peg teachers pay to students standardized test scores. Bankers and millionaires (with the help of politicians theyve supported) refuse to pay their fair share of taxes to fund quality schools. Crime spiked during her term, though she has repeatedly touted that it dropped year-over-year in 2022. Testifying to this sea change, not only did AFT and NEA leaders start to more consistently challenge neoliberal education policies, but even establishment Democrats such as Joe Biden dropped their former advocacy of privatization and pledged to support many of the educator movements demands in their 2020 presidential campaigns, from tripling Title I funding, to boosting teacher pay, to hiring more mental health professionals. 4. The Chicago Teachers Unions abandonment of their duties today is nothing short of a strike. 64% of employees at Chicago Teachers Uni are White. The Effects of Labor Unrest on Mass Attitudes, 2019, available at https://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/do-teacher-strikes-make-parents-pro-or-antilabor-the-effects-of-labor-unrest-on-mass-attitudes/. 1412. Teachers also resented the constantly increasing bureaucratic control over their classrooms. [21] The CTU continued to pursue the school violence issue, insisting that teachers were being attacked by dangerous youths. Early on, the CTU made the decision to decline an offer of pay increases combined with layoffs. Author Biography CHICAGO In grave danger of becoming the first Chicago mayor defeated in 40 years, Lori Lightfoot stood before an audience of mostly her fellow Black women at a [12] By September 1938, it was the largest teachers union in the U.S., with over 8,500 members. Austerity and privatization, the union insisted, disproportionately hurt communities of color. The least common salary at Chicago Teachers Uni is <$25k. WebThe average pension for Chicago teachers is $47,700, which includes short-term workers and individuals who retired years ago at much lower compensation levels. 7. WebChicago unions. In the following decades, there were seven strikes which improved both learning and working conditions. What are the best practices in left union governance? [33][34], Fewkes remained CTU President for most of this period. Eric Blanc is an incoming assistant professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. Lightfoot is the first incumbent elected Chicago mayor to lose re-election since 1983, when Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, lost her primary. 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[opinion] Some elementary school teachers were paid less than janitors, and more teachers came to agree that they experienced discrimination because they were female. The Amendatory Act limited subjects for union bargaining, and gave control of CPS schools to the mayor, including the power to appoint the Board of Education. Got a confidential news tip? . These militant teachers took to the streets protesting the City and the Loop bankers who owed taxes that could have been used for salaries and schools. On the Los Angeles strike, see Jane McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2020). She was at times lauded for her handling of the pandemic but saw violent riots in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis. Live in New York City. Black and Latino students make up 37 and 47 percent of students at the district, respectively. On December 4, 2018, CTU members at the Acero charter school network initiated the first strike at a unionized charter school in US history. As one CTU organizer later recalled, in school-site meetings preparing for the coming contract in 2012 organizers would start off the discussion as follows: If any of you think the next contract is about a percentage-point raise, tell us, because we think we know its about the future of public education as we know it: thats whats on the table.[5] This was not just rhetoric. [55] This strike was the CTU's first since 1987, and the first strike ever for many of the teachers involved. On average, employees at Chicago Teachers Uni stay with the company for 4.2 years. After months of build-upthrough rallies, community outreach, one-day wildcat walkouts in southern counties, and an outpouring of Facebook-fueled deliberationsWest Virginias unions were eventually pushed by the rank and file to back a statewide strike, which lasted from February 22 through March 6, 2018. Alex Parker, Jean-Claude Brizard: We Underestimated Teachers Union, August 22, 2013, available at https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130822/downtown/jean [24][25] It also called attention to a mounting teacher shortage, citing over a hundred classrooms without regular or substitute teachers. [26], During this period, Fewkes and the CTU consistently opposed merit pay policies, proposals which would vary teachers salaries based on evaluations. 2022-2023. Among teachers, 19 percent are Latino, and 52 percent white. The CTU is also affiliated with the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and the AFLCIO. WebOn August 26, 2019, the Chicago Teachers Union rejected an independent fact-finding report that suggests a 16% raise over 5 years and a 1% increase in healthcare costs. Using a database of 30 million profiles, Zippia estimates demographics and statistics for Chicago Teachers Uni. [45] CORE ran an aggressive grassroots organizing campaign, and took a strong stance against school privatization. Chicago Teachers Union affiliations include the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL), the Illinois State Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (ISFL-CIO), the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). 2023 Chicago Teachers Union. 1985: Two-day strike for salary and sick leave. A sign is displayed at the entrance of the headquarters for Chicago Public Schools on Jan. 5, 2022. Signs in support of the Chicago Teachers Union are handed out before a caravan from Union Park to City Hall on Jan. 5, 2022, in Chicago. The numbers tell the story: 52% of CPS teachers are white, 21% are African American and 20% Latino, while the student population is 90% black, Latino and other CTU also scheduled civil disobedience training for its members at the CTU headquarters at 3:00p.m., suggesting a prolonged strike.[85]. Download reports to your device below. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis. [56][57] Regulations required them to make contract negotiations an issue in the strike, and the teachers indeed sought better pay, better benefits, and protections for teachers who lose their jobs due to school closures. As crime in Americas third-largest city soars, Lori Lightfoot is the first mayor in 40 years to lose a reelection bid. 6. Organized Money: What Is Corporate America Thinking? Underfunding, low pay, high class sizes, and excessive standardized testing remain endemic. [82] On Wednesday, October 23, 2019, negotiations continued at Malcolm X College. The two Chicago strikes, like the broader 2018 to 2019 educator upsurge, wrested important concessions for educators and students. The department is now headed by former Tilden High School principal Maurice Swinney. By combining social justice demands with rank-and-file engagement and a willingness to take disruptive action, CTU set itself apart from most other unions and inspired teachers across the country to follow its example. Only 1% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees stay at the company for 8-10 years. [2] In addition to bucking the trend, the Chicago teachers strike was not just any other work stoppage. [T]he 2018-19 educator offensive was thrown backwards almost overnight by the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020. People who werent political, it made them politicaland it sparked such camaraderie and solidarity in our building. they did not decisively reverse decades of neoliberal policies. Later, Mayor Lightfoot canceled CPS classes for Wednesday, October 23, stating once again that "CTU has not scheduled a House of Delegates vote, which would be necessary to end their strike As a result, it will not be possible to hold classes tomorrow. One suit claims school closings and turnarounds since 2000 have had a disparate impact on African-American tenured teachers and staff on the South and West sides of the city, where a majority of the teachers worked. Over 90% of Chicago Teachers Union members polled said they would participate in a remote-work action when they resume school in January. This is an important strategic corrective. [38], The CTU intensified its campaign for collective bargaining rights in the 1960s, staging huge demonstrations at the Chicago Board of Education. "[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. district CEO Janice Jackson told Chalkbeat in July. But perhaps their greatest cumulative impact was in shifting public opinion on education policy and organized labor. CTU won recognition in 1966 as the official bargaining agent for Chicago teachers, negotiating its first contract in 1967. But, as the Teamsters recent election of a new progressive national leadership suggests, it is spreading to the private sector as well. Schools with no black teachers soared from 10 to 50. Though strike action is a more exciting topic than electoral politics and organization building, further investigations may reveal the myriad of ways these two factors determine the long-term impact of victories won through workplace militancy. [59] They also called for smaller class sizes and paid preparation time. Put your passion for social justice to work inside and outside the classroom. [74], On Thursday, October 17, 2019, teachers took to picket lines early in the morning, and the CTU stated that it planned to resume negotiations with the city at Malcolm X College. Working-Class Voices: First Person Accounts of Life and Work, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, Creative Commons (CC) license unless otherwise noted. This Act established Local School Councils but also seriously weakened teacher tenure. [14], When the CTU formed, teachers had become disillusioned about their status as a special class of workers. It was an action that explicitly challenged the entire neoliberal education reform agenda of privatization and union busting, a struggle that pitted the CTU and its community allies against a powerful Democratic Party establishment. Then when we were actually on strike [in 2012], marching in downtown Chicago, it was epic. Chicago teachers went on strike multiple times in the 1970s and 1980s:[51], Under the leadership of CORE, the CTU pushed hard in negotiations with the city. The second bill also allowed some issues to be brought to the table only if both sides agreed. Its a matter of student achievement and racial equity, said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of the new book A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago Since the 1960s.. 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. He also got the backing of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police. [60], On September 14, 2012, the teachers reached a tentative agreement with the city, which included preferences for teachers who have been laid off due to a school closing to be hired in another school, and student test scores having less of a role in teacher evaluations than the city had originally planned. No deal, no school: Chicago cancels classes for a 2nd day | AP News AP NEWS While both sides noted progress over Saturday, Lightfoot noted that she would be "very surprised if classes [would] open on Monday. Margaret Haley, often dubbed Chicagos Lady Labor Slugger is the figure who put Chicago teachers on the labor map. But in various ways, the roots of these recent upsurges can be traced back to Chicago. [48] When the city would not agree to the CTU's core demands, including an expansion of programs like art and music at the city's most underfunded high schools, CTU members voted overwhelmingly (90% of teachers and 98% of those who cast ballots) to authorize a strike. 1. [27][36], Most of Chicago's public school teachers were white single women. WebLimited English Proficiency, Special Ed, Low Income, IEP Report. [75] Later that afternoon, CPS announced that classes had been cancelled for the following day, as even though negotiations seemed to be progressing, there was no foreseeable agreement in the near feature. It's rare for an employee to stay with Chicago Teachers Uni for 8-10 years. com/chicago/20130618/river-north/ctus-karen-lewis-blames-rich-white-people-for-education-inequity/. (Meanwhile, male teachers felt shortchanged and emasculated.) "We will have a safe Chicago. Robert Muller, dean of the National College of Education at National Louis University, said his institution is one of many wrestling with the question of how to bring more people of color into the teaching profession. 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. Its an action that ignores both science and experience. [53], On September 11, 2012, the Service Employees International Union Local 1 informed companies that some of their members might go on strike with the teachers. [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. [47], CORE quickly took action to distinguish itself from UPC, reaffirm its grassroots support, and launch a campaign to defend public education. Later in the election, she took specific aim at Johnson, which many saw as a sign that her internal numbers showed him as a growing threat. Diversifying the teacher workforce is among the issues on the to-do list for Chicagos new chief equity office,district CEO Janice Jackson told Chalkbeat in July. The VEC had been aggressive but not radical, and explicitly sought to exclude communists. Amid a stalemate in reopening negotiations, the Chicago Teachers Union is threatening a Wednesday labor action in which high school educators would refuse to work from school buildings unless an agreement is reached with the district before then. 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. By 2012, mass job actions had all but disappeared in the United Statesindeed, the year 2009 witnessed the fewest number of major strikes, five in total, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking labor conflicts. The most common age range of Chicago Teachers Uni employees is 18-20 years. Demonstrating the potential for rank-and-filers to successfully transform a moribund union, the left-led Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) won the CTUs leadership in 2010, with a mandate to empower members to take on privatization, austerity, high-stakes testing, and the systematic underfunding of schools serving students of color. To be sure, systematic problems in K-12 are very far from being resolved and the 2018 to 2019 educator offensive was thrown backwards almost overnight by the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020. The Movement Goes National You cant always get to the school board meeting. 41% of employees earn a salary of $40k-60k a year. Ten years ago, Chicago educators lit the fuse of what eventually became a national teachers revolt. Following a lengthy strike in 1987, the Illinois School Reform Act was passed. Chalkbeat has on multiple occasions requested interviews with the official since he announced his promotion in September, but the school district has not yet made him available. The [Arizona] strike won over $300 million in additional funding for schools and a 20 percent educator raise over the next four years, while preventing these gains from being funded by cuts to other social services. Teachers also resented the constantly increasing bureaucratic control over their classrooms. 10. 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. 1973: Two strikes, of 12 and 11 days, yield improved salary, benefits, preparation time, supplies, and class sizes. The most common ethnicity at Chicago Teachers Uni is White (64%). In Chicago Public Schools, 47 percent of students are Latino, 37 percent are black, and 10 are percent white. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Chicago Teachers Uni and its employees or that of Zippia. [22][23] During this period the union also sought shorter hours for students and teachers. May 19, 2022. To win a transformational reinvestment in K-12 schools, CTU, UTLA, and other left led unions are also deeply invested in the electoral arena. Studies show better academic and social-emotional outcomes when students have a teacher from a similar cultural background, especially black and Latino students. Average annual salary was $135,037 and median salary was $142,478. . Meanwhile, 31 other incumbents had over 50% of the votes cast in their races, according to unofficial results. CHICAGO Paul Vallas, the former schools CEO endorsed by the Chicago police union, advanced to a two-candidate runoff for Chicago mayor on Tuesday. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. 28% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees stay at the company for less than 1 year. [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. Bottom-up internal union transformation remains most prevalent in K-12 teachers unions. He left the CTU in 1943 to serve as AFT president. Jean-Claude Brizard was the CEO of Chicagos public school system at the time. Another suit claims that a round of layoffs in 2011 that shed more than 900 classroom teachers disproportionately impacted African-Americans. At the time, Illinois state law required that all school districts in Illinois include at least 176 days in the school year. [36] For Emily Comer, who in the fall of 2017 cofounded with ONeal the viral Facebook group West Virginia Public Employees United, the main political upshot of the McAlevey book was its clear analysis of the difference between real organizing and advocacy. Whereas CTU had empowered member leaders to organize their coworkers and communities, West Virginias unions were focusing on lobbying politicians. John Dewey and Margaret Haley were founders.. About 60 percent of AFT's membership works directly in education, with the remainder of the union's members To make things worse, pandemic conditions have exacerbated public educations longstanding problems and stressors. The reform act created two classes of discussion in union bargaining, but only for districts in cities with a population of more than 500,000 people, limiting its effect to Chicago. [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. They are more likely to be identified by black teachers, according to the research. . [37] Teachers came from a shifting mix of white-collar and blue-collar families. Lightfoot, a Democrat, failed to get enough votes in the nine-person race to move on to an April 4 runoff election, according to projections by The Associated Press. They battled an early plan to factorize public education. The Illinois state board of education has yet to weigh in on the matter. Negotiations between CPS and CTU continued, and Lightfoot sent the union a letter asking them to end the strike while negotiations continued. Johnson received about $1 million from the Chicago Teachers Union for his campaign and had support from several other progressive organizations, including United The district is relaunching and expanding teaching academies at high schools, which prepare students to pursue an education degree, and has partnerships with teacher training programs that place special emphasis on recruiting people of color. Research Summary. In September 2016, union members voted overwhelmingly to strike if an agreement could not be reached, setting a deadline of October 11. Asked if the district had a robust plan for addressing the issue and engaging communities around it, Matt Lyons deferred to Swinney. After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that: 63% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are women, while 37% are men. [5], By the 1930s, Chicago teachers had formed several other different unions, some of which were still segregated by gender. CHICAGO Chicago Teachers Union members are voting on their leadership this week a high-stakes decision at a challenging juncture for the countrys public educators. Hiring more black and Latino teachers isnt just a matter of fairness or progressive sensibilities. The one-year retention rate for all new teachers in the 2017 fiscal year was 80 percent, but the retention rate for new black teachers was about 4 percentage points below that, the lowest among the three biggest racial groups at the district. And whereas much of the 2012 strike was focused on warding off the worst of Rahm Emanuels attacks, CTUs most recent work stoppage was an almost entirely offensive struggle to reverse the damage done by years of austerity and corporate education reform. 0% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are between the ages of 20-30 years. It asked the Chicago Police Department to station an officer in each of Chicago's 43 high schools; CPD refused. [53], The striking teachers also wanted to call attention to a number of education issues, particularly what they defined as a broad attack on public schooling by corporate privatizers. In January 2021, the Chicago Teachers Union released a video showing six of their members who were dance teachers performing an interpretative dance to CTU was officially formed in 1937 by merging sectional and sex-segregated unions. [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. If there is not a concerted effort in place to take an affirmative action to change the demographics of the teaching force, it will stay the same or get worse, Todd-Breland said. [3] The Obama administrations signature Race to the Top national grant policybased in part on Chicagos earlier Renaissance 2010 program, which punished schools with low test scorespushed competition, overhauls or closures of failing schools, standardized testing, and merit pay. A decade after Chicagos historic strike, labor research should start reflecting the fact that the CTU was, and continues to be, a pioneer in more ways than one. But some key facets of the unions experienceand of militant labor organizing more generallyremain under-explored. In just the last decade the number of schools with fewer than a 10 percent black teaching staff jumped from 69 to 223. 43% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are between the ages of 18-20 years. [13] The CTF, still under the leadership of its longtime head Margaret Haley, remained separate for some years, based on concerns that the CTU would disproportionately represent the interests of males and high school teachers. 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. The union has said conditions for in The most common major among Chicago Teachers Uni employees is psychology. The CTU recognizes that when we fight these attacks together, we win, which is why in 2018 our membership voted to stand united with charter school teachers and staff in one local, fighting for the benefit of all of Chicagos educators and students. On September 27, 2019, CTU members voted to authorize a potential strike starting on October 17 if a contract deal is not reached. Chicago's Lori Lightfoot has lost her bid for reelection, Students are more likely to be held to high expectations, and less likely to suffer from teachers implicit bias those unconscious, automatic stereotypes, and attitudes people foster that can influence decision making, such as the idea that certain ethnicities are inherently unintelligent, aggressive, or criminal. Answering questions of this sort will not only fill a lacuna in the literature, it will also inform the governance practices of a new generation of militant union leaders, as an increasing number of opposition caucuses win the helm of a much weakened and hollowed-out labor movement. And in Chicago, the ranks of black teachers continues to decline, and the percentage of Latino teachers has only increased slightly. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election Tuesday, ending her historic run as the city's first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve in the position.
