I'm Sticking with the Union!

Strike Update

Well, as my Fearless Readers undoubtedly know, unless you’re just back from Siberia, the threatened Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) strike became reality as of Monday morning.  It’s the first Chicago teachers’ strike in 25 years, and my first ever.  Thus far, four days into the strike, I am advisedly hopeful, confident in my union’s leadership and especially the three dynamic union reps and delegates at my school.  Jerry, Eric and Jaime have proven to be indefatigable leaders – with Jerry and Eric combining participation in exhausting and frustrating negotiation sessions with inspiring the troops, while Jaime is point-woman for organizing and managing the strike activities at our school, doing everything from being the coordinator of our strike team captains and setting up our pickets at 6:30 am, to supplying us with signs, union garb, donuts & coffee, and generally keeping us enthusiastic. 

I have discovered that, far from being a semi-break from work, being on strike is at least a full-time job if you’re doing it right.  Here is how my days have looked like thus far:

• At my school (or another school that needs support) for four hours’ of picketing starting at 6:30 in the morning.
• Usually a break in the middle of the day for a couple of hours.  I have mostly spent the time grabbing a quick lunch, uploading my pics from the morning, and editing my on-line photo journal. (See my Chicago Teachers' Strike Photo Journal)
• Some sort of afternoon rally, starting at about 2:30 or 3:30 – from which I generally get home by about 6:00 or so.  There have been three downtown, and one at a representative high school in my area (there were three of these rallies on Wednesday).  Tomorrow I look forward to a neighborhood rally at Logan Square, with its soaring column commemorating the GAR,* sponsored by the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA). 
• My evenings have been spent uploading the rest of my pics that day, updating my album, and sending emails to friends and family.  I try to get to bed by 10:00 or so, with that 5:00 alarm looming; alas, more often than not, I have been too keyed up to get to sleep easily.  In consequence, I am often running on caffeine and the contagious enthusiasm that prevails on the line.
• There will also be a mass rally this Saturday downtown.  Come join us! 

Group Photo at my school after the first day's picketing

ON THE PICKET LINE

Picketing at my school and in the surrounding neighborhood has given me renewed respect and fondness for my fellow teachers in general, and a somewhat surprising and entirely gratifying regard for the residents – including parents – of the neighborhood.  The generous and spontaneous support and, yes, love, that we have received from these hard-working, often struggling, poor members of the community has made my eyes misty, and my heart achy.  The cars driving by the little intersection at my school these past week have mostly honked in support, sometimes quite enthusiastically.  You glimpse Hispanic moms and dads and working stiffs in these cars smiling and waving or giving us the thumbs-up and your heart swells.  We have had local ladies bring us water and home-made cookies – how great is that?!  And these are people who are sometimes being put out by our walkout, struggling to find daycare or begging more babysitting time from grandparents, uncles, aunts.  Furthermore, quite a few of our more diligent and hard-working students are showing up to march alongside their teachers.  Warms the cockles of my heart…

In contrast, a friend and former colleague who now teaches at a magnet high school just north of downtown, in a pretty tony neighborhood, reports that at best half the cars passing his picket show support.  Moreover, the fancier the car, the more likely the occupants will demonstrate outright hostility to the strike.  These are folks who almost certainly send their kids to parochial or private schools and, in any case, can easily afford daycare if the need arises.  Makes me seriously reconsider my periodic thoughts of applying for a job at one of these schools; give me my struggling Hispanic and Black parents, and their kids, any day. 

The other, immensely gratifying source of support on the picket line or when we march up and down busy Fullerton Avenue comes from two groups.  Firstly, fellow union workers, especially those who work for the city.  We get lots of love and often really loud honks (and sirens) from city buses, Streets and Sanitation vehicles, Fire Department trucks and ambulances, and, best of all, cops.  These people – especially the police – know that they are next in the Mayor’s and the corporate puke’s sights.  Everywhere we go, including on the huge rallies downtown, the police have been unfailingly friendly, courteous and openly supportive.  I have been joking that storming the barricades would be anticlimactic; the cops would smilingly open them up for us to pass. 

Secondly, we get honks and thumbs-up from non-union workers passing by.  This is bit of a surprise to me, as so often it seems that non-union workers resent us folks with our fancy contracts and union backing.  Perhaps that is a myth perpetuated by the lamestream, corporatist media.  After the way they’ve been man-handling us in the papers and TV news, it makes sense.

Shutting down LaSalle Street, Chicago's financial district

MASS RALLIES

The rallies have been huge – at least twice, if not three times the afore-mentioned media’s predictably lowball figures of 10,000 or so.  Being one small part of a sea of chanting, cheering, singing, hollering, noisemaker-ing, sign and banner waving teachers and allies all garbed in red is an awe-inspiring, intensely communal experience.  I have often found myself with a lump in my throat as I surveilled the mass of cheerfully determined humanity taking over the wide LaSalle street downtown, or absolutely packing Clark Street in front of the Board of Ed, or encircling City Hall on all sides.  We have twice shut down most of the West Loop for two or three hours, and I imagine we have given Mayor He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named a moment or two of pause, and perhaps just a little worry.

Those of you who have been following my photo journal will have seen these crowds, and the alternately funny and serious and often clever signs and banners they carry.  As I wander the crowds taking pictures, I also often single out kids carrying signs calling for fair treatment of their teacher and for school reform (smaller class sizes, more enrichment education, etc).  I do this not simply because they are cute, but because their support – the support these children and young people are lending their teachers – is heartening and humbling and bodes well for the future.

DIRTY TRICKS

We know the Mayor and his corporate buddies are worried, because their dirty tricks have escalated as the week has worn on.  They have mountains of money – mostly from outside the city or even the state – to spend on media and various shenanigans, and they are starting to show just how cynical, hypocritical and mendacious they really are.  Also, scared.

Some examples the Mayor's chicanery:

• Disinformation campaign in the media.  Don’t accept at face value the periodic reports that the negotiations are all but over, that teachers will be back at school tomorrow, etc.  There is generally no truth to such reporting and it mostly serves as an opening for further stories that make the Union and teachers look bad when they don’t come true.  Other obvious examples are the way they twist everything the union leadership does or says – like accusing CTU President Karen Lewis of ’walking out of’ talks when she was actually just taking a half hour off to address the rallying teachers downtown.  This is ironic, since she has been at almost every negotiating sessions these past many months, while the Mayor and the CEO of CPS, Jean-Claude Brizard, have attended exactly none.  Furthermore, when she responded to a reporter’s pointed question about her ‘walk out’ that the idea was “just silly” the Board pukes turned that comment into ‘Lewis Calls Contract Negotiations “Silly”.’
• Greedy Bastard Teachers.  The media loves to reduce our negotiating points down to our supposedly outrageous salary raise demands.  You will hear and read that we are demanding, in the middle of a recession, a huge raise of 16%, 20%, 25%.  In fact, like all negotiators worth their salt, our initial proposals were rather high; that’s what you do – you start with a somewhat exaggerated position, fully expecting to negotiate and compromise downwards.  So, while the media is still quoting ridiculous figures, the negotiations on salary have for the moment been settled and the negotiations have moved on to other issues like teacher evaluations, re-hiring priorities, and school closures.  The latest figure I got from one of my union reps, who has been in most of the important negotiating sessions, is the following four-year plan:  3%-2%-2%-2%.  Feel free to check my math (not my strongest suit), but I’m pretty sure that amounts to 9% over four years.  Considering that the Mayor unilaterally revoked the last 4% contractual salary increase we were due in our last contract, plus the fact that he is increasing the school day and lengthening the school year, this is an eminently reasonable, in fact modest salary raise.
• Ridiculous rumors spread – especially on talk radio.  There was one call-in show where the host opened up with the accusation that teachers were taking advantage of their new ‘free time’ to go on drunken pub crawls, laughing and joking about screwing CPS and the parents and students.  Another involved supposed shopping sprees – as if teachers on strike and not receiving pay for the duration of the walkout would go off plunking hundreds of dollars on shoes and the like. 
• The union leadership and the more active members are being ‘investigated’ in an effort to dig up dirt from their pasts to use against them.  Family and friends are being asked probing questions by mysterious, official sounding people.  That is sheer intimidation and an old trick.
• People with union garb are showing up at picket lines with bullhorns, spreading misinformation to confuse teachers and, presumably, trick them into missing the next day’s events or even going back to work prematurely.
• Remember those snotty young Repubs led by James O’Keefe, who produced those ‘gotcha’ videos – in reality heavily edited misrepresentations of what unsuspecting people said – that brought down ACORN and other liberal community groups?**  Well, they’re apparently lurking in the shadows here. There are reports of odd phone calls to CTU headquarters from so-called ‘reporters,’ and mysterious young videographers posing as legitimate media asking pointed questions of rank-and-file members at strike events.  So we can expect some bilge from these creeps to show up on your televisions some time soon.

I and my fellow teachers truly do want to get back to work.  Nobody in their right mind would do this often frustrating, exhausting, and increasingly micro-managed job unless they loved teaching and cherished the young people in their charge.  But we will not end the walkout until the powers-that-be acknowledge our legitimate grievances and treat us with dignity and respect.

ONE BIG UNION!

____________

*The Grand Army of the Republic, founded by Illinois politician and former Union General John Logan, was the veteran’s organization for Union Veterans of the Civil War.

**In a much less publicized follow-up to the devastating ACORN videos, the California Attorney General granted O’Keefe and his partner in dirty tricks, Hannah Giles (the ‘prostitute’), immunity in exchange for the raw tapes of the ‘interviews.’  The AG found that the videos actually aired were heavily edited misrepresentations; a subsequent US Government Accountability Office report cleared ACORN and its workers of any criminal activities or misuse of government funds.  Too late for ACORN, which was effectively destroyed by the controversy.

One Big Union!

Rallying in front of, around and on the famous
Picasso sculpture, Phoenix.  Full album here.

There was plenty of bad news here at Chicago Public Schools for teachers at my school and others this introductory week before classes start.  I shall leave the bad news for another essay.  The good news in this first week was the ample evidence of solidarity amongst us teachers, both within my own school, and across the city.  We are ready and willing to confront the powers that be and demand justice for our students and ourselves. 

My Fearless Readers might recall (see posts from June, below)  that towards the end of last year the Chicago Teachers’ Union had called a strike authorization vote, determined to overcome the union-busting requirement of a 75% majority that Mayor He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named imposed on the CTU.  This, our Democratic Mayor accomplished with the help of a fellow Democratic Governor and a Democratic Illinois Assembly. Mayor HWSNBN, aka ‘Rahmbo’, had pissed off enough teachers that the union received an unprecedented 90%+ endorsement, in spite of a dirty-tricks campaign on the part of HWSNBN and outside monied interests including a public relations blitz to convince everyone that the teachers were hasty in voting before the independent fact-finding commission issued its report on July 16^th.  In the end, the ink on the commissioner’s report had scarcely dried when the CPS board rejected it out of hand the same morning it was released; apparently, they didn’t like the fact that the report lambasted the Board and Mayor Rahmulus for insisting on a scrooge-like 2% raise, after having taken away our contracted 4% raise on false pretenses, among other dastardly deeds. The CTU, meanwhile, held a meeting, examined and debated the various components, and ended up objecting to several of the findings by that evening. 




Possible English Teacher

I could go on about the Mayor’s and the Board’s shenanigans and all the energy and money they are spending on undermining the teachers and the CTU.  I probably will, but first, a few facts about the CTU’s position.  Our dispute with the Board is about salary and benefits, yes, and much more besides. 

Let’s start with the ‘much more besides’ category.  What the CTU and Chicago Teachers are demanding is a ‘Better Day’, which means:

<!·      Limit Class Size.  Currently the Board can unilaterally increase class size without any input from teachers; CPS currently has the fifth largest class sizes in Illinois.  Just about every study ever conducted on this issue has shown that small class size is a major determiner of academic achievement.  This belies the CPS motto Children First.

•  Stop the hemorrhaging of ‘Enrichment’ Education – Art, Music, World Language, Physical Education, as well as clubs and teams and sports.  My own school is down to one Music teacher, after having let go a dynamic and award-wining Chorus teacher two years ago; our championship-winning Girls’ Volleyball team was eliminated at the same time.  Two of our five Art teachers this year were told they don’t have programs and might not at all and were therefore on tenterhooks all week; ditto a P.E. teacher/coach.  We lost a World Language teacher who retired and wasn't replaced; as a result cannot offer French I this year.  Other neighborhood schools are in the same dire straits.  With no Music or Arts or PE teachers, one wonders just what HWSNBN intended to do with the extended day.  More Math?  Yay...what fun...

• Stop the replacement of closed public schools with dubious charter schools.  Our current mayor if anything outdoes his predecessor in his enthusiasm for charter schools.  Many so-called educational reformers champion charter schools.  All this in spite of studies now coming out that show that these privatized public schools perform overall at…exactly the same level as actual public schools.  There are some outstanding charter schools, some execrable ones, and a lot of middling charter schools.  They are not the silver bullet that will revive US education; they only serve to undermine public schools and teachers’ unions and take troublesome neighborhood schools off the mayor’s books and out of his hair.

• Related to the above, are concerns about the increased use of standardized testing to evaluate our students and schools.  These measures are often unfairly biased against urban minorities, ESL students and SPED students, do not measure students’ true achievement, and are used to penalize schools that do not reach often arbitrary and unreasonable goals.  Under this framework, a struggling school with low tests scores gets penalized and loses funding.  Follow that neighborhood public school down a year or two and the inexorable logic and reality is that you will find a charter school. 

  Now for the salary-benefits demands, for which we CPS teacher have been pilloried as greedy bastards for demanding a raise during a recession.

Nope: Math

·      Salary Raise.  Mayor 'Tiny Dancer' (for that was his Secret Service moniker) has from the beginning, through the middle, and now towards the end of this whole process, insisted on a 2% raise over four years,  meaning 8% all told.  (Keep in mind that this is accompanied by a 10% increase in H.S. teacher’s hours and preceded by the unilateral withdrawal of the contracted 4% raise).  He has not budged from this figure, in spite of the Independent Commission, the 90%+ teacher slap-down, and being forced to back down from increasing our hours by some 20%+ without any added compensation.  Meanwhile, the Independent Fact Finding Commission chastised the Mayor for being in fiscal la-la land and mostly sided with the teachers on salary issues.  While the Union has some issues with the commission’s calculation of a 14.85% raise, that is clearly more in line with the contract history and long-delayed cost-of-living increases we have yet to receive.  Additionally, the Board wants to increase the school year without compensation (i.e. we work more for the same pay), and eliminate ‘step’ salary increases for years worked. 

·      Benefits.  The Board wants to increase health insurance premiums for couples and families while simultaneously tying premiums to a ‘Wellness Program’ that would financially penalize teachers who do not meet certain health goals.  The Board also wants to take away our accrued sick-days (effective immediately but not affecting previous years’ accumulated days).  This would, in fact, create a disincentive to come to work every day, as unused sick days would disappear at the end of the year.

·      Job Security & Teacher Evaluation.  Without going into arcane details, the Board is implementing this year – without proper consultation with the Union – a new paradigm instruction and for evaluating teachers that will likely result in the ability of school administrators to fire teachers with little justification and no provisions for appeal.  None of the teachers I know object substantively to the overall teaching philosophy of the new program; it's how the admin will be using it to undermine teachers that we object to.

The above is only the sketchiest of outlines of the many issues at stake in this dispute.  If you want a detailed account of the Union positions, please consult www.ctunet.com.

As of last Thursday, Aug 30, the union has issued its 10-day countdown to a strike, meaning 30,000 teachers will likely walk out on Monday, 10 September, leaving 400,000 students and their parents in the lurch.  This is not a prospect to be relished or crowed over and is, in fact, an avoidable disruption in tens of thousands of lives.  It’ll take the combined pressure of the teachers union, other unions, and, especially the parents and students and communities around the city to get the Mayor to see reason and stop worrying about his reputation for combativeness and confrontation. 

I could think of worse ways to spend Labor Day, for a kid

In that regard, I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the spontaneous comments I have gotten over the past week and more.  When I called up my dentist to cancel an upcoming procedure due to the strike, the receptionist’s reaction was “We’re all for you!  Good luck!”  I got similar thumbs’ up from my vet (another cancelled appointment), a Postal clerk, baristas, and some passers by who saw my red CTU t-shirt.  Then, there was the Labor Day rally in Daley Plaza (full album here), which was heartening and inspiring.  For those people out there who equate labor unions with some sort of un-American crypto-communism, you gotta come to a teachers’ rally and see the funny, creative, and literate signs on all sides, the moms and dads with babies in strollers, the kids running around waving signs, getting a civics lesson and having a gas climbing the Picasso Phoenix statue, the young and middle-aged and elderly teachers and supporters of all stripes, the brother and sister unions who come out in support.*  It is a sight to behold.

See my Strike Album for an ongoing, edited collection of my images from the picket lines.

______________
* A hearty solidarity shout-out to some of the organizations and unions whose t-shirts, signs and banners and buttons I noted: Chicago Police and Fire unions, CCCTU (Cook Co. College Teachers Union), American Postal Workers' Union, United Steel Workers, United Airlines Pilots' Union, various locals of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO), SEIU (Service Employees International Union), CBTU (Coalition of Black Trades Unions), ISPC (Illinois Single Payer Coalition), IUPAT (International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, ATU (Amalgamated Transit Unions) and, bless their hearts, the Unitarians.  I have no doubt left someone out -- please let me know if I did.  But as far as I could see, it was one big happy union out there!