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. We want to hear from you. [27][28][29][30], The CTU's first president was John Fewkes. His 11. The district is navigating a faltering recovery from the pandemic, at a time when educators here and across the country report feeling stressed Chicago Teachers Union average salary is 188 percent higher than USA average and median salary is 228 percent higher than USA Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Suresh Naidu, and Adam Reich, Do Teacher Strikes Make Parents Pro- or Anti-Labor? Though educator actionsfrom West Virginia to Los Angeles to Chicagodid bring about major gains, and achieved more than years of backroom lobbying have achieved, they did not decisively reverse decades of neoliberal policies. [78], On Monday, October 21, 2019, CTU members entered the third school day and second calendar week of the strike. February 28, 2023 / 8:49 PM / AP. Even though tentative agreements had been made on eight points, CPS canceled school for Monday as CTU had not voted to end the strike yet. Got a confidential news tip? CHICAGO Paul Vallas, the former schools CEO endorsed by the Chicago police union, advanced to a two-candidate runoff for Chicago mayor on Tuesday. . Bankers and millionaires (with the help of politicians theyve supported) refuse to pay their fair share of taxes to fund quality schools. 14% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are Hispanic or Latino. [61] This tentative agreement did not hold, however, and the strike continued, at which point Mayor Emanuel announced his intention to seek a legal injunction, forcing teachers back to work. [35] The union continued to propose a 15% raise with no increase in healthcare cost over a 3-year contract citing rising cost of living and low-wages for PSRPs. [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. The most common major among Chicago Teachers Uni employees is psychology. 13. [35] By 1947, he had returned to the CTU for a second term as its president. In late April, tens of thousands of Arizonan educators walked out to demand better pay and more funding for their students. The number of children between the ages of CHICAGO Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson will meet in a runoff to be the next mayor of Chicago after voters on Tuesday denied incumbent Lori Lightfoot a second term, issuing a rebuke to a leader who made history as head of the nations third-largest city.. Vallas, a former schools CEO backed by the police union, and Johnson, a Cook Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey on Monday accused Mayor Lori Lightfoot of being relentlessly stupid in her dealings with the union and in trying to reach a deal to restart schools. 2021-2022. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. 7. "[79] The next day, Tuesday, October 22, 2019, negotiations continued, and 2020 democratic presidential primary candidate Elizabeth Warren joined the striking teachers. Cited in Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 122. Combined, these Chicago metro unionsemploy 10,653 people, earn more than $882 Meanwhile, 31 other incumbents had over 50% of the votes cast in their races, according to unofficial results. It's rare for an employee to stay with Chicago Teachers Uni for 8-10 years. [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. Lightfoot, Johnson and five other candidates are Black, though Lightfoot argued she was the only Black candidate Arlene Inouyea teacher and UCORE activist in Los Angeleswas one of thousands of educators for whom CTU showed that a different type of unionism was possible: Chicago was the spark of the movement that has swept this country in recent years. Another suit claims that a round of layoffs in 2011 that shed more than 900 classroom teachers disproportionately impacted African-Americans. Successful strikes often seem inevitable in hindsight. They battled an early plan to factorize public education. Highest salary at Chicago Teachers Union in year 2017 was $172,405. This new equity officer, this is one of their charges.. WebUnion Democracy Contact Our History For more than 75 years the Chicago Teachers Union has fought for the schools Chicagos students deserve. Jean-Claude Brizard was the CEO of Chicagos public school system at the time. [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. Its an action that ignores both science and experience. It was chartered in 1937 as Local 1 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in which it played a founding role. How do unions such as the CTU seek to effectively maintain member engagement when a strike is not looming? [68], After the expiration of the CPS contract with CTU in June 2019, a contract dispute emerged. Chalkbeat Chicagos reporters will be there to report the news you need. When the CTU formed, teachers had become disillusioned about their status as a special class of workers. Faith Karimi, Chicago Braces for Possible Teachers Strike Its First in 25 Years, September 7, 2012, available at https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/07/us/chicago-braces-for-possible-teachers-strike-its-first-in-25-years/index.html. [73] Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that CPS would not add any makeup days for any school days lost during the strike, stating that "There's no plan to make up any days We want to make sure we get a deal done." Only 1% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees stay at the company for 8-10 years. [33][34], Fewkes remained CTU President for most of this period. . Vallas, a former schools CEO backed by the police union, and Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, advanced to the . The second bill also allowed some issues to be brought to the table only if both sides agreed. 64% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are white. Unless otherwise noted, all educator quotations in this article are from semi-structured interviews conducted by the author between March 2018 and May 2019. 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. Revitalizing labor may begin with risky actions like work stoppages or insurgent unionization drives, but it cannot end there. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey on Monday accused Mayor Lori Lightfoot of being relentlessly stupid in her dealings with the union and in trying to reach a deal to restart schools. 18% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees majored in psychology. 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. Eric Blanc is an incoming assistant professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. 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. On average, employees at Chicago Teachers Uni stay with the company for 4.2 years. All of our data show that we actually are hiring non-white teacher candidates, Lyons said. 1979-1980: Multiple strikes over a payless payday during holiday break in 1979, results in salary increase and improved sick leave and maternity/paternity leave. 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.. Web63% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are women, while 37% are men. [13] Yet unlike ten years ago, CTU is now no longer almost entirely alone in its fight for the schools that students deserve. [46] CORE accused the incumbent United Progressive Caucus (UPC) of capitulating to corporate interests, silencing dissent within the union, and collaborating with the city to prevent union outreach at schools. Teachers were demoralized, and the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) leaders often seemed more interested in accommodating themselves to corporate education reform policies than in fighting them. The CTU united several teachers' organizations in Chicago in the wake of a teachers' revolt against banks during the Great Depression. It was real democratic unionism. Lightfoot's decision broke this mandate, as the 20192020 school year was exactly 176 days long. 37% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are male and 63% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are female. 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. [15], The CTU sought collective bargaining rights early on, but Superintendent William Johnson refused to grant them. [44], In 2010, the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), led by President Karen Lewis gained control over the CTU by winning 60% of the vote in a run-off election. And that is adding an extra layer of complexity [27][36], Most of Chicago's public school teachers were white single women. As crime in Americas third-largest city soars, Lori Lightfoot is the first mayor in 40 years to lose a reelection bid. 43% of Chicago Teachers Uni employees are between the ages of 18-20 years. They are more likely to be identified by black teachers, according to the research. Micah Uetricht, Strike for America: Chicago Teachers against Austerity (London: Verso Books, 2014), 98. A sign is displayed at the entrance of the headquarters for Chicago Public Schools on Jan. 5, 2022. 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. CTU was officially formed in 1937 by merging sectional and sex-segregated unions. But, as the Teamsters recent election of a new progressive national leadership suggests, it is spreading to the private sector as well. Race also was a factor as candidates courted votes in the highly segregated city, which is closely divided in population among Black, Hispanic and white On the issue of crime, under Lightfoot, Chicago in 2021recorded the most killingsin a quarter-century, 797, and more than 3,500 shootings which was 1,400 more than were recorded in 2019, when Lightfoot first took office. It has more than 25,000 members. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. 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. Vallas was the only white candidate in the field. Austerity and privatization, the union insisted, disproportionately hurt communities of color. Download reports to your device below. 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. Chicago's Lori Lightfoot has lost her bid for reelection, On Friday, October 18, 2019, teachers continued on the second day of the strike, meaning that students had attended school two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) out of the five days from October 1418 (CPS students did not go to school on Monday due to the observance of Columbus Day). [36] At this point, teachers planned to keep the strike going until at least Thursday the 24th, or longer if necessary. Asked if the district had a robust plan for addressing the issue and engaging communities around it, Matt Lyons deferred to Swinney. 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. But some key facets of the unions experienceand of militant labor organizing more generallyremain under-explored. Chicagos impact on the national teachers revolt was even more direct in Arizona. Chicago Teachers Uni may also be known as or be related to CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION, Chicago Teachers Uni and Chicago Teachers Union. 2023 Chicago Teachers Union. 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. Statewide, 83 percent of all teachers are white, a decrease of only 2 percentage points in the past decade. The least common age range of Chicago Teachers Uni employees is 20-30 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. [64][65] Students began their return to the schools on Wednesday, September 19, 2012. "We will have a safe Chicago. But she faced stiff competition, particularly from Johnson, who had the backing and organizational benefits of the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, as well as Willie Wilson, a Black entrepreneur who had been polling ahead of Johnson. [26], During this period, Fewkes and the CTU consistently opposed merit pay policies, proposals which would vary teachers salaries based on evaluations. Diversity Scholarship- dedicated to fostering diverse leadership in the labor movement and labor studies. . . 85.4%. However, the Chicago Teachers Unions recent strikes are not unprecedented, but rather one chapter in a long history of fights that have improved Chicagos education system. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune) 1985: Two-day strike for salary and sick leave. This is an important strategic corrective. All Rights Reserved. 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