By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
It should have been called a strike. When Chicago teachers didn’t show up on Monday in defiance of Chicago’s Public Schools’ directive to show up for class, Mayor Lori Lightfoot let them off the hook by moving the start date to Wednesday.
And on Wednesday, when teachers didn’t show up, Lightfoot once again moved the deadline to next week.
She should be calling the CTU’s bluff. Call it a strike. Dock their pay. Start the layoffs.
But twice now she’s let the union off the hook. That’s how you enable bad behavior.
In recent years, Chicago officials have given in time after time when the CTU has thrown a tantrum. The union is now used to having its way on every issue. It’s why they’ve struck over contract negotiations three contracts in a row. This is now the fourth time they’ve struck in a decade.
Lightfoot shouldn’t be surprised by the union’s complete refusal to comply. The CTU has made clear it has no regard for the science and data that say it’s safe to go back to class. (See Wirepoints’ recent pieces on school reopenings here, here and here, and the CDC’s recent reaffirmation that schools are safe.)
After all, the mayor fully enabled the CTU’s behavior just one year ago. She had a chance to put her foot down when she entered into her first contract negotiations with the CTU. She should have offered the union nothing. The city is broke and CPS is even worse off (see charts 1 and 2). Massive concessions from the union were needed to right CPS’ finances – and to give Chicagoans a break from more tax hikes.
Instead, she did the exact opposite by offering what she called the “most generous” contract ever to the union (see chart 3). Her generosity was repaid with an 11-day strike that ended with teachers extracting even more benefits from the shrinking school system (see chart 4).
Lightfoot should have learned from the experiences of her predecessor Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Emanuel came to Chicago from the White House with the reputation as a savvy insider and ruthless tactician who would fix what the city’s previous mayor, Richard M. Daley, ignored — the unions’ stranglehold on the city and Chicago’s nearly $30 billion pension debt. Emanuel ended up failing on both counts.
His 2012 challenge to the CTU’s contract demands had a strong foundation. Chicago had the shortest school day and year when compared to other large cities. CPS was stuck with a $1 billion dollar deficit. The district had dozens of near-empty, underperforming schools. And the city’s teacher pension debt had recently ballooned to over $8 billion.
None of that mattered after a week-long strike by the CTU. The mayor’s resolve broke. He gave in to demands for higher pay — a 17 percent increase over four years — and received few reforms in exchange.
Ditto in 2016, when the union held a one-day walkout, followed by additional months of ugly negotiations. Another strike in October of 2016 was averted when a deal was finally reached. The union ended up the winner again when Emanuel caved.
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What’s frightening for Chicagoans is that the Illinois legislature supported giving the CTU even more bargaining powers – read, strike powers – during the most recent lame duck session.
A new bill expands CTU’s collective bargaining powers by increasing the number of items subject to negotiation.
In 1995, a law officially stripped the CTU of its broader negotiation powers and limited it to striking on just salaries and benefits. This latest legislation, passed and expected to be signed by Gov. Pritzker, will give all those powers back.
Three strikes over the past ten years is bad enough. But the situation for Chicagoans is likely to get far worse once the union officially has the ability to strike for any reason.
If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider the longer-term history of CPS and the CTU.
Chicago teachers went on strike in 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1987. And according to the Chicago Tribune, the union threatened to strike another eight times during the same period.
Now CTU is on the verge of possessing the same powers it had when it went on that disruptive spree.
Lightfoot herself opposes the new law, kind of. Her official response is that it should be delayed “until the expiration of the current contract” – which just so happens is after her first term ends.
It’s unfortunate that Mayor Lightfoot apparently doesn’t understand cause and effect. The Chicago Tribune reports: “[Lightfoot] lamented that the city reached a five-year deal with teachers — following an 11-day strike — slightly more than a year ago, ‘yet here we are.’”
If she had possessed more resolve a year ago, “we” wouldn’t be here.
Read more about Chicago’s situation:
- True inequality: In-class education at Chicago’s Catholic schools but remote learning at public schools
- Proposal To Expand CTU Strike Power Would Betray History
- Nine facts Chicago’s City Council ignored when passing the city’s 2021 budget
- Look Who Is Standing In The Schoolhouse Door Now: The Chicago Teachers Union
- Every Illinois school parent, teacher should know these COVID-19 facts
Appendix
Chart 1
Chart 2
Chart 3
Chart 4
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
Virginia is a non-union state, and most of our school districts are fully remote. The jury is very much out regarding how safe it is to go back to in-person instruction, especially with the new COVID variants from the U.K. and South Africa that are beginning to spread. I do not blame Chicago teachers for not wanting to risk death or severe long-term health issues, when access to safe and effective vaccines is only months away. This website has a tendency to paint Chicago and Illinois as somehow uniquely messed up, when in truth the entire world right now is… Read more »
Fire them all and strip them of their pension benefits if they don’t show up to teach on the scheduled day.
Has anyone made an issue of the fact that the neighborhood “Safe Passage” stand arounders are still being paid to stand around?
I bounced out of Chicago a couple years ago, but every time I bounce back in I see the “Safe Passage” stand arounders are still standing around the empty schools?
Does anyone but me notice this?
Does anyone care?
Apparently laws and contracts mean nothing in Chicago. Here is what to do for Monday morning… 1. Revoke teacher VPN access so no online classes can occur. 2. Send out teacher termination notices for not showing up for work. 3. Supply them with instructions on how to apply for COBRA coverage. Do this and most teachers will crawl back begging or at least a meaningful negotiation will begin. Right now the teachers know Lightfoot is a wussy wimp.
She doesn’t even have that power, until a judge ok’s it. The CBA is like a huge weight on getting anything of substance done, and that’s why CTU wrote it that way.
Is there anybody out there who doesn’t think Lightfoot is in over her head? Her city is in a death spiral on so many fronts it is hard to believe it isn’t intentional. Extreme violence left unaddressed, and even encouraged by a State’s Attorney who behaves like a social justice warrior. Fiscal woes that can’t be solved and are growing exponentially. A downtown ravaged by protestors, with Covid now rendering it irrelevant. And now even the most basic services like education are apparently optional. Last one left turn out the lights.
And, no one is afraid of her, which is the unfortunate way you generate political capital in Illinois. She has no clout in Springfield, and the public unions walk all over her.
I gave her a chance in the beginning, although I had my doubts. I especially liked her attempt to end “aldermanic privilege” which is a real problem for small businesses.
Unfortunately all of those doubts I previously had, have been confirmed.
There are some very credible e-learning programs that could be used to cut overall school costs and offer meaningful lessons simultaneously to multiple schools in the district at one time. It’s never going to happen in CPS because nobody cares about quality or efficiency.
In another Wirepoints article, 01/28/21. a teacher claims schools are the hub of the community. Perhaps when teachers all lived within the boundaries of that particular school and walked to work. Not now. That kind of “hub of the community” chatter is just more Rosie Scenario for the thoughtless.
CPS has a ton of exemptions for teachers to live outside Chicago.
Mr Lightfoot APPEASES the CTU because they r of the same mind set COMMUNIST its just a power struggle between COMRADES
Thoughts on the Lightfoot : CTU relationship: We only think we have a government; in reality, anarchy reigns. Whether it’s COVID vaccines or teacher “contracts” I increasingly think that Illinois is only the tip of the iceberg. “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group … in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”― Frédéric Bastiat “Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”… Read more »
Please do it CTU vermin. Strike. Strike. Strike. Show all of Chicago your true colors; even the sheeple always-vote-Democrat’s. Stay on Strike until next January and there will be no change in the education levels of Chicago kids. School vouchers for all will be the CTU legacy. Please please please do it.
What doesn’t work? Saying what a corrupt Chicago Mayor “should ” do. What does work? Shaking up the status quo by using the same rules as the big players who have been jerking you around and shaking you down. (See recent Gamestop price action as proof of concept). What happens then? The big players have to reluctantly change the rules which have served to profit them mightily in the past. Because it is not so easy to write a law that narrowly applies only to benefit them and cronies. How does this specifically apply in this case? Chicago gets special… Read more »
The first place LL should go with these yahoos is court. They’re violating their latest contract by striking (yes, it is a strike when you organize the entire labor force to not show up) despite not formally calling it one and hold them to the terms they agreed to. A judge would agree. I don’t even call the previous contract discussions negotiations because in negotiations there is some element of give and take. CTU only takes. What have they ever conceded to the tax payer? It is not a stretch to call CTU the most radical teachers union in country… Read more »
It’s been over 80 years since Munich. Lori Light-tongue has found another foot to lick. Tastes like jackboots.