Chicago Teachers Union considering strike
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After rejecting recommendations of a fact finder, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is considering a strike after a 30-day “cooling-off period” is set to ex pire on May 16. The CTU membership has already authorized a strike; and the CTU House of Delegates is empowered to set the date of the strike, if one is necessary.
A 10-day advance notice is required when a strike is called, and the CTU must decide whether the strike would occur before the end of the current school year (June 21),or at the start of the fall term in September.
CTU has been without a contract since June 30, 2015, when the contract reached after the seven-day strike of September 2012 expired. Talks between 4 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 2016 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and CTU have been ongoing for the past 18 months.
On April 16, the fact finder, Steven Bierig, recom mended that the parties reconsider an old CPS con tract offer that had already been unanimously reject ed by the CTU bargaining team. On the same day, the CTU formally rejected the proposal, thus starting a 30-day countdown to a possible strike.
The CTU House of Delegates gave union officers authority to immediately reject the fact-finding re port if its conclusions offered “no substantial break through in terms of class-size limits, reasonable eco nomics or the closure of devastating loopholes.”
“The clock has started,” said CTU President Karen Lewis. “CPS has created a fiscal mess and refuses to go after hundreds of millions of dollars in exist ing revenue that is already out there. … We have no choice but to prepare ourselves for a possible strike.”
A CTU press release explains: “The previously-re jected contract proposal made by CPS on January 29 would result in teachers taking home less in earn ings at the end of the proposed four-year contract than they earn today.”
The proposal would also phase out over two years a 7 percent CPS pension contribution, and freeze salary “steps and lanes” increases. Both of these have been features of teacher’s contracts over many years, and remain key issues for the teachers.
— MARK UGOLINI
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