Chicago Teachers Strike. Chicago Labor Can win It.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Chicago teachers voted unanimously last night to begin their strike today (10-17-19) continuing the ongoing struggles of teachers and educators that have occurred over the past few years. There is no doubt that previous strikes in mostly right to work (red) states run by right wing Republican governors have had a major effect on the ranks of organized labor.

The most important aspect of the significant gains that were made in these earlier strikes was that they were rank and file led and began, for the most part, in opposition to the established leadership. These strikes/protests also broke from the narrow, jurisdictional restraints that dominate the present labor hierarchy’s approach in labor disputes with all workers in education invited to participate in the process, janitors, kitchen staff, even Charter School teachers were not excluded. In West Virginia, teachers/educators increased pay from a 1% offer to 5% and a 5% raise for all state workers. I will say one more time: What better reason for joining a union is there than that? 

I have also stressed that a key reason that these strikes/protests were somewhat successful or even took place at all is that the established labor officialdom and the full time apparatus they control was either not present or too weak to stop it. They showed that we can violate anti-union laws and win. The reader can find numerous articles on these earlier teachers/educators struggles on this blog.

The Chicago school district is the third largest in the nation with 300,000 students and while the district offered a 16% raise over five years, (the union had asked for 15%) the strike is not simply about money. The truth is, no strike is simply about money despite the corporate mass media’s intense efforts to convince the public otherwise.  The union's demands continue the trend in the earlier strikes, smaller class sizes, more support staff like counselors and nurses and higher raises. 

Chicago has suffered an all out assault on public schools with former Mayor Rahm Emanuel closing many of them. Other urban centers like Oakland California have been faced with school closings and it is overwhelmingly poor students and students of color that suffer the consequences of these actions. Right wing websites are already attacking the teachers and their union for what one calls the teachers, “….expensive list of demands including higher wages – wages that the data shows have been growing far faster than the pay of the taxpayers who fund them.” All this argument confirms is that there has indeed been an intensified and successful assault on the living standards and wages of the US working class. It also confirms that all the recent struggles are in response to declining wages and conditions are valid. Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot also said used her love of the taxpayer as an excuse for not being able to afford the teachers’ demands. “We always have to keep in mind the taxpayers” she said.

They kept the taxpayer in mind when it came to bailing out the banks, Wall Street and indeed, the capitalist system itself in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The US taxpayer dragged capitalism from the edge of the abyss in 2008.The US military, the greatest polluter on earth is also funded by the taxpayer to the tune of a trillion dollars a year or so. We fund the Zionist regime and it’s brutal state as well as the Saudi’s who have orchestrated a human catastrophe in Yemen, so we need to pay no attention to the anti-union, anti-worker ravings of the right wingers.

Both Democratic and Republican administrations alike are after privatizing education with the help of WalMart, Bill Gates, Eli Broad and others. The teachers/educators are in the forefront of the struggle to reverse this assault on US workers and the middle class; they are fighting for our children.

“We have not achieved what we need to bring justice and high-quality schools to the children and the teachers of Chicago,” Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union announced to the media yesterday and the union has pointed out that almost 17,000 Chicago public school students “struggle with homelessness”, and some professional educational staffers are unable to afford rising housing costs.

Given the social conditions that exist in US society, educating our children is an extremely difficult task for the teacher as all the ills associated with poverty and despair are brought in to the classroom.  One in eight live in poverty in the US according to a recent survey, and a third of the US poor are children. In cities like Flint and Detroit, children are 36% of the poor.

From what I read, issues like housing and the needs related to social conditions are technically outside of the sphere of bargaining and the union contract.  Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s mayor responded to the issue of homelessness and housing may well be a critical issue but “…., mandating it in the union contract ‘is never going to happen.’” Wall Street Journal 10-17-19. 

It is important to remind ourselves once more that what is outside or inside the realm of possibility depends on the balance of class forces. The 2018 strikes teach us that. The law was violated in states most union members were told (unfortunately more often than not by our own leaders) strikes could not occur. The first step in this new period is to openly reject and campaign against the Team Concept and all jointness and labor/management plans instituted under the title of the Team Concept philosophy

In the 2012 strike school closings were also an issue as they are throughout the country as the campaign to privatize education continues. There is a lot of money to be made investing in private schools and Wall Street and the private sector want to get their grubby little hands in that public trough.

In the strike in 2012 school closings were a major issue. In his balanced assessment of the 2012 strike, retired teacher Earl Silbar points out:

“No limits were set on the Mayor’s proposed closing of 50 neighborhood schools.  This failure undermined  perhaps the largest focus of the Union’s outreach and public support - “Improve our schools! Don’t close them!”.  School closings was a legally ‘ permissable’ subject of bargaining, meaning that management could and did refuse to bargain over that issue. It also meant  that the union could not legally strike over that issue.  However, being “permissible” also opened  the door for  other forces -  parents, community groups, students, religious and union organizations-  to have intervened and pressured the Board to negotiate over the closings. Did the union work to make that happen? In fact, there was no internal  CTU member education or preparation towards that end. There were no public initiatives  or mobilizations to force the issue. Public relations rhetoric, yes. Effective action? No” Read the entire article here.

The bosses use all forces at their disposal against us in these situations; the courts, the police, the National Guard if need be and at all times the mass media they control. The Chicago Labor Federation has 300 unions and 500,000 workers affiliated to it. This is a potentially powerful force and the city’s economy could be brought to a halt by this body. The issue of housing, health care, transportation and education is important to all of us. Better paid unionized workers try to overcome the failings of public education by paying for child-care and private schooling but this is no way out. Some workers in education belong to other public sector unions.

Activists, socialists and all workers who are union members, and have friends or relatives that are union members, should raise the importance of all of workers, union or non-union becoming involved in this strike. Union members should raise proposals and motions in their locals directed at the Chicago Labor Federation to bring the power of the half a million workers who are affiliated to that body in to this struggle. What good is it for us to belong to national organizations yet strikes are isolated local events?

Lori Lightfoot claiming there is not the funding for some of the teachers demands should simply be ignored. Faced with the power of the working class in Chicago, the money can be found and no robbing Pam to pay Paul here. However, The approach and public statements like this from former CTA president Karen Lewis in 2015 must be abandoned:

“We understand that there is a serious financial problem and we are willing to work within that framework. We accept that there will be a 0 percent raise. But give us something to make that 0 percent feel better.”  (see the CTU press conference on the union’s You tube channel here.)

Both Karen Lewis and Jesse Sharkey, who was the CTA’s Vice President back then both accepted the bosses’ arguments that there was no money and that the cuts had to be made. Jesse Sharkey said on WGN radio, “When we say ‘broke on purpose,’ both parts are important, including the recognition that CPS is broke. We don’t think it’s a good time to be asking for big raises or really expensive reforms.” 

Hopefully brother Sharkey has thrown that worldview out the window and taken a lesson from the West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, and other states that changed the game in 2018-19.

There is no shortage of money in society. We must demand what we need and a program and strategy for winning it.

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