More than 98 percent of Chicago teachers have voted to strike, which union activists say is as much about defending students and parents as it is about the economics of their contract. America's third largest school system could be shut down by next week, setting off a confrontation between a militant rank-and-file teacher movement and the Democratic Party Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s former Chief of Staff, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention. It is a wake-up call for unions who every election year expend their resources into electing Democrats. While every election year trade unionists see the Democrats as a defense against Republican aggression, it still doesn’t make sense for teachers’ unions to side with Democrats because they take a “we’ll kill you slower” attitude towards them.
The teachers union have rejected a 2-percent raises and merit pay, as the raise would be offset by cuts to healthcare benefit concessions. But what makes this possible work stoppage is that the union is also making this a fight in defense of parents and students. The issue of class size has been key for getting parent’s support; a union study found that Chicago public school class sizes were among the highest in the state of Illinois. “Reducing class sizes can lead to improved teaching and learning,” Chicago Teachers Union’s president Karen Lewis said in a statement. Educationalists criticize the approach because it focuses so much on numbers-based testing, which along with merit pay encourages teachers to “teach to the test,” rather than engage in critical thinking. There is an anger toward the Emanuel administration’s spending on charter school expansion and dedication to testing. Mayor Emanuel’s plan favors already rich areas like downtown and Gold Coast, exacerbating the already apartheid-like dichotomy between the poor African American South Side and the wealthy white North Side. Davis Guggenheim, who made the pro-charter schools movie Waiting for Superman, is an outspoken Obama supporter and made a film for the president’s re-election campaign. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who comes from Chicago, is unabashedly in favor of more privatization.
Organizing for the strike, teachers have used the same kind of bottom-up organization. “It’s about going out to the schools and talking to teachers one-on-one and building up delegates, rather than before, where if there was a problem in your school, you just called the field representative,” CTU bargaining committee member Sarah Chambers explained. “We found out that did not work. Delegates and leaders are really standing up and solving issues on their own...We set up contract action teams. They started making actions and doing various things to organize our schools..."
Such organizing contrasts with the business-like model of many major labor unions. Education activist Deborah Meier said in an interview earlier this year, “To fight an enemy like the education bureaucracy, the union developed its comparable bureaucracy.”
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten supports the strike effort, saying, “This level of participation and engagement by Chicago's educators is both inspiring and instructive. It represents not just anger and frustration, but also a real commitment to Chicago's students and a desire to be active participants in building strong public schools that help all Chicago children thrive.” Yet, she appeared with Mayor Emanuel at a Clinton Global Initiative conference in Chicago as a partner in a joint effort to address education and public investment. Many CTU members now ask“Which side are you on?” Labor activists also point out that in 2007 the then-Senator Obama had promised as president he would “walk on that picket line” if collective bargaining was ever under attack, but he offered little support for the Winconsin public sector struggle. President Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on Twitter praised the president’s relationship with teachers unions as “anything but cozy.” The mainstream labor leadership have conveniently forgotten that Obama is a war criminal, a promoter of authoritarian government, a tool of Wall Street and an opponent of authentic health care reform. Their commitment to a supposed pragmatic electoral strategy chains them to a corrupt Democratic Party supporting a predatory economic system and the oligarchs who own them. Obama acted like a Bush and Clinton completed what Reagan began.
“[Public sector unions] grew up depending on the political system, particularly the Democratic Party,” said Stanley Aronowitz, a sociologist at the CUNY Graduate Center who has written extensively about labor and class politics. “They didn't think even Republicans in power would try to roll back their gains. They're not accustomed to the traditional trade union tactics like the strike weapon.” The capitalist class pushed labor to the margins of the Democratic Party and for those "progressives" who still remained within the Democratic Party such as MoveOn Mayor Emanuel once denounced them as “fucking retarded.”
The teachers unions are going to have to learn to act independent of the politicians and in solidarity with other unions and the public.
Adapted from here
The teachers union have rejected a 2-percent raises and merit pay, as the raise would be offset by cuts to healthcare benefit concessions. But what makes this possible work stoppage is that the union is also making this a fight in defense of parents and students. The issue of class size has been key for getting parent’s support; a union study found that Chicago public school class sizes were among the highest in the state of Illinois. “Reducing class sizes can lead to improved teaching and learning,” Chicago Teachers Union’s president Karen Lewis said in a statement. Educationalists criticize the approach because it focuses so much on numbers-based testing, which along with merit pay encourages teachers to “teach to the test,” rather than engage in critical thinking. There is an anger toward the Emanuel administration’s spending on charter school expansion and dedication to testing. Mayor Emanuel’s plan favors already rich areas like downtown and Gold Coast, exacerbating the already apartheid-like dichotomy between the poor African American South Side and the wealthy white North Side. Davis Guggenheim, who made the pro-charter schools movie Waiting for Superman, is an outspoken Obama supporter and made a film for the president’s re-election campaign. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who comes from Chicago, is unabashedly in favor of more privatization.
Organizing for the strike, teachers have used the same kind of bottom-up organization. “It’s about going out to the schools and talking to teachers one-on-one and building up delegates, rather than before, where if there was a problem in your school, you just called the field representative,” CTU bargaining committee member Sarah Chambers explained. “We found out that did not work. Delegates and leaders are really standing up and solving issues on their own...We set up contract action teams. They started making actions and doing various things to organize our schools..."
Such organizing contrasts with the business-like model of many major labor unions. Education activist Deborah Meier said in an interview earlier this year, “To fight an enemy like the education bureaucracy, the union developed its comparable bureaucracy.”
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten supports the strike effort, saying, “This level of participation and engagement by Chicago's educators is both inspiring and instructive. It represents not just anger and frustration, but also a real commitment to Chicago's students and a desire to be active participants in building strong public schools that help all Chicago children thrive.” Yet, she appeared with Mayor Emanuel at a Clinton Global Initiative conference in Chicago as a partner in a joint effort to address education and public investment. Many CTU members now ask“Which side are you on?” Labor activists also point out that in 2007 the then-Senator Obama had promised as president he would “walk on that picket line” if collective bargaining was ever under attack, but he offered little support for the Winconsin public sector struggle. President Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on Twitter praised the president’s relationship with teachers unions as “anything but cozy.” The mainstream labor leadership have conveniently forgotten that Obama is a war criminal, a promoter of authoritarian government, a tool of Wall Street and an opponent of authentic health care reform. Their commitment to a supposed pragmatic electoral strategy chains them to a corrupt Democratic Party supporting a predatory economic system and the oligarchs who own them. Obama acted like a Bush and Clinton completed what Reagan began.
“[Public sector unions] grew up depending on the political system, particularly the Democratic Party,” said Stanley Aronowitz, a sociologist at the CUNY Graduate Center who has written extensively about labor and class politics. “They didn't think even Republicans in power would try to roll back their gains. They're not accustomed to the traditional trade union tactics like the strike weapon.” The capitalist class pushed labor to the margins of the Democratic Party and for those "progressives" who still remained within the Democratic Party such as MoveOn Mayor Emanuel once denounced them as “fucking retarded.”
The teachers unions are going to have to learn to act independent of the politicians and in solidarity with other unions and the public.
Adapted from here
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