Chicago Teacher's Union Strike Continues after Negotiation Fails

CICS Teachers and Staff Picket Outside the Offices of Charter School CEO Elizabeth Shaw in February 2019 (Wikimedia Commons).

More than 25,000 Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members joined a strike on October 18 after negotiations with the school district failed. Their demands include higher salaries and more benefits in addition to funding for social justice issues.

The last CTU strike was in 2012. The union wanted better pay, and they advocated for issues such as smaller class sizes. The CTU succeeded, winning concessions from the school district that included fairer evaluations for teachers. The CTU shifted the national discourse from bread-and-butter concerns to larger, socially-driven educational issues. 

“In 2012 the strike established CTU as a strong institutional voice on how the school system was being governed and introduced the importance of social justice issues to the bargaining process,” Professor Robert Bruno, a labor-relations expert at the University of Illinois, told the Caravel. “This time it's about attaining real social justice gains through the collective bargaining process.”

Professor Bruno and his colleague, Professor Steven Ashby, cowrote A Fight for the Soul of Public Education, a book about the 2012 CTU strike. They write that CTU leaders “believed that preserving public education and promoting social justice would require uniting with other private—and public—sector workers struggling against the interests of the country’s economic and political elite.”

In recent months, the CTU and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) failed to reach a deal, which lead to this strike. The CTU rejected the school district’s deal, which offered teachers a 16 percent salary increase over five years. Instead, the CTU demanded a 15 percent salary increase over three years. 

The strike has affected the whole city. On October 16, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson cancelled school preemptively for approximately 300,000 children. The closures caused inconveniences for parents and the school district. Parents are scrambling to arrange childcare, and the school district must feed the 75 percent of children who receive free-or-reduced lunch. The CTU and CPS reentered negotiations October 17, but meanwhile, residents of Chicago will feel the pressure.

Regardless, the CTU has made clear its intentions to stand firm. CTU President Jesse Sharkey has said, “we are on strike until we can do better.” Until the city agrees to do more, the CTU will refuse to teach.

On the other hand, the school district said the CTU’s demands are unfeasible. Mayor Lightfoot said her administration “value[s] the workers… Honoring that value is who I am and what I stand for. But I also must be responsible for the taxpayers who pay for everything that goes on.” In addition, Mayor Lightfoot believes the CTU’s demands would cost the city $25 billion—money they do not have. 

Across America, unions are striking more frequently. Although union power has declined in recent decades, these developments suggest it might be returning. As the internet organizes workers more effectively, unions could return to the forefront of middle-class life.