The Chicago Teachers Union, which represents 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel, filed a 10-day strike notice on Aug. 29 and the next day they set a potential strike date of Sept. 10. In June, over 90 percent of the members of the union voted to authorize a strike.
Why is the CTU filing the strike notice? Among other things, the administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel has demanded a longer work day, a longer school year, a decrease in pay of up to 25 percent, higher health care payments and an erosion of workplace protections, along with yet another increase in the number of privatized schools.
CTU President Karen Lewis said about the strike notice: “This is a difficult decision for all of us to make. But this is the only way to get the board’s attention and show them that we are serious about getting a fair contract which will give our students the resources they deserve.”
Beyond the specifics of the contract negotiation, the reality is that the teachers are being forced to defend each other and their students from a highly coordinated Wall Street and government war on public education and unions.
The teachers’ union is using the underlying power that all workers possess in capitalist society—collectively withholding our labor—to better position the union in its face-off with the powers-that-be in the city.
The destruction of public education is no far-off abstract threat to teachers, students and poor and working people. In April, Philadelphia moved to hand over the entire school system to private charter schools over the next three years. In Chicago, Emanuel plans to add at least 10 more charter schools this year, bringing roughly 16 percent of schools under private management. The school board plans to eventually privatize at least 50 percent of the city’s schools. Private schools, like private businesses, do not put people first; they put the bottom line first. Charter schools are notoriously anti-union.
The campaign to privatize public education
Part and parcel of the campaign to privatize education, which is bankrolled by billionaires like Bill Gates and the owners of McDonald’s, is the underfunding of public schools. Given the funds and resources, public schools will always provide a much better, more equitable education. Privately run schools, by their very nature, give up on “undesirable” and poor students. African-Americans and Latinos make up 85 percent of Chicago Public School students.
In the media and in anti-public education videos, Emanuel has very publicly joined the right-wing national campaign against public education and teachers’ unions. The mayor has called the teachers’ union “the problem” on numerous occasions.
In fact, the strike vote stems directly from the mayor’s aggression against the teachers. Among the new administration’s first substantial acts, one was to illegally cancel a contractually obligated pay raise for teachers. Then he tried, and failed, to undermine the teachers’ union by getting teachers at individual schools to vote for a longer school day.
In response to the overwhelming strike vote and the impressive organization and unity of the teachers, Wall Street millionaire Emanuel and his self-appointed school board, which includes Penny Pritzker, one of the richest people in the world; the media; and both conservative and liberal “education reform groups” have all denounced the teachers, arguing that striking is not the solution and would harm the children.
Responding to news that the teachers would issue the strike notice, school district spokeswoman Becky Carroll said, “A strike would only hurt our kids.”
Really? How would students be harmed by a strike by teachers to defend themselves during a war waged by well-funded anti-union and public education-bashing organizations? Not at all. A strike by their teachers to save their schools would most likely be an inspiration and a call to action for many of the students.
Why is it that hard-working teachers are persistently mischaracterized by the mayor’s office and in the media as “selfish” people who are plotting to retain a privileged access to the public “coffers” while thumbing their noses at their students, the budget crisis and the suffering and sacrifice of other workers during hard times?
In 2008, the biggest banks, whose reckless gambling and predatory lending were major factors in the economic and financial crisis of that year, demanded billions of dollars of our tax money and trillions more in loan guarantees and other benefits in order to cover losses that they created through their own shady activity and to prevent a collapse of the entire banking system. Were they ever treated like they were out of their minds to ask for this to be done? No. Their demands became reality—instantaneously. The whole system backed their right to rob the population.
Why should Wall Street, a millionaire banker and other lackeys of the 1 percent, who are unnecessary to the educational process and whose children do not go to public school, get to make policy decisions about public education—a service badly needed by poor and working people and people of color—or get to decide how much a teacher is worth? They should not.
Should teachers who, along with other education workers, are the ones responsible for public education, make public education policy in coordination with parents and students, and get compensated adequately for the work they do? Yes, they should.
In order for education to be democratic it must be of, by and for the public. Education must be “owned” by the public, not McDonald’s and Microsoft.
If there is a strike to defend a unionized workplace and save public education, then we will join the picket lines and go out into the streets to build solidarity with the strike.
Should the Chicago teachers strike?
Let’s imagine a world in which workers never withheld their labor because it would “cause problems.”
Let’s imagine that the teachers’ union gave in to Wall Street—that they never held up picket signs, never formed picket lines or protested at the school board meetings, never prepared to strike to fight for their rights. How would that help better the plunging economic lot of tens of millions of currently unemployed, underemployed and underpaid workers?
If we want things to get better for workers in general, then anywhere where workers are under attack they must utilize their numerical superiority and strengthen their bonds with other besieged workers and oppressed people and do battle together—that’s how we can help each other out right now.
Should we sit around and wait in the hopes that the economy will get better, work for lower and lower wages and live in a society where there is no social safety net or public services? Or should we fight?
Whether the teachers should go out on strike is up to them. Striking is not always the correct tactic, especially if you can win without striking. But there’s no doubt that workers should be striking more frequently.
Strikes carry risks—all struggles do. The mayor’s office and the establishment will attempt to pit workers against each other on the basis of who makes more money. They will try to pit unemployed and underemployed workers against the teachers. They will attempt to frighten and mislead people, erroneously insisting that the economy can only get better if public workers like the teachers make less money and budgets are reduced to “create jobs.”
During a strike, people can go to jail or worse. A strike may be lost—they often are. We can never be sure of the outcome, or even the ups and downs, of a struggle before it unfolds. But we can predict what will happen if workers do not engage in struggle and are not prepared to use the most potent weapons in our arsenal. The billionaires will take it as a sign that they can reach even deeper into our pockets and endanger our lives—all so they can increase their already enormous profits.
We can’t win if we don’t struggle
If we do not engage in struggle, we will not learn how to wage the very struggles that are necessary to protect and expand our rights. If we do not struggle, we will not win.
Most of the inertia in society is currently on the side of the bosses. Without definitive, well-planned action, we cannot tap into the very real discontent of millions of working people and inspire the masses of working people to fight on their own behalf against the anti-worker offensive. We need more struggle. We need more strikes. We need bigger strikes. General strikes where workers shut down entire cities—that is undeniably what is needed. Workers must flex their muscles and take bolder actions.
If the Chicago teachers go on strike, then they could very easily, and in a short amount of time, get the masses of people on their side and bring them into the struggle. A big teachers’ strike is the kind of thing that can change the whole climate in the city, the country and beyond. The Chicago teachers’ struggle has the potential to be a great catalyst to the fight-back movement, especially considering that there are more than 7 million teachers and 81 million students in the primary educational system across the country. They could make the strike and other militant actions popular again, especially if it leads to a victory.
Is there enough money to pay the teachers?
The question of whether there is money to fund public services and teachers’ salaries is not really a question—it is a weapon wielded by Wall Street against workers. In the case of the teachers’ canceled raises, for example, the Emanuel administration claimed they did not have the $70 million they said it would cost to meet the city’s contractual obligation. That was a lie.
The city took that $70 million and diverted it to the police department. This month, the mayor’s office announced that they will build a new $55 million park, and the school board just voted to allocate $25 million to defeat the strike. The plain and simple truth: The mayor’s office wants to decrease teachers’ salaries and weaken their union in the service of Wall Street.
In December 2011, the state of Illinois granted two Chicago businesses, Sears and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, $317 million in tax breaks because they threatened to move from the city. Instead of paying this extortion, that money could have been used for teachers’ wages and to fund public education. What did Sears do in the wake of the outrageous tax break? They laid off hundreds of workers!
But let’s be honest. This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. If there is money to bail out the banks even when doing so will not revive the economy, there are absolutely the resources to protect teachers’ living and working conditions.
The truth is: The billionaires are using the economic crisis and the uncertainty and suffering it is causing to strengthen their stranglehold on society. Why? Because under the capitalist system, a few millionaires and billionaires monopolize the means of producing wealth—enabling them to influence public opinion and misdirect public anger while they carry out class war on workers.
And what is their biggest weapon in this war? Divide and conquer. They want workers to stand aside or side with them as they steal from the teachers and pillage the public school systems that working-class students rely on.
What are our biggest weapons? Struggle, organization and unity, which are the only things that can lead to a reemergence of the idea amongst working people that the billionaires have no right to rule the education system or any part of society—that we should fight them over who gets to make decisions, and ultimately who gets to control the workplace and the economy.
People of Chicago: Stand with the teachers on Labor Day, Sept. 3. The CTU is calling for a solidarity rally at Daley Plaza from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Join us at the rally.
Everyone who can should attend this important event to build solidarity with the teachers. If the teachers go on strike, we should help swell the picket lines. A teachers’ victory will be our victory too!
