(From Associated Press, June 6th, 2012)
CHICAGO | Like an angry spouse who wants to work things out but pre-emptively hires a divorce lawyer, the Chicago Teachers Union will ask members Wednesday to vote on whether they’d be willing to strike if negotiations with the city’s school district break down.
Union officials say they’re voting now and not after the recommendation of an independent fact-finder, which is due in mid-July as part of the contract talks, because they believe they have a better chance of getting 75 percent of the 25,500 members they need to authorize a strike while teachers are still in school, rather than possibly on vacation.
“Everyone that doesn’t vote is essentially voting no,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who added that the vote will be held for at least a few days until it becomes clear whether the 75 percent threshold has been reached.
An actual decision to strike could be months away, but the vote comes amid at-times acrimonious negotiations about issues such as teacher pay and the length of the school day.
Chicago Public Schools officials have proposed a five-year deal that guarantees teachers a 2 percent pay raise in the first year, as well as the introduction of “differentiated pay” that could be tied to a host of criteria — including taking hard-to-fill jobs and leadership positions at their schools. Behind a high-profile push by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the district also is proposing lengthening the school day by 10 percent, said CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll.
The union wants a two-year deal that calls for teachers to receive a 24 percent pay raise in the first year and a 5 percent pay raise in the second year. Also, the union wants language in the contract that would reduce each class by about five students. The CPS says the current class size policy will remain as it is, with Carroll noting that state law does not allow teachers to strike over class size anyway.
As the negotiations have gone on, CTU President Karen Lewis and Emanuel have engaged in a war of words. Emanuel once defended the school board’s decision to cancel teacher raises by saying they’d already received a couple of raises, while the students received “the shaft.” Lewis once issued a statement saying that in one meeting with Emanuel, the mayor “exploded and “used profanity, pointed his finger (and) yelled.”