Seymour writes: "If the fight to halt school budget cuts in Obama's Democratic heartland succeeds it would be a huge boost for unions."
Thousands of Chicago Public School teachers rally before marching to the Board of Education's headquarters in protest in Chicago on May 23. Teachers say they are upset with contract talks, especially the offered 2 percent raise to work a longer school day this fall. (photo: John Gress/Reuters)
Chicago's Teachers Could Strike a Blow for Organized Labor Globally
19 July 12
ast month, approximately 90% of Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members voted for strike action. Only 1.82% voted against. This was a shock to the local administration.
Not only is this the heart of Obama country, where unions are expected to play ball with the Democrats in an election year. It is also a city where, thanks to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, teachers are not allowed to strike unless more than 75% of union members vote for it.
Yet it is not just the local establishment that will be unsettled here. This is getting national attention in the US, and a strike could be an embarrassment to President Obama. Moreover, it could re-ignite the American labour movement at a time of global unrest.
The basis of this dispute is what is innocuously termed "school reform". This is a process of privatisation and union-busting. Since the 1990s, Chicago has been a laboratory for such reforms, which have been rolled out across the country. The programme enjoys the support of the Democratic leadership as well as leading pro-Obama liberals such as Davis Guggenheim, whose film Waiting for Superman was a lengthy attack on teaching unions and a tribute to private schools.
Chicago intends to open 60 new privatised, non-union "charter" schools in the next five years. Public schools are being closed to make way for this change and capital spending has been slashed. The CTU's new leadership has been driving a campaign to tackle chronic underfunding in Chicago schools, and broaden the curriculum. They describe the system as one of "educational apartheid", and demand an elected school board which reflects the needs of the city's population.
But the final provocation was when the "reformers" increased teachers' working hours by 20%, while cutting a promised 4% pay rise in half. They falsely imagined that the CTU would be a pushover, having recently elected a bunch of "rookie" candidates to the leadership.
In fact, the victory of these "rookies", from the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), demonstrated two things. First, it showed the unwillingness of members to be as compliant as the leadership has been in the past. Second, it proved the new leadership's ability as grassroots organisers. They showed the same skill in building support among teachers for strike action in a series of mock ballots and mass public meetings.
The administration and local media are now running with the story that this is purely a fiscal problem. The government, they say, is trying to close a £700m deficit. But the teachers' union has obtained, through a Freedom of Information Act request, evidence that the money that was to pay for teachers' salaries has been spent on paying police officers to patrol public schools. This is typical of reform in the neoliberal era: budgets are cut, but just as significant is the shift in the balance of state intervention away from welfare and toward coercion and discipline.
Having effectively built support among teachers, much now hinges on the union's ability to win over parents' groups , who have been alienated by the budget cuts. Parents are a key target of the administration's propaganda. Rahm Emanuel has tried to appear above this dispute, but his mayoral campaign in 2010 was led by education "reform", and his allies are running campaign ads attacking the teachers, and encouraging parents to pressure them into dropping their campaign.
But this is just one aspect of a general problem facing the union. Unions in America have been so diminished over the years that membership is concentrated in a public sector rump. Their struggles can thus appear as sectional, even where they have much wider significance. Union members in Madison, Wisconsin won widespread support. In the end, however, they lost the initiative by falling back on a narrow client relationship with the Democratic party. Pushing a recall vote against Governor Scott Walker, they haemorrhaged members while the new anti-union laws were passed, then lost the recall vote.
Chicago teachers don't even have the option of appealing to the Democrats, who are their antagonists in this case. But if they are to succeed, they will need allies. The unions have strategic power, but they are too small to fight in isolation. Some Chicago unions found that reaching out to Occupy last year helped them resist rightwing attacks.
If this strike goes ahead, it will be the first such strike since 1987. But the stakes are much higher. Teaching activists say this struggle recalls the Patco dispute. When the airline workers union failed in that battle with the Reagan administration, it was a setback for the whole American labour movement for decades.
A failure in this case would potentially be much worse than Patco. On the other hand, a success would partially redeem the heavy defeat inflicted on unions in Wisconsin, and signal a fundamental shift in American politics. And more than this: from Sichuan in China to Asturias in Spain, labour protests are growing in scale and militancy. America's influence is such that a return of the labour movement in the US would tilt the balance in favour of workers globally.
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Teachers aren't just teachers they are parents too who struggle to maintain a somewhat middle class status. They like everyone else want a well paying career job that will help them pay for a home and put their kids thru college.
Obama talks about the American Dream yet
his policies are breaking this country down. He sides with the rich and powerful corporations and bankers instead of real people who work long hours and many years
in hopes that they can have and raise a family and maybe have a comfortable retirement.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/do-our-public-schools-threaten-national-security/?pagination=false
Go Chicago teachers! Hopefully Wisconsin will send some good vibes your way :)
Kind of reminds me of what is happening in Mayor Brewer's town of Tucson, AZ.
Why did the tower of babel fail?
You're kidding right?
So, the importance of a union is not to its members alone, but to the whole society. ALL workers benefit from the respect and material benefits earned by UNION workers, and every citizen benefits who then lives in a fairer, more decent and prosperous nation. Or, to be crass, even a capitalist ought to recognize that unionized workers with fair wages in their pockets can still be exploited as customers.
Organized labor is routinely slandered: it's a special interest (as if big business is not); it is run by union bosses (as if business bosses are paragons); it is costly to consumers (as if business profit is not); it is costly to its members (as if helplessness in the workplace is a free perq).
None of these slanders impugns the purpose and critical value of unions in a decent and open society. Unions don't have to be perfect to be profoundly necessary.
funny thing about unions they abjectly refuse the right to work, unless your paying one of their bosses -- sounds like another gang who cares more about their own greed then anything else.
Workers themselves long ago realized the problems with their own unions. this was one of the reasons that the IWW called for "one big union" more than 100 years ago. It is also why there have been rank and file democratic union initiatives going back decades (the most recent and one of the most interesting is the NYC Taxi Workers Alliance that consciously chose to affiliate with but not join the AFLCIO). Instead of bashing unions how about getting behind the workers that are trying to organize to get a decent wage, benefits and working conditions and support a new, democratic union movement in this country that is truly fighting for the rights of its members (as well as those of the US working class more broadly) to a decent wage, benefits and working conditions.
As Florence Reece's 1931 song put it: "Which Side Are You On" Martintfre?
on the rights of real live breathing individuals -- not artificial gangs who for their selfish benefit oppress individuals rights.
I hear it more all the time that charter schools are there to dumb down the kids and make them the work force for the wealthy. It is something to think about.
Go Chicago teachers! Go unions, the makers of the middle class!
So, instead of simply being cheer leaders, we need to be critical supporters and say to the unions (the union bosses that is, who for the most part have chosen to "partner" with management and betray their own membership particularly future memebers) we support you but you need to change your tactics so that your strikes, labor actions, what have you, hit the employers instead of making the general public (who you serve and who should be supporting you) bare the brunt of the consequences of your going out on strike by shutting down service delivery.
Monopoly requires government protection to last.
IT matters not if the monopoly is a corporation, a union or a political party -- the consumers are screwed every time.
So how is Chicago and Illinois doing financially? Are they bankrupt yet? Can they afford the ballooning pensions -- I bet not.
unionized workers are in no way a monopoly in the sense that a company has a monopoly on the product it produces. A company that has a monopoly over its products/indust ry has absolute power to set prices (as long as people will pay them). Unions only give workers relative bargaining power when it comes to negotiating wages and benefits with their employers that still reap all of the profits for themselves. So, this first analogy simply is not an accuuate one.
When unions were closer to 1/3 of the workforce (compared less than 12% today and much lower if you exclude public sector workers) during the post world war II boom years were "consumers screwed"? Hardly. In fact, workers had higher wages, better benefits and worked less hours (ane where one wage earner could support the family). So, your arguement that unions screw consumers is also simply not true.
True dat -- unionized workers have the monopoly backing of government and a company faces the tyranny of consumer choice.
States and localities are now bankrupt not because of pension funds but because they have given tax breaks to the wealthy and to corporation's for decades which means they are collecting less revenues (in NY, e.g., it has been shown that if we only collected the so-called millionaires tax as well as the stock transfer tax that the state would in fact have a surplus) and the fact that they to to wall street to borrow money instead of creating (as they have done in North Dakota) a publicly owned bank so that states and localities could borrow from themselves (as a result, North Dakota doesn't have the same fiscal woes as other states).
And, on the Federal level, most of the deficit that is bankrupting us are the result of a decade of unnecessary wars and the bush tax breaks for the wealthy. take those out of the equation and you have cut the deficit by 2/3.
yea - the teachers could go on strike and the kids still won't be educated, just like the were no educated when school was in session.
Say Wall Mart closed their doors until the customers paid them more and only came at times of the stores convenience -- F* the customer! how long would that/they last?
Companies do not go on strike against their customers they go on strike against their workers. It's called a lockout or simply firing them (especially if they are unionized) and then hiring new, cheaper workers.
Since Wall Mart F*cks their workers daily they don't have to F*ck their customers although they do that too by paying their entry level workers a salary such that they qualify for food stamps which means that Wall Mart F*cks us all by taking our tax dollars (by way of food stamps) to increase their profits by not paying their workers a livign wage
But unionized schools typically endeavor to guarantee you must send your kids -- or at least your money to their schools - no matter how rotten they are. The consumer has no rights when monopolies have government protection. That is the nature of monopolies.
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