Pro-labor insurer
pledges to national
labor college
Teachable moment: CTU strike
inspires unionists nationwide
Chicago teachers
deliver a blow to a
corporate agenda
for schools
B Y DON M C INTOSH
Associate Editor
Any doubts that the seven-day
Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike
could have an impact thousands of
miles away were dispelled Sept. 20 in
the basement of the Portland teachers
union office. There, about 100 union
activists gathered the day after the
strike ended — to celebrate, and to dis-
cuss what it meant.
The walkout by 26,000 teachers in
the nation’s third largest school district
wasn’t principally about pay, benefits,
or perks. It was a strike for basics, like
air conditioning in classrooms, getting
more school nurses and counselors,
and restoring art, music, physical edu-
cation classes. And it was a strike
against corporate-style education re-
forms that subject students to heavy
testing and blame teachers when stu-
dents score poorly.
“Education workers,” said American
Federation of Teachers-Oregon Execu-
tive Director Richard Schwarz, “have
been the pincushion for sticking every
new idea that some grandstanding busi-
ness or political leader, talk show host,
or newspaper editorial writer dreams
up about what to do with children.”
PAGE 4
[CTU is an affiliate of American Fed-
eration of Teachers.]
With the Chicago school board pro-
posing that student test scores account
for 45 percent of teacher evaluations,
and demanding that teachers accept a
longer school day with no commensu-
rate increase in pay, Chicago teachers
voted 98 percent to authorize a strike.
The strike began Sept. 10, and drew
support statements and solidarity fund
donations from labor organizations
around the country.
“It was going to be a make-or-break
moment for public sector unions and
the labor movement in general,” said
retired letter carrier Jamie Partridge,
who helped organize the Sept. 20 soli-
darity meeting in Portland. “A win for
the teachers and the people of Chicago
would push back the privatization
agenda.”
“We knew that we had to stand up
to a big bully,” said CTU member
Kirstin Roberts, referring to Chicago
Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Roberts, a
member of the strike committee at her
Northwest Chicago public preschool,
joined the Portland forum via Skype.
Emanuel — dubbed “Mayor 1%” by
striking teachers — is associated with
the corporate wing of the Democratic
Party. Long before the one-time invest-
ment banker became Obama’s chief of
staff, Emanuel twisted arms to win
Congressional passage of NAFTA, as
President Bill Clinton’s political direc-
tor.
“We didn’t know if we could win
against him,” said Roberts. “But teach-
ers around Chicago were sure that if we
didn’t stand up and fight, we were go-
ing to lose everything. So we took that
risk, and if you look at our contract,
you can see things that we won, you
can see things that we lost. We stood
up, and we are stronger today than
when this struggle started.”
In the tentative agreement, subject
to teacher approval in an Oct. 2 vote
(after this issue went to press), the
Chicago Board of Education backed
off demands for a merit pay system, for
major increases in worker contributions
to health insurance, and for student test
scores to make up 45 percent of how
teachers are evaluated. Chicago teach-
ers will still be subject to the state re-
quirement that the test scores make up
30 percent of teacher evaluations, but
that will be treated as a trial run in the
first year, and teachers will have the
right to appeal bad ratings to a neutral
board. The Board also, in the agree-
ment:
• Agrees to hire 512 art, music,
physical education and language teach-
ers
• Guarantees that students will have
their textbooks when classes begin
• Gives laid off teachers 10 months
of “recall rights” for the first time, pro-
vided they had good evaluations
• Commits to fill at least half of all
new openings with laid-off teachers
• Provides annual raises of 3, 2, and
2 percent
(Turn to Page 11)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Yes Man
Yes Men co-founder Mike Bonanno
(in front of a light at the end of a
tunnel) closes a daylong conference
of Young Emerging Labor Leaders
Sept. 30. YELL is a constituency
group of the Oregon AFL-CIO with
a mission of increasing the part-
icipation of young people in the labor
movement. Bonanno is the alias of
activist Igor Vamos when he works
with the Yes Men — a group that
uses publicity stunts and media
hoaxes to expose corporate wrong-
doing and undemocratic trade neg-
otiations. The Yes Men are being
sued by the U.S. Chamber of Com-
merce for violating trademark law,
for using the Chamber’s name and
logo to draw reporters to a fake news
conference at the National Press
Club. That stunt and others are
documented in two movies, The Yes
Men (2003) and the The Yes Men Fix
the World (2009). Bonanno — asked
about the risks of his style of
activism — said he’s only been
arrested once. It’s much more risky,
he said, to stand by and do nothing.
Forty members from 15 unions
attended YELL’s third annual
conference, and elected a new chair,
union stagehand Leah Okin of Inter-
national Association of Theatrical
and Stage Employees Local 28.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) —
The pro-labor American Income Life
Insurance Company is pledging
$600,000 yearly to the financially
troubled National Labor College. AIL
President Roger Smith said the grant
“will support the college’s education
and outreach programs.” Smith called
the funds “an important commitment
for us in labor because we recognize
higher education will be increasingly
vital to workers in the 21st century.”
The 43-year-old college is the only
U.S. higher education accredited insti-
tution specifically geared to serving
educational needs of union members.
But it has had financial trouble for
years and its Silver Spring, Md., cam-
pus is up for sale.
$17 a month coverage
includes:
www.legalshield.com/info/randallnix
OCTOBER 5, 2012