Vol. 76/No. 42      November 19, 2012

The strike ended Sept. 18. The union’s 800-member House of Delegates, under threat of a court injunction requested by Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel, voted to suspend the strike pending membership approval of the contract.

The assault on the Chicago teachers led by Emanuel is part of a bipartisan campaign across the country to slash budget expenses by targeting public programs and government workers, including closing schools, laying off teachers and cutting programs.

The widespread support for the strike among working people reflected the sentiment that something must be done to stem the assault against workers by the employers and the city government. Dozens of unions endorsed the actions.

“Rahm underestimated us,” Noel Merchaert, a teacher at the Jahn World Language School, told the Militant. “The strike showed a lot of teachers that it’s worth it to stand together. The solidarity we got from working people across Chicago strengthened all of us.”

Many teachers and their supporters expected they would be able to push back the city’s attack on their union by the Democratic Party administration.

But the union agreed to the pay scale proposed by the Chicago Public Schools of 3 percent the first year and 2 percent during the next two years. The teachers did beat back demands to substitute merit pay for wage levels based on seniority.

The teachers lost the fight to block the city administration from lengthening the workday and adding more teaching days to the school calendar.

The union kept limited seniority rights for teachers who are laid off because of school closings. If jobs open up within 10 months, 50 percent of them must be filled with laid-off workers.

Under a state law passed in 2010, teachers are evaluated each year, which is used as a factor in layoffs as schools are downsized or closed. The city failed to increase the weight of students’ test scores in these evaluations.

Adopting the law was required for the state to get money from the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” initiative—$4.35 billion worth of grants conferred to states for the expansion of charter schools.

The Illinois Education Labor Rela-tions Board barred the union by state law from striking over many other issues that were raised by striking teachers, such as the demand for a smaller class size, school closures, the condition of the school buildings and the issue of privatized charter schools.

The teachers’ and other government workers’ unions face an additional obstacle compared to unions in the private sector. Both have been weakened substantially by decades of class collaboration and political support for the bosses’ parties. Public workers, however, confront the capitalists only indirectly. Their bosses are not capitalists, but government bodies that represent the class interests of the bosses. Their services do not create, but subtract, surplus value, the source of the capitalists’ wealth.

Just as the bosses in one branch of industry after another are determined to shore up their declining profit rates on the backs of workers, and have been doing so, they are doubly united and determined to cut expenses of their government that they see as not essential.

The long-standing strategy of backing Democratic Party politicians by the officials of public workers unions runs even deeper than those of private-sector workers. It has been directly tied to gaining quid-pro-quo support for deals on higher wages, benefits and job security. For decades, this is how they angled for concessions from the Democratic Party administration in Chicago. And these deals have gone hand-in-hand with getting teachers to see themselves as a layer of “professionals,” increasingly divorced from the lives and experience of many working-class students.

The entire course and strategy has turned into a millstone around the neck of the teachers, as the capitalist economic crisis deepens and Democratic and Republican city officials respond to shrinking revenues by taking aim at city services and workers.

Workers back teachers’ fight

“Many parents in the Southside and Westside Black communities supported the teachers because the conditions in their schools are horrible and underfunded,” Owen “OC” Cope, a Chicago streets and sanitation worker, told the Militant. “I guarantee the city will now close many schools on the Southside and Westside.

“In the end the teachers got screwed,” Cope said. Emanuel “did this to the teachers, and now the other public unions will face this in the future.”

Emanuel and public school officials now say the settlement deepens the school system’s budget crisis, with projected annual deficits of $1 billion.

Before the strike began, Chicago Public Schools declared its intention to close 80 to 120 schools in the next year, costing thousands of jobs. Now estimates are as high as 200. The underfunded pension system for teachers would require stepped-up payments by the city and state to catch up. Instead, officials say pensions must be significantly reduced and retirement age increased.

Even in the face of all these contradictions, many teachers and other workers here feel proud they stood up to Emanuel and fought against the city’s attack.
 
 
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