Editorial: What will the mayor do if the Chicago Teachers Union he used to work for takes to the picket lines? Join them?

The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune on Jan 29, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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After nine months of ham-fisted stabs at power politics, the Chicago Teachers Union’s leadership says a strike is likely. Teachers could walk off the job as early as March.

The irony couldn’t be any thicker, given that teachers would be striking against a city run, for want of a better word, by their handpicked mayor, Brandon Johnson, who sits feebly on the fifth floor and to date has been unwilling to challenge any of CTU’s outlandish and unaffordable demands. Not one.

The prospect of the former CTU organizer taking the side of striking teachers even as he holds the office of mayor of Chicago isn’t unimaginable. Given what we’ve seen from him to date — multiple appointed school boards trying at Johnson’s behest (and failing) to force Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to cave to the union, the hiring of a high-priced, taxpayer-funded law firm to try (and fail) to force Martinez out of his job immediately and advocacy for hundreds of millions in new junk-rated CPS debt at nosebleed interest rates — it’s the logical next step.

The standoff over a collective-bargaining agreement that ought to have been completed months ago is nearing the point of farce.

“What this feels like is that the district is going to strike,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said Thursday as the union began taking the formal steps needed before it can take that ultimate step. “That they are choosing to create a process that forces the hands of members who teach our young people in our schools every day, which is very discouraging.”

Discouraging is one word for a potential work action that would (once again) interrupt CPS students’ educations, upend the routines of working parents and make Chicago a national punch line. Outrageous also comes to mind.

What CPS has on the table right now for its union workforce is very generous. It’s been offered 4% raises every year for four years. But that understates the bounty being made available to CPS teachers, who already are the highest-paid educators of any urban district in the country. When factoring in so-called step pay increases, which give teachers additional compensation bumps based on seniority, the average CPS teacher will see their pay rise by over 32% over the next four years.

Whatever job you hold, can you imagine how ecstatic you’d feel if your employer told you today that you’d be making nearly one-third more than you are now after four years? Guaranteed money in the bank. No goals to hit. No pressure to perform.

CTU is demanding the district hire hundreds if not thousands more union members even after the district added 7,000 over the past five years and enrollment at more than a third of district schools is at less than half of capacity. CPS rightfully says it will be a big challenge just to hold onto those 7,000 given its financial constraints.

The district’s offer is exorbitant. CPS faces an estimated $500 million budget deficit in the coming fiscal year and deficits as far as the eye can see in later years. As CTU has been told repeatedly — by Gov. JB Pritzker, Senate President Don Harmon, House Speaker Emanuel (Chris) Welch and, of course, Martinez — there is not close to enough money to satisfy their demands. A strike, if it happens, won’t make nonexistent funds magically appear.

What’s the endgame?

Unless Johnson shocks everyone and joins Pritzker et al. in telling CTU the truth, Chicago has the unprecedented misfortune of not even having a mayor representing taxpayer interests in this travesty. He’s abdicated that role to Martinez, at least until the end of the school year, when Martinez will be fired per the earlier action of Johnson’s school board and the terms of Martinez’s employment contract.

That leaves rank-and-file teachers themselves to do the right thing, accept the offer on the table, ensure the school year is completed uninterrupted and reckon with the future of their radical union leadership, which has played out their brinksmanship strategies well past efficacy.

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