Read Online Strike for America by Micah Uetricht - Free Book Online

afternoon of September 18, 2012, the parking lot of the union hall housing the CTU’s House of Delegates meeting, usually forlorn, was packed with teachers’ cars and local and national news trucks. A few days earlier, teachers had voted to extend their strike for two days, so all union members would have the chance to fully digest and debate the proposed tentative agreement between the Board of Education and the CTU; a second vote would now be held to determine whether to call off the strike.
    When I arrived, journalists had been milling about for several hours. Local television reporters spoke into their BlackBerrys, informing their editors of nothing; a newsman in a trench coat, perhaps out of boredom, tried holding his ear up against one of meeting room’s exit doors multiple times, futilely hoping to catch any words uttered inside. A normally mild-mannered union staffer seemed to be so incensed at this that I worried the strike might see its first casualty in the form of a well-tailored journalist. I somehow allowed myself to be sucked into an argument with an out-of-town pamphleteeraccusing the union’s leadership of selling out its membership and not holding out on the picket line for the immediate establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or something like that.
    Without warning, the doors flew open and a sea of educators in red half walked, half ran through the gauntlet of news cameras and pouncing journalists, some looking terrified as members of the media chased after them rabidly for a quote. In what would become a front-page picture in the
Chicago Tribune
the next day, one teacher in a bright-red sweater emerged through the glass doors clutching copies of the contract in one hand and a raised fist in the other, a look of pure elation on her face. Off to the side, I struck up conversations with several delegates who weren’t fleeing; they told me that the members had voted overwhelmingly to go back to work the next day.
    I expected these members to share details about the tentative contract’s specifics: what they had gained, what they had no choice but to give up on, joys and disappointments about the collective bargaining process. But all of the teachers I spoke with had little interest in discussing the details of bargaining. They wanted to talk about how the union could capitalize on its energized, tightly organized membership to continue leading a fight for broader educational reforms. One teacher, Eric Skalinder, said he wanted to “focus [the union’s] energy on fighting privatization, advocating for neighborhood schools, all of it”; clinician Kristine Shanley said that the union now needed to prepare a campaign against charter school expansion through closures, so that “every time [CPS]announces a school closing to turn it into a charter, we’re ready to mobilize and fight back.”
    Teachers had just won a historic strike. Yet few educators seemed interested in celebrating their accomplishments—they were looking more at how to best position themselves in future fights for public education.
    On that day, 79 percent of the educators voted to return to work the following morning. Significant noncompensatory provisions that were mutually beneficial to CPS students and teachers were negotiated. Students were now guaranteed textbooks on the first day of class; teachers’ supplies budgets were more than doubled; and the proportion of a teacher’s evaluation made up by students’ standardized testing scores was held to the state’s legal minimum despite the board’s attempt to increase it. Mayor Emanuel had hoped to introduce merit pay into the contract, but he was denied.
    The union also beat back an attempt to increase health-care costs by 40 percent. The union and Emanuel had battled over a longer school day for months and did agree to extend it, but not without annual raises along with a cost-of-living increase, which the mayor had initially fought.
    However, the contract was