By DFER’s Rebeca Nieves Huffman
(From Chicago Sun Times, May 3, 2012)
For much of the last year, while parents, community leaders and policymakers have been focused on bringing much-needed improvements to the Chicago Public Schools, the teachers union has been not-so-secretly planning to hold our city — and our schoolchildren — hostage by calling for a strike.
A teachers strike — something Chicago hasn’t seen since 1987 — is a big deal. It’s a nuclear option for defiant union negotiators who don’t get their way.
One reason there aren’t as many teachers strikes around the country as there used to be is that everyone involved — including teachers — recognizes the havoc created for families and for students who need every minute of education possible to keep pace with their peers around the country and around the globe.
Strikes are extremely dangerous, which is what makes them effective as political tools.
This is why it is so upsetting that the Chicago Teachers Union has been so reckless about playing the strike card. This does not sound like a union that has any respect for the principles of collective bargaining, where both sides work in good faith at the bargaining table. Rather, union bosses like Karen Lewis seem intent on thuggery and intimidation to get their way outside of the process.
While the rest of the city has focused on how to provide students more time for learning, the CTU has very publicly pushed its members towards a strike. If the union follows through on its threats to walk next school year, hardworking families would be burdened with millions of dollars in lost wages and emergency day-care costs.