SOLIDARITY FOREVER: Phony CTU staff pay claims are still on caucus's website... Anyone who thinks Chicago's United Progressive Caucus (UPC) has reformed following its defeat last May and June should go to their website and see how many of their lies they've retracted
Apparently some people in the Chicago Teachers Union are more hopeful about the possibility of salvation than many of us at Substance. We try to keep track of the doings in the Chicago Teachers Union as closely as possible, as Jim Vail's article about the enormous salaries and perks that former union President Marilyn Stewart doled out during her six years running the Chicago Teachers Union. That article, the first is what will be a series, is now up at www.substancenews.net (right column, January 9, 2011).
Part of the massive confusion among supporters of the Chicago Teachers Union has arisen since June 2010 (when the union leadership changed) because of the policies, politics, and practices of the union leadership under former President Marilyn Stewart. Recently, legislators were uncertain about the legislative position the union on charter schools in 2011 because the CTU position on charter schools had been rendered unclear during the six years Marilyn Stewart was CEO of CTU. Another example of the confusion came in relation to "Advance Illinois," which promoted the anti-union and anti-teacher "Performance Counts" legislation that was defeated by union action in Springfield last month. During one heated internal union debate, some partisans were critical of City Clerk Miguel Del Valle because he is on the Board of Advance Illinois. But Del Valle was only taking signals from Marilyn Stewart and the CTU leadership. Above, Stewart and Marc Wigler were photographed attending the Advance Illinois breakfast featuring Arne Duncan on June 19, 2009, supporting the Advance Illinois and Duncan agendas and cheering after each of the four main speeches. Was it any wonder that many political leaders thought the CTU was on one side at one time? Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. Two months ago, the UPC issues a leaflet, appropriately on yellow paper, considering that they had negotiated to yellow dog contracts, attacking the current union staff for what they claimed was "double dipping." Although the leaflet was simply untrue, they not only distributed it proudly, but they have kept it as the Home Page of their website (UPC4CTU.com) through the first week of February 2011.
While Substance is committed to updating stories as they evolve, UPC seems committed to repeating over and over their versions of reality even when those versions are simply not true. The current UPC website Home Page is just the latest example. We're not going to repeat their lies here, since any reader who can reach this can read Jim Vail's article and then go to the UPC website and enjoy their perverted version of reality.
By: Martin Efram
If the UPC's allegations are untrue, post all current CTU salaries
If the UPC's allegations are untrue, post all current CTU salaries so transparency can tell who is really lying (since this seems to be Substance's favorite word). Thank you.