Sections:

Article

CTU House of Delegates decides to endorse all candidates for Chicago Teachers Pension Fund trustees

Jim Vail - October 20, 2011

The House of Delegates on Wednesday, October 19 decided to endorse all candidates running for the pension election November 4, rejecting the executive board’s recommendation to endorse Tina Padilla and Raymond Wohl. Five candidates are running for two teacher seats on the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund (CTPF) board of trustees. The voting will take place in all schools on November 4. Teachers who are part of the pension fund (including charter school teachers) are eligible to vote.

Pension Fund trustee candidate Ray Wohl with his testimony during the September 15, 2011 meeting of the trustees of the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Several delegates affiliated with the United Progressive Caucus (UPC) stated that the union should not be divided and instead show its support for each candidate.

Delegates who are members of the Coalition of Rank and File Educators (Core) pointed out that corrupt deals were made under UPC trustees John O’Brill and Linda Goff, including giving $25 million to DV Urban, a company run by a cousin of former mayor Richard Daley. The fund eventually lost $24 million on that deal, according to CORE literature.

Linda Goff said she was not a trustee when this deal went down.

Chicago Teachers Pension Fund president John O’Brill was also singled out for allowing the fund to lose $87 million in highly speculative derivative funds invested by Northern Trust on behalf of the pension fund, pension trustee and delegate Jay Rehak stated. Rehak said it wasn’t until he and Lois Ashford were elected as trustees that the fund decided to sue Northern Trust. The lawsuit was made public on the Substance website.

O’Brill pointed out that Rehak, who made the motion to support the two CORE-endorsed pension candidates at the delegates meeting, had a conflict of interest because he is a trustee and should not have recommended an endorsement to the executive board.

Interestingly enough, pension candidate and delegate Pam Touras also argued that the House should not be divided at this crucial time and therefore all candidates should be endorsed. However, Touras, who is also a member of the executive board, asked to be the third candidate endorsed by the exec. board along with Padilla and Wohl after the members rejected endorsing all the candidates.

Each pension candidate was given three minutes to make their case to the delegates why they should be elected trustees.

Padilla touted her background as a national board certified math teacher at Lane Tech who has earned an MBA at Keller School of Management and worked as a mortgage broker.

O’Brill said he has served as a trustee for nine years during which the pension fund has earned on average about 8 percent in returns each year, pensioners have never missed a pension payment, and retirees have 60% of their hospital costs covered.

Wohl said he has been a teacher for 18 years and remembered that when he first started teaching in 1994, the pension fund was 100% funded, but today it’s only 58% funded. “I have never missed a pension payment, but the city has,” Wohl said. The city has diverted its pension payments over the years to pay for other things, just like the federal government has used stable social security funds to pay for pet projects. The state just recently agreed to allow the Board of Education to sidestep $1.2 billion in pension payments to be paid at a later date.

Unlike the other candidates, Wohl outlined an active approach to promoting and protecting the pension fund. Wohl fought to save teachers’ jobs after the Board closed his former school Irving Park Middle School. He argued that the teachers should transfer along with the students to Thurgood Marshall Middle School as part of the NCLB requirement that minimal disruption for the students would include keeping their teachers.

Touras, a 22-year teacher at McPherson Elementary School, noted her numerous positions in the union which include serving as her school’s delegate as well as being a member of the executive board, the professional problems committee, the rules and election committee and serving on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s committee for a longer school day, which president Karen Lewis has refused to be a part of, but appointed Touras and four others instead to serve on.

Goff noted that teachers are being called “greedy.” She said she has the experience, having served as vice president of the CTPF for two years.

CTU President Lewis focused on the pension attack in her speech to the membership. She noted House Bill 3827 will give the mayor control of the fund and Senate Bill 512 will feature a three tier plan that will eventually destroy the defined benefit pension plan.

Lewis pointed out that one of the members of the Board of Education who Emanuel appointed was also serving on the board of Bear Sterns, the investment bank that crashed in 2008 due to toxic risks.

“So now the mayor wants to take control of (the fund) and do what he wants,” Lewis said. “These people make all the laws without the facts. They listen to business experts in the Civic Federation who drove the economy off the cliff.”

Lewis told delegates to call their state reps and senators to oppose the anti-teacher pension bills in the legislature. Lewis mentioned that another bill (HB 3813) would not allow union workers to pay into the teachers pension fund, nicknamed the Dennis Gannon bill, after the two major dailies profiled union officials who earned high pensions in two funds.

There was other news from the meeting. Lewis said the union is also seeking “injunctive relief” for the schools currently under an extended day after the Illinois Labor Relations Board found that the Board of Ed had violated the rights of teachers to vote on a waiver in their contract to implement the longer school day.

Teachers can go to the cutnet.com website and punch in their zip codes to send a message to their legislators to oppose the anti-pension bills. The CTU will also have a couple of buses going to Springfield and leaving at 6:30 am next Wednesday, October 26 to lobby against the bills.

Lewis noted during the question and answer period that while all the other unions are geared up to fight these toxic pension bills in and out of committees, the unions’ million dollar ad campaign to fight SB 512 earlier this year, dubbed “We Are One” in response to the business lobby’s the “State is Broke,” will be tough to repeat because of the high cost.

The delegates unanimously passed the executive board resolutions for a 30 member contract bargaining committee, a strike fund and support for Occupy Chicago.

The House also agreed unanimously to endorse Rudy Lozano for state representative in the newly created 21st district. It was noted that Lozano is being heavily contested by union buster UNO Charter Schools, which helped Rep. Burke narrowly defeat Lozano the last time he ran.

Next Friday Oct. 28 the CTU will host at Plumbers Hall its annual Legislators Educators Appreciation Dinner or LEAD beginning at 3:30pm. Tickets are $30 per person and can be ordered from the CTU.



Copyright 2006-2020 by Substance News. All rights reserved.