ANATOMY OF THE SELLOUT... CTU leadership continues to stall and stumble as time nears for vote on the controversial 'Tentative Agreement'... Latest is the claim that not enough print copies of the proposed deal are available to members in the schools...
Despite union tradition that the CTU is to provide every member with a complete copy of the proposed contract before a union referendum on the deal, the CTU officers in 2016 failed to print enough copies and are telling the members to go on line if they want to read everything. In 2010, the leadership neglected to tell the members that certain things had been agreed to -- including a surrender of the four percent pay raise that was supposed to go into everyone's pay during the 2011 - 2012 school year.As part of what is becoming a pattern of denying Chicago Teachers Union delegates and members printed information about the workings of their union, the leaders of the CTU announced on October 27, 2016, that there would not be enough print copies of the "Tentative Agreement" available for all union members before the voting on the proposed deal begins on October 30, 2016. Originally scheduled for October 27 and October 28, the vote was postponed until October 31 and November 1. Now there are more unprecedented problems with providing the terms of the four-year deal to the union's voting members.
This is the third recent example of members being told to go "on line" or use their computers for important information about union affairs, despite the fact that union rules require that certain materials be published -- not just provided in cyberspace. Despite promises of greater transparency in union affairs, the union's members are unable to go on line to learn the results of all the votes at the meetings of the House of Delegates. The union's officers have also unilaterally ended the 40-year tradition (required by the union's Constitution and By Laws) of publishing a listing of all members of the CTU House of Delegates.
As union delegates across town were noticing that the packet of TAs for their school's members was insufficient, an October 27, 2016 email about the lack of sufficient copies of the TA came from the newly elected Financial Secretary, Maria Moreno:
Dear [Delegate]
In order to print and deliver the Tentative Agreement quickly after finalization of the legal language, we were unable to print enough copies for every single member. We anticipate that many members will prefer to read the TA in electronic form. For that reason, please leave the pile of TAs in a prominent location (e.g. near the time clock) for those who want a printed copy to take as they please. Please remind members that the tentative agreement is available electronically at www.ctunet.com/ta and encourage those who do not need the printed form to read the text electronically.
Thank you.
In solidarity, Maria Moreno, CTU Financial Secretary
Comments:
By: Susan Hickey, LCSW
CTU is disorganized
There have been schools that conducted the vote today, Friday, October 28, instead waiting until the last minute change to Monday, 10/31 and Tuesday, 11/1.
It is another example of poor planning and communication with CTU members.
By: George Schmidt
Deliberate railroading is not 'poor planning'...
This is deliberate, more an attack on democracy than anything that's been done during the current presidential race by either side.
First (at the verylastminute OMG! OMG! wehavetodothisbeforeanyonereadsitorgetssomesleep!!!), the un-elected Chicago Teachers Union BBG (the Big Bargaining Team) is railroaded into a midnight vote. That vote was railroaded through after the "BBT" people had basically been held hostage because this last minute trickery (after more than nearly two yers of "negotiations") had to be done! So the BBT members voted -- without most of the realities of the deal described or even provided to them. It was a great boss's trick -- Stockholm Syndrome instead of serious representation of the union's 28,000 members.
What was the rush and where were all the facts?
But that "BBT" voting thingy became the "news" that dominated the morning the strike was supposed to begin.
Next...
The House of Delegates that was railroaded into voting to approve the "TA" was the first time that delegates were denied the right to vote, page by page after a page-by-page discussion, on every point in the proposed contract. Any delegate who remembers union history knows that in the past -- since the 1960s when CTU first got written contracts -- the delegates were respected. Questions were asked page by page and only when the pages had been fully discussed did the delegates vote, first page by page and finally on the whole proposed contract (since when did we get the jargon of the "TA" along with all the rest of the blather?)...
Now, finally, the ultimate insult to union democracy. The therearen'tenoughpiecesofpaper (again OMG! OMG! instead of as it really should be -- WTF?! WTF!?) school-by-school vote. The voting will take place on October 31 (Monday) and November 1 (Tuesday).
At which time another railroad will have been run against the members of the Chicago Teachers Union and a half century history of union democracy.
By: Susan Zupan
Will it be membership or membersheep?
One can only hope that Chicago Teachers Union members will with their votes: 1) not vote without having read the fine print so as to be clearly aware of the negative impacts others are trying to (against the tide) warn of regarding this TA; and 2) be very suspicious of the fact that CTU leadership clearly did/does not want all of its members to have easy access to a hard copy of the TA.
I am a delegate. I was shocked to find out that I could not simply distribute a copy of the TA to every union member at my school. We were given enough for about half. Quite a few members, yes, would and have already checked it out online. But otherwise, we had to double-up.
So the union is being run like CPS, with schools in which union members like students have to double-up and share books and materials in classrooms. Unimpressive. (
By: Susan Ohanian
CTU paper shortage
If there were time, I'd launch a drive to send paper to the CTU.
What a farce.
And a great disappointment. Now there's no teacher union we can look to for honesty and courage.