UNION NEWS? CTU's 'Executive Team' is no longer looking for the union label when it buys stuff. Walmart and Aramark are now getting business from the union's leaders at the new union headquarters...
After they moved into the Chicago Teachers Union's new offices at 1901 W. Carroll St., union workers at the CTU noticed that the union's officers were utilizing Walmart products in their washrooms, and that the union, instead of hiring its own workers for janitorial work, contracted the work to Aramark.Those union members who no longer buy Oreos or Hostess Brands products (including Twinkies) because of union busting were surprised to hear that the executives of the Chicago Teachers Union are using Walmart products and hiring Aramark for their janitorial services. Following a chaotic move into the union's new headquarters on Chicago's West Side, the union's officers reportedly went on a hiring spree hiring workers at the union who are supposedly exempt from unionization, and utilizing notorious anti-union outfits like Walmart and Aramark for the CTU.
Reliable sources at the union have long noted that the Chicago Teachers Union no longer tries to encourage its members to buy American made union made automobiles, and that some union officials proudly use non-union cars. But as the years have progressed, other examples of questionable policies have grown. At the present time, the Chicago Teachers Union's own workers are all required to be members of the Chicago Teachers Union. However, many of the workers who work at CTU are also members of the Teamsters union. Clerical workers are members of one Teamster unit, while the union's field reps are in another Teamster unit. Both groups have explicit union contracts outlining their rights when the officers of the Chicago Teachers Union are their boss.
In this context, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis wears two hats. On the one hand, she is a union president (as well as "executive vice president" of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and a member of the Executive Council of the American Federation of Teachers).
On the other hand, she is Chief Executive Officer of a corporation which has more than 70 workers working for it and an annual budget of more than $30 million. While previous CTU administrations have faced criticism at times for their treatment of the union's own workers, the current situation is unprecedented. Never before has the Chicago Teachers Union's leadership (currently a thing calling itself the "Executive Team" consisting of the officers and a few others) followed a course of action that in other contexts would be called anti-union.
Like many union members, this reporter, who also serves as a CTU delegate (currently representing retired teachers who are union members) makes sure that his household does not shop at the anti-union Walmart. Also, since the attacks on union workers by Mondelo, we have not purchased Oreos, and we stopped getting Twinkies when Hostess Brands broke its unions.
Despite claims by the officials of the Chicago Teachers Union that its policies are against the "billionaires" and in favor of working people (and "the poor"), there is a growing contradiction between the rhetoric of the CTU leadership and the praxis on the union's officials, from automobiles to toilet paper.
