CTU leadership's betrayal of unionism goes deep, including directing the union's field reps to hob nob with principals against delegates and the 'rank and file'...
As attendance at the meetings of the Chicago Teachers Union's House of Delegates continues to drop, one of the main reasons why delegates are either leaving as soon as they arrive or boycotting the meetings is that the delegates and rank and file are realizing that they are being betrayed by the union's four officers and other highly paid people in the leadership clique.
Although the most dramatic public example of the betrayal of the union's members came when CTU President Karen Lewis showed up in U.S. District Court in support of former Chicago Public Schools "Chief Executive Officer" Barbara Byrd Bennett the day Bennett was sentenced for her corruption (the worst in the history of Chicago school executives), other examples have taken place every day at schools. There, the union's leaders have violated a long standing union position that the union never stabs its delegates in the back by going behind delegates' backs directly to principals. That position (see below) was enforced even during the most contentious days of former union leaders, including Jacqueline Vaughn and Robert M. Healey. Although CTU presidents Tom Reece and Marilyn Stewart often joined forced with CPS officials, they generally followed the union's position and fiercely supported delegates, the elected leaders at the local schools.
No longer.
