Salary analysis shows how much CTU members lost under the latest contracts...Nick Lang’s Members First April 26 CTU salary slide presentation: How the 2012 and 2016 contracts diminish our pay over time...Before the group began officially calling itself Members First, meetings of concerned Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members were held during the 2016-2017 school year to discuss and analyze how badly the members were faring under . . . | Article | |
Next 'Members First' meeting scheduled as CTU members' outrage over current leadership's sellouts grows...Meeting on July 26 at noon at the Pompei Restaurant on Taylor St...The teachers union group calling itself "Members First" has scheduled a summer meeting at Pompei Restaurant, located at 1531 W. Taylor Street, on Wednesday, July 26 at 12:00 noon. Members First leaders will be sharing . . . | Article | |
Labor analysis... The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: A Lifetime with Labor By Vincent Emanuele...[Editor's Introduction: The following is the first of several articles we will be publishing this summer in Substance. It was originally published in Class, Race and Corporate Power (July 2017) as part of a special . . . | Article | |
NEA RA continues the con game policies of its very very well-paid leadership...'All That is Pretense Dissolves into Delusions: The NEA Representative Assembly 2017'...The 'Representative Assembly' (RA) of the National Education Association (NEA) met during the first week of July 2017, over the Fourth of July as usual. Thousands of elected delegates from across the USA and territories . . . | Article | |  |
MEDIA WATCH: John Kass's puerile attacks on Illinois budget deal undermines his history as an anti-union and anti-public schools scab...On July 7, 2017, several friends of ours noted with outrage the (generally false) claims by some pundits that the deal which finally gave Illinois a budget was a bad one for working people. One . . . | Article | |
National Education Association comes out against the 'failed experiment' of charter schools...One of the most important resolutions approved at the annual Representative Assembly of the National Education Association (NEA) brings the organization, the larger of the nation's two teacher unions, out against the further expansion of . . . | Article | |  |
Chicago Teachers Union files federal lawsuit on behalf of Sarah Chambers, 'special ed whistleblower'...The Chicago Teachers Union has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of teacher Sarah Chambers, who was fired by Chicago Public Schools following her years of advocacy on behalf of special education students and for . . . | Article | |
South Loop school plans show that Jim Crow is business-as-usual in Chicago's public schools...The President of the Chicago Board of Education no longer shouts "Get those communists out of here now!" as police beat protesters during Board meetings, and the Board is now rather diverse, as are top . . . | Article | |  |
Chicago Metro Retirees briefed on legislative agenda...The Chicago Metro Retirees met June 26, 2017, to discuss the June 17th Intergen Retreat. According to everyone, the retreat was a success. I personally can attest that attendance was great since I tried to . . . | Article | |
BOARDWATCH: Protests ignored by Chicago Board of Education at its final meeting of the 2016 - 2017 school year...Protests both inside and outside the Chicago Board of Education's Loop headquarters didn't stop the seven members of the Board from approving the agenda that was placed in front of them at the Board's final . . . | Article | |  |
Corporate media push for 'pension reform' as part of attack on teachers in Chicago's real public schools...As Illinois entered its third year without a state budget and the prospect of the state becoming the first ever to have its bond ratings reduced to "junk" status, corporate media in Chicago continued to . . . | Article | |
Retired CTU officers and officials are among Chicago teacher pensioners making more than $100,000 per year, according to Chicago Teachers Pension Fund...Several former now retired officers of the Chicago Teachers Union join retired Chicago Public Schools administrators among those currently receiving pensions of more than $100,000 per year. The facts are according to the most recent . . . | Article | |
New name, same segregation game... How corporate 'school reform' has turned racism into a virtue in Chicago as Chicago Public Schools plans to spend a quarter billion dollars on segregated schools...Chicago's schools may be either "broke" or (to quote the Chicago Teachers Union) "Broke on Purpose," but as it has for nearly a century, Chicago can always find dollars to sustain or expand racial segregation, . . . | Article | |  |
Emanuel and Claypool help gangs' summer building plans by cutting public baseball coaching, field maintenance, and teams in the parks and through the schools!... Hypocrisy begins with 'austerity' proclamations and continues with cheap publicity stunts rather than sustained programs for kids...Is there a direct relationship between the politics of austerity as practiced by both the right wing Democrats (like Forrest Claypool and Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton) and the expansion of drug gangs in places . . . | Article | |  |
REVIEW: A family history of organizing across generation shows among other things that Chicago union organizing always required careful work... How an African American organizer who spoke Polish helped bring workers together in the 1930s...Political activism affects individual lives profoundly. Once a person becomes politically conscious—no matter how it happens—it opens up new worlds to you, while it can distance you from your previous life. But how does it . . . | Article | |  |
Chicago Teachers Union opposes new high school in Englewood, releases new study of segregation in Chicago...The Chicago Teachers Union has finally issued a challenge to some of the expensive proposed new high school construction in Chicago, issuing on June 15 a study of segregation and a critique of the new . . . | Article | |  |
More than 23,000 Chicago Teachers Union members will be shocked to learn that CTU leaders have cut the union calendar date-book because their 'austerity' budget... Lewis aide suggests retirees forget the date book and get training on the use of their i-Phones to replace the traditional booklet...The word has begun coming out slowly, as it did on Thursday June 8, 2017, at the monthly meeting of the retiree group of the Chicago Teachers Union. For the first time in union history, . . . | Article | |
CTU leaders ignore vast expense of new high schools while discussing possible racism in the closing of schools in Englewood...While both the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union claiming they are broke (or, "Broke on Purpose"), the leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union took an unusual path to criticizing the proposal by . . . | Article | |
UNION NEWS: Instead of stalling the discussion and debate on the CTU budget (and ignoring the CTU Foundation budget completely) the union's officers should have called a special meeting so that delegates could get clear answers on the budget before voting...When it became clear to the union's school delegates that the agenda for the June meeting of the Chicago Teachers Union's House of Delegates had been designed to stall discussion and debate on the actual . . . | Article | |
CTU ends House of Delegates meeting with controversial 'vote' after a quorum call... Vice President Jesse Sharkey calls out his 'resignation'!...Was the budget legitimately passed at the June 2017 CTU House of Delegates meeting? That was one of several questions that came up during the brief meeting of the union's House of Delegates on June . . . | Article | |  |
