… it isn’t. Union hits political foul ball

Learning that the Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates refused to give its approval to a settlement that could have put Chicago Public School students back in the classrooms as early as Monday gave me the same gut feeling as watching a baseball blown foul.

In my mind, I could hear the Harry Caray “home run” call when I learned last week that a tentative deal was in place.

HARRY GETTING ALL worked up (“It might be,”) over a deep fly ball that definitely is headed (“it could be,”) for the stands.

But then at the last second, that gust of wind from the south blows the ball just to the left of the foul pole – turning the would be “it is!” into a foul ball.

What makes this particular shot galling is that it is the delegates who seemed to be determined to will the ball foul. Picture the '75 World Series Carlton Fisk waving his hands in the opposite direction!

The explanation given Sunday for the lack of a vote was that the delegates for the teachers felt rushed – even though a vote originally was expected Friday. They want to take their sweet time reviewing this deal.

I DON’T THINK they fully appreciate how much people were pleased to know that this “strike” was only going to be a week-long thing. The fact that it now will go into a second week is bound to shift the will of the public toward the tyrannical antics of Rahm Emanuel.

That’s the Rahm-bo who got his butt whupped by teachers union boss Karen Lewis. Yet it seems that her own delegates want to give Emanuel some first aid so he can resume the fight.

Which he seems determined to do. His reaction to learning of the lack of a vote of approval was to say that he will get a judge to issue an order that forces the teachers to go back to work.

If that happens, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chicago Public Schools suddenly rescinded a lot of the points they were willing to concede.

SO HERE’S HOPING that these same delegates follow through with what Lewis says is possible – a vote on Tuesday that could result in classes resuming Wednesday. If they open any later, I could see the mood getting downright U-G-L-Y!

Those two days might not be much in the short-run. But the teachers have managed to give up some serious good will with the way they have handled this.

Talk about the potential for turning victory into defeat. This is the kind of maneuver that I would only expect the Chicago Cubs to be capable of doing. I wouldn’t have envisioned it possible in the field of labor negotiations.

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