It’s gonna be a long, long, long strike

It never fails to amaze me the degree to which some people have no respect for those individuals amongst us who actually have to work for a living. 

Picketers could be in for a long-drawn-out dispute over insurance benefits for hotel workers. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

As in doing forms of labor that are tiring, grueling and are the kind of jobs that nobody really willingly takes on for themselves.

I’M REFERRING TO the people who are part of the UNITE HERE Local 1, the union the represents hotel workers at various establishments around Chicago.

They’re the ones who have been picketing for the past 10 days outside all of the upper-crust hotels, trying to make a nuisance of themselves in hopes that they’ll shame the hotel owners into meeting their demands.

Yet I get a sense from the complaints I have been reading in recent days that most people who stay at those hotels are going to be merely appalled by whatever amenities are being tampered with as a result of the striking workers.

Heaven forbid that some hotel patron who was too lazy to go outside missed a meal because they couldn’t get room service. Or that someone had to wait a little while longer while checking in to their hotel because the short-staffed businesses are behind on having their rooms ready for them.

YOU’D THINK HOTEL management would see the activity of the past week-and-a-half and come to the realization that their staffs are essential parts of being able to provide the quality of service they think they offer – and ought to be offering for the absurd rates they often charge for a room there.

Instead, they’re more than willing to try to shift blame to those workers for not doing work.

Did any of these people care at all about the picketing taking place just blocks away?

Which may be appropriate since we’re now in an Age of Trump, with a president who made his personal fortune by building all those allegedly-upscale hotels that egotistically bear his name.

I don't doubt that Donald Trump himself views the staffs of all his Trump Hotels as being totally-replaceable minions who ought to be grateful to wear work uniforms bearing the “T” (for Trump) and think their affiliation (no matter how superficial) with his name is compensation enough for their grueling labor.

I FULLY EXPECT it’s just a matter of time before the public turns on those hotel workers who are now making a racket outside the so-called elite hotels.

Just as how whenever the issue of the minimum wage and the notion of raising it to $15 per hour comes up, some people are quick to go on rants about the unmitigated gall those people have thinking their labor ought to be compensated appropriately.

We’ll also hear arguments made about how keeping employee wages and other compensation is absolutely essential to maintaining the current status of the economy. Almost as though they think underpaying the hired help is essential to preserving the “American Way” of life.

Personally, I’ve always felt companies that manage to keep their employees satisfied are the ones that have the most productive workforces – and often have people wanting to work for them.

NO COMPANY THAT thinks its workers ought to be thankful anybody bothers to employ them in any capacity is going to achieve much in the way of success. Of course, their management later will “blame the workers” for not properly producing.

What if Trump workers tried striking?

Part of the reason I can sympathize with these hotel workers is because this particular strike isn’t about salaries (although I’m sure they wouldn’t object to a raise). It’s about health insurance – as in many of these hotel companies like to lay off staff during the winter months, which results in them losing health coverage.

You’d think that management would want to have a healthy workforce. At the very least, they wouldn’t want to encourage concepts that their workers could be carrying something that could be passed on to their customers.

And in the end, it’s the notion of serving those customers properly that is the reason those hotels are in business to begin with. Particularly at a place like the Palmer House hotel downtown – where the absolute cheapest room one can get there is $169 per night. Because if one is just looking for a night’s sleep that isn’t on a park bench, there’s always Motel 6.

  -30-

‘Day of Action’ more like expanded effort to get teachers’ union on TV

It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to Friday – the day that the Chicago Teachers Union has a one-day strike, of sorts, planned.

Looking to build up friends

The union has its gripes with the Chicago Public Schools (what else is new), and the hope is that a one-day lack of teachers in the schools somehow scares the board of education into taking their concerns more seriously.

THE IDEA BEING that a one-day work stoppage could avert a lengthier strike at some point in the future.

Yet I must admit to being skeptical – in part because I realize the Chicago Public Schools are run by people who have their own stubborn streak and if there was an easy solution toward achieving a new contract for the public school teachers it would have been negotiated a long time ago.

But also, I can’t help but note the large amount of activity planned for Friday that seems not all that concerned with public education.

The ‘Day of Action’ is intended to be a whole day on Friday of activities meant to show the teachers’ union solidarity with other organized labor interests. As in the teachers union wants to be sure that if there is a future strike, they will have the backing of labor unions in other industries.

LOOKING AT THE tentative schedule the union put together (it could always change and Friday could turn out to be completely different), there will be teachers in places ranging from the Nabisco cookie manufacturing plant at 73^rd Street and Kedzie Avenue to the Cook County Jail (as part of a stunt meant to encourage increased education funding to avoid children growing up into inmates).
 

From a visit to the Cook County Jail ...

There will be teachers partaking in events at Chicago State University (where financial conditions are so strapped officials recently demanded the return of keys by employees in case the school has to shut down) and at Northeastern Illinois University.

Where officials there have planned their own protest events to show support for the Chicago Public Schools teachers. Which is relevant because many of the students at the Northwest Side public college came out of the Chicago Public Schools.
 

... to a solidarity visit to a McDonalds, ...

Heck, there even will be an early morning rally of some teachers outside a McDonalds – got to show support for an increased minimum wage, and what is more symbolic of someone stuck working at the bottom of our society’s economic scale than someone earning some money by working the grill or the cash register while serving up Big Macs.

... teachers could wind up their Day of Action downtown

THERE’S A GOOD chance that if you’re out and about throughout the city on Friday, you’re going to run into a teacher or two (dozen or so). They want to build up support for the strike they’re likely going to take on in coming months.

The one that will cause classes to be cancelled for more than just a day like they will be on Friday.

Because the simple fact is this – parents may be able to express a symbolic support for the teachers union when the issues are all theoretical.

But the moment it turns into those parents having to arrange for special day-care to watch their kids while at work because classes are cancelled, it becomes a massive inconvenience.

AND YES, THERE will be some (many, actually) parents who will just as soon blame the teachers for not showing up for work.

This pre-strike, so to speak, is meant to build up enough good will with so many interests that they will have their friends all geared up for the good fight that could come.

Ultimately, it's all up to Rahm

And who knows? Perhaps the sight of an afternoon rally from the University of Illinois at Chicago campus to the Thompson Center state government building (where they’ll ride the subway to get from college to the government building) will be enough of an intimidating spectacle.

One that would actually persuade the Chicago Public Schools officials (and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, their spiritual leader) to make the kind of concessions that would actually urge the union not to walk off the job sometime later this year.

  -30-

EXTRA: No school strike? A miracle!

So what should we think of the possibility that the Chicago Public Schools has actually reached an agreement with its teachers’ union toward a new contract.

 

EMANUEL: One less headache

Thereby avoiding the image of striking school teachers further blotting the public image of Mayor Rahm Emanuel – who already has endured one teachers’ strike during his mayoral stint and surely would like to avoid another.

IT HAS BEEN for so long that Emanuel and the Chicago Teachers Union have been enemies, doing whatever they could to undercut each other. So much so that it was the teachers’ union that was the reason Jesus Garcia was able to run a serious campaign against Emanuel last year for mayor.

But this week, the teachers union said they received a “serious offer” from the Chicago schools. They’re not saying what it is. But say it will be contemplated by the union’s Big Bargaining Team on Monday, and could soon get a recommendation to the union as a whole to support.

An actual contract in place, instead of the teachers’ strike that too many people had presumed was inevitable.

In terms of specifics, the union would only say they would have to make financial concessions in exchange for protections of education quality and job security. Which shows that the union can spew political gobbledygook as well as any politician.

BUT THE CHICAGO Public Schools says significant concessions are being made by both sides. Which if accepted would ensure the current school year does not get interrupted – which would be a massive headache for parents.

And you don’t mess with those parents. It is the reason why the one part of the state government budget for Fiscal 2016 that Gov. Bruce Rauner did sign into law was the part for public education.

He knows how deep in doggie doo he’d be right now if he had school parents peeved at him along with everybody else.

And if there really is a contract, then it is one less headache for Emanuel to have to cope with – no matter how intense the headache caused by his police department’s behavior may be.

  -30-

The sight that Rahm may really fear threatens to go on attack in near future

As if Mayor Rahm Emanuel didn’t have enough people upset with him these days, he now gets the most outspoken of his critics back again.

As in Karen Lewis and her people with the Chicago Teachers Union. For the union let it be known Monday that Chicago school teachers are so overwhelmingly disgusted with current conditions that they’re prepared to walk the picket lines.

STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!

If only it were merely another Chicago Cubs batter going down for the count because he can’t hit big-league pitching. Instead, it means the union has given its leadership the authorization to call for a work stoppage at any point now if negotiations toward a new contract don’t get serious.

Which as far as the teachers are concerned, they haven’t been serious at all up to this point – particularly the talk about continued layoffs and measures they regard as pay cuts; even though Emanuel and city officials have ways of describing them to make it seem that nobody’s losing anything.

For the record, three days of voting by the teachers came to an end with an announcement Monday that 96.5 percent voting “yes” for the idea of a strike in the future.

IT ALSO SEEMS that 92 percent of those who could cast ballots bothered to do so. Making this seem to be an election that people cared about.

If only we could get that kind of turnout on Elections Days for municipal, county, state and federal governments. Just think of the kind of change that could be made if people cared enough to show interest.

A thought that would scare the pants off so many politicos – who instead prefer the tactics that make most people disgusted enough to not bother to want to vote at all.



EMANUEL: Does he wish he was still just a Rep?

It’s so much easier for the politico’s life if he (or she) doesn’t have to worry about those pesky voters with their own opinions that just can’t seem to realize how much a political person’s self-interest is important enough to dominate their voting record.

YES, I’M BEING sarcastic and smarmy.

Because a year ago, the only people who were really prepared to trash Rahm Emanuel were Karen Lewis and the teachers union people. Lewis may be recovering from health issues to the point where her subordinates are now doing the dirty work.

But they were the ones who put up a fight and tried to give people a serious choice for mayor between Rahm and somebody else. Particularly that mayoral bid of Jesus Garcia that for awhile made the one-time alderman, legislator and county commissioner a household name.

Now, they’re going to go back to bashing Emanuel for the way in which he and his political people oversee the Chicago Public Schools. These are the people who really are devoted to the cause of “Anybody But Rahm,” as in they wanted him gone years ago and (it seems from their level of strike support) haven’t lightened up one bit.

PROBABLY BECAUSE EMANUEL hasn’t lightened up in his view of them as the problem that must be eradicated. A view that is going to have to wither away if we’re to avoid the now-likely possibility of a mid-year school strike.

Just think how upset parents are going to be if they suddenly have to come up with new day-time plans for their kids to be watched when those parents had gotten used to the idea of the kids being “out of sight, out of mind” because they’re in school.

I know some of those activist-types (who come across as political opportunists who could never achieve an Election Day victory proper) want to believe they can depose Rahm Emanuel as mayor because of Laquan McDonald’s death at the hands of a Chicago cop are gunning for the mayor.

But why do I think that the sight of p’o-ed school teachers with their picket signs might be the sight that Emanuel would fear (and respect) even more!

  -30-

Should we ready ourselves for encore?

A part of me wants to relax, after learning Thursday that the members of the Chicago Teachers Union gave an overwhelming vote of support for the contract agreement they got after forcing the schools to shut down for seven school days.

A message from Seattle teachers



Union officials made it known that 16,428 union members voted in favor of accepting the deal, compared to 4,337 who would just have soon taken to the picket lines again and resumed the labor dispute.

ALL OF WHICH makes the vote in the near future by the Chicago Public Schools a formality. They’ll back the deal as well, and life will be all peachy keen for the next two years.

I write that sentence knowing full well how much sarcasm drips from it. Because despite the fact that 79.1 percent of union local members backed the agreement (the “highest approval rating for a contract in the history of the union,” officials said Thursday), there is the fact that there is still a whole lot of distrust between the two sides.

I’m sure there will be teachers who will not forget any time soon just how much city and schools officials, particularly Mayor Rahm Emanuel tried to demonize them in order to pressure a deal for much less than what they got.

I’m also convinced that the ego of Emanuel will resent having to make much in the way of concessions – since he likes to think of himself as the tough guy who stands up to bullies and forces them to back down (even though a new poll indicates many of us are more inclined to think of the mayor as a mediocrity these days).

SO DOES THAT make union local President Karen Lewis the bully who wouldn’t back down. Or is it Emanuel himself who was the equivalent of the schoolyard thug, now walking about with a black eye.

Everybody is going to be convinced that they’re correct, and that the other side is wrong. It will be a long time before any feelings are smoothed over to where these people will be able to “play nice,” so to speak, with any sincerity.

Yet all we, the people with an interest in the Chicago Public Schools either because we have kids there or because we sense that our city’s public image relies in large part on the quality of education one can get outside of a Catholic school in the city, have out of this is a three-year deal.

EMANUEL: Readying for a brawl?



Is that enough time for hurt feelings to be assuaged?

A POINT THAT I heard mentioned briefly in the moments after a contractual agreement was reached, but which hasn’t been discussed since, is that this contract will expire right around the time of the next Chicago municipal elections.

Which means that round about the time that we’ve finished electing an Illinois governor to serve through January 2019 and Emanuel is going to have to start thinking about whether he wants to have a second term as Chicago mayor, he’s going to have to do the renegotiation thing again.

Could it be that the local is plotting its own revenge in making sure that the next round of negotiations will be so acrimonious that it will make this year’s labor talks seem like a kiddy tea party by comparison?

It makes me wonder if we have labor officials who would love to be able to make Emanuel look weak and  ineffectual at a time when he could be trying to make himself appear almighty and powerful in hopes of getting “four more years” at City Hall.

COULD THAT WIND up motivating Emanuel to go ahead and take the tougher stand against teachers come 2014 to make up for what has happened now?

If all of this sounds like speculation about juvenile behavior on the part of labor, schools and city officials, you’d be correct.

Then again, we have officials who like to say they’re doing all this “for the children.” Perhaps hanging around kids so much has reduced them to acting like children!

  -30-

EXTRA: It’s Ovah!!!

No more Haray Caray tag phrases to describe the status of the labor dispute that shuttered the Chicago Public Schools for seven week days.

Instead, we’ll use the call of the current Chicago White Sox broadcaster – Ken Harrelson’s catch phrase for the end of a ballgame.

HIS SOUTHERN DRAWL might well be the best way to inform people that the Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates managed to get its act together on Tuesday to support having teachers return to classrooms now, with an actual vote by the teachers on the contract to come in the near future.

Kids will be returning to class on Wednesday, unless they’re playing hooky. I’d like to think they’re skipping class so they can follow the White Sox’ bid for a division title (that victory Monday against Detroit was REALLY huge). Are there even truant officers any more to go in pursuit of those errant young people?

Although I can’t help but wonder how Harrelson would have handled himself if, by chance, he had been asked to broadcast a report about the progress of labor negotiations between the teachers union and the Chicago Public Schools.

Would he have become so disgusted by the conduct on both sides that he would have given us the same treatment he does during White Sox games whenever somebody does something bone-headed?

WHICH ANY WHITE Sox fan knows amounts to pure silence, dead air while he seethes in anger!

So to mark the overall lack of intelligence that has been expressed during negotiations of the past two weeks, here’s the weblog equivalent of silence from, “the Hawk.”

And no, I’m not about to venture a guess as to whom Harrelson would have regarded as “the good guys” in this labor dispute.

  -30-

Judge to city: Resolve it yourself!

After the egomania and insanity that was the activity Sunday related to the Chicago schools strike, it was reassuring to see someone try to act in a rational manner.

EMANUEL: Mayoral ego restrained by judge



I’m referring to Judge Peter Flynn, who was the one who was asked by the city’s attorneys to issue an order that would force the Chicago Teachers Union members to end their labor dispute and return to the classroom – immediately!!!

WHAT DID FLYNN do that catches my admiration? Nothing.

Flynn told the attorneys with the city Law Department and with the Chicago Public Schools that  he might be willing to hold a hearing on Wednesday to consider a request to forcibly end the teachers’ strike.

But let’s not forget that the teachers union’s House of Delegates is supposed to meet again Tuesday, and could come up with a vote to approve a contract offer that was made late last week.

If that happens, the strike ends naturally and the kids would be back in school on Wednesday. In which case, Flenn wouldn’t have to do a thing. As he put it, the issue would be “moot.”

PERHAPS THIS IS just the natural temperament for a judge. I have lost track of the number of criminal trials I have covered as a reporter-type person throughout the years where a jury sends a note to the judge claiming to be deadlocked on a verdict.

The judge invariably sends them a note back telling them to keep trying on deliberations. Most often, the jury manages to work out the problem themselves.

I’d like to think Flynn (a judge whom I personally have never encountered while covering court activity) is taking that same attitude here – telling the city officials who want to strong-arm the schoolteachers that they need to be patient.

Because it would be better off if this strike ended with people in agreement on something resembling a contract. Bringing the strike to an end with a court order and no resolution on the contractual issues would create so much animosity on both sides that I wouldn’t want to bet on when (if ever) they’d reach agreement.

AND FOR THOSE people who read that and engage in fantasies about “breaking” the Chicago Teachers Union, I’d have to respond with, “Grow up!”

That kind of attitude is exactly the problem in this round of negotiations. There is so much distrust on both sides that it is complicating the efforts to reach an agreement that will keep teachers working in their classrooms toward the intellectual improvement of their students.

That distrust is the reason why the House of Delegates is not rushing itself to approve a contract agreement and said Sunday they want more time.

They want to be sure that something unexpected wasn’t slipped into the legal language of the contract that would harm the teachers’ interests – but that they would vote for by accident.

YES, I DO believe that politically-motivated people are capable of being conniving enough to try that tactic. Anybody who doubts it is misguided.

Although I also comprehend the frustration that I’m sure many people with children in the Chicago schools are feeling these days. They now have to concoct a way of caring for their kids for at least another couple of days – after having been told over and over and over again on all those television newscasts for at least three days that the strike was likely to end and the kids were supposed to be back in class on Monday.

Frustration is being felt everywhere, and it was reassuring to learn that Judge Flynn didn’t give in to it with a knee-jerk court order that would have only served to fulfill the more vindictive side of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s personality.

Now if only we can get the schools officials and teachers union to “play nice” in their talks, perhaps we can get those children back in class before week’s end.

  -30-

… 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.

  -30-

Strike! Strike! Strike!

It will be curious to see how parents react to having to find something to keep their children’s time occupied during the daytime hours when they would be expected to attend class.

For Chicago Teachers Union  officials late Sunday made it known that while they are more than willing to continue to negotiate with the Chicago Public Schools (and say they're not far apart in terms of pay increases for teachers), there will be teachers on picket lines come Monday because they are far apart on other issues.

AS TEACHERS’ UNION President Karen Lewis said, “No CTU members will be inside our schools.” Chicago will see its first school strike in a quarter of a century (and as a matter of disclosure, I have an aunt who is a retired teacher who walked the picket lines back in ’87).

The Chicago school system has made it known that they will have school buildings open for half-days – which creates the potential for images of school teacher “scabs.”

Although I don’t think anyone is seriously going to try to educate school children in the coming days (or weeks, or months, or however long this labor dispute lasts). It basically is going to amount to over-glorified baby-sitting of school children.

Perhaps we should make Rahm Emanuel have to spend some time at a school and have to watch over a group of unruly youths. He might suddenly find people like Gov. Pat Quinn or the members of the City Council to be downright conciliatory by comparison.

BUT THE CHICAGO Public Schools officials are going to have to make the gesture, unless they want the will of the public to shift so hard against them that they wind up having to completely capitulate to the teachers’ union in their labor dispute.

I don’t think the public is going to care one bit about high-minded discussions of “the issues.” They’re only going to care about what becomes of their kids while they have to work during the day.

Particularly in the case of the younger students in lower grades, they can’t be left alone at home.

And as for the programs that can be used to preoccupy a child’s time during summer vacation? Well, we’re past Labor Day.

SUMMER HAS ONLY a few more days left according to the calendar, but it is most definitely over in reality. Those programs aren’t an option.

If significant numbers of parents suddenly find themselves having to take time off from work so they can watch their kids, they’re definitely going to get ticked off about the loss of income.

And for those people whose bosses won’t be the least bit tolerant and will just “fire” them for even thinking of taking time off? They’ll be the most upset.

They’ll be angry. They’ll be outraged! They’ll make those mobs of people hanging around last week outside the Will County courthouse in Joliet to learn the fate of Drew Peterson look downright rational.

THEY’LL DEFINITELY BE looking for somebody to blame! At this point, I could easily see them piling onto the teachers’ union.

Those educators may have dreams of hundreds of thousands of people wearing the color red on Monday to show their solidarity with the union. They may even believe Lewis’ comments Sunday night where she cited the number of teachers union locals in other communities (nearly 20, of both Illinois Federation of Teachers and Illinois Education Association locals) that are on the verge of striking, and think there will be pockets of support elsewhere.

I doubt it. This will be an ugly brawl if the picket lines in Chicago last for more than a day or two. People will want to view this as merely a matter of their lives being inconvenienced. Fact won’t really matter much to them!

After about Tuesday, the “red” will go from the t-shirts people wear to the flow of blood to their cheeks as their blood pressure climbs higher and higher.

  -30-

Teachers stepping up their fight

It has been intriguing to watch the e-mail messages flowing into my inbox in recent days. For it seems the unions that represent teachers are stepping up their own efforts to protect their own financial interests.

From the Chicago Teachers Union, which may well wind up walking the picket lines in coming weeks to try to force the Chicago Public Schools to give them a contract worthy of their work.

ALTHOUGH EVEN THE Illinois Education Association is joining in the effort, seeking to protect the interests of teachers in public school districts across the rest of the state.

They have come up with a poll concerning all the pension reform talk, which some people think could easily be fixed if only those school teachers weren’t so greedy.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been more publicly outspoken in trashing teachers and their unions than state officials have been. But the end result is the same. There are people who want to view school teachers as a problem.

Which is why I can’t get terribly offended at the idea of the teachers retaliating. What’s wrong with self-defense?

EVEN IF THAT self-defense includes cluttering my e-mail in-box with all kinds of messages meant to give me the impression of a union ready to go to war.

From the notice letting me know how I can contact the printing company that is preparing all the picket signs that might be needed IF the union actually takes a strike vote, to the news that there is a “confidential e-mail” that says the union members are being wrongly monitored for their union activity.

They even informed us of the informational pickets they did this week, while reminding us that the strike vote has NOT been taken.

“Students come first, but you can’t have a quality school district by putting a fair and equitable labor agreement last,” teachers union President Karen Lewis said, in one of her several prepared statements she issued this week.

“AFTER LABOR DAY, we want to be where we belong, in the classroom,” she said. “However, if talks continue as they have been, we will be where we need to be (and that is) on the (picket) line.”

Now it might be hard to get away with that kind of attitude IF the general public were really buying into the rhetoric that teachers are a batch of overpaid hacks pretending to be performing a worthwhile service.

In short, some people don’t want to have to respect educators, and they want the rest of us to listen to their rhetoric. But the Illinois Education Association has a new poll that would seem to indicate that we’re not buying it.

That poll says 68 percent of all teachers should get the pension benefits they were promised, and 58 percent think that talk of cutting retirement benefits to teachers to try to resolve pension funding programs would be a bad move.

WHEN IT COMES to blame, there are 58 percent who think the pension funding problems are the fault of the General Assembly, while ONLY 5 percent think the teachers are to blame for the situation.

When it comes to the pension situation, I realize that a large part of resolving the problem is determining what will be done to close the funding gap for the program that provides retirement benefits for teachers in the suburbs and rural Illinois.

It is likely that if the school districts have to assume a larger cost of covering those benefits costs, those officials are going to shift blame to teachers.

They’re already going out of their way to claim that any such shift would result in higher property taxes for local homeowners.

IS THIS POLL merely an attempt to pre-empt the eventual argument that, “Your property taxes wouldn’t be so high if those teachers in your school district didn’t expect so much in retirement benefits!”

Which is about as over-the-top a comment as some of the rhetoric we’ve been hearing from Emanuel when it comes to bashing the Chicago Teachers Union.

And my e-mail in-box may well be cluttered in the future with the rhetoric in response.

  -30-

‘Strikes’ aren’t just for baseball. News judgment affects spin on school story

It really isn’t a surprise that there’s a good chance later this year (say, in about a month or so) that we will get the sight of teachers in the Chicago Public Schools walking the picket lines.

Will we soon get teachers picketing here? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

That was pretty much a given from the start of the negotiation process.

EVEN WHEN AN outside arbitrator this summer found that the teachers’ union had some legitimacy to their claim that they deserved some compensation for being asked to teach a longer school day and repayment for a past perk lost, in addition to a raise for the upcoming school year, that didn’t seem like enough to bring the two sides completely together.

So the fact that the two Chicago metro newspapers on Friday published stories that said the chances of a strike remain good? It’s not really news.

But what amused me was the difference in “spin” put on the story by the two newspapers. Although I’m sure some will argue that the proper word is “news judgment.”

Although it seems the big difference between the accounts published by the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times is that the latter paper got to Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis on Thursday.

FROM MY OWN occasional dealings with her, I know she will speak bluntly and say whatever she thinks – regardless of who or what her words will offend.

Which is why the Sun-Times gave us the story about “rattling the bargaining sabers” and how Lewis says there’s “no chance” of avoiding a strike sometime in September.

Her logic is that so many issues remain unsettled that it is highly unlikely that the Chicago Public Schools and the teachers’ union could come together on all of them before the first classes start for the 2012-13 school year.

Something is bound to keep the two sides apart, which would cause the first picket lines by Chicago teachers in decades (literally since the days when I first became a professional reporter-type person a quarter of a century ago).

SHE MAY BE right. Although it makes me wonder of Lewis and other top union officials are so eager for the fight that they’re looking for something to “go wrong” so they can justify the picket lines that will let them express the outrage they feel toward the Chicago Public Schools administration.

And Mayor Rahm Emanuel – whose hard-fisted attempts to take firm stance against the teachers union early on to score political points for himself have made teachers feel neglected and unwanted.

A picket line, particularly one in front of City Hall sometime next month would be the teachers’ equivalent of the foul-mouthed language that Emanuel has been known to use as part of his own blunt speech.

Emanuel versus Lewis. Who can be harder-headed? We’re going to find out in coming weeks!

BY COMPARISON, THE Chicago Tribune account comes off as so tepid, particularly when one considers the subject matter. It tells us how students in 243 public schools will begin classes, “at a time of transformation and uncertainty.”

The story that too many truly do care about



They give us teachers, administrators, union reps and spokespeople telling us how no one really wants a strike. Although they give us what seems to be the “drop dead” date of Sept. 4.

That is when officials are hoping a contract will be complete, because that’s the date on which other facilities in the Chicago Public School system start classes for this school year.

Will it also be the date of the first Chicago teachers’ strike since 1987 – the year that we wish the only “strikes” involved the Chicago Cubs games where Andre Dawson won that most valuable player award while playing for a last-place ballclub. It really has been that long since we’ve had a teachers’ strike.

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