ONE OF THOSE NASTY HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS FOUNDED THE UPC! UPC candidates ignore own history, insult all union members with Mary Orr’s ‘Elementary’ mailing
Thousands of elementary school teachers who are members of the Chicago Teachers Union received an unusual mailing from one of the caucuses running for union leadership in the hotly contested June 11 CTU runoff election. In a mailing to elementary teachers that arrived to most on June 8, 2010, Mary Orr, one of the four candidates for officer on Marilyn Stewart’s slate, took a shot at high school teachers on behalf of Marilyn Stewart. Orr is running for Recording Secretary, which makes her one of Stewart’s running mates.
Above: The election card that was mailed to more than 17,000 Chicago elementary teachers (but not to high school teachers) promoting the candidacy of Mary Orr (left above) and Marilyn Stewart (right). According to the post card signed by Mary Orr, who teaches at Haugan Elementary School, elementary teachers will face a danger of militancy if the CORE caucus candidates win on June 11. Throughout the lurid narrative, Orr neglects to note that the first chairman of her "United Progressive Caucus" (UPC) was a high school teacher turned union leader (Bob Healey taught at Gage Park High School, an English teacher, until joining the union's staff and eventually becoming CTU President from 1972 through 1984). Generally, attempts to divide elementary and high school teachers have failed in the Chicago Teachers Union, although they've been tried in the past, but never with the blatant disregard for history shown in the plugger above. In the mailing, Orr claims that an elementary teacher would be best to run the union because high school teachers and too militant, or something like that.
Because many teachers had difficulty reading what Orr wrote when we posted it here, here are her actual words, in full without any comment by Substance:
"A message to elementary school teachers
"We are all just teachers to the public. But within our union, we are either elementary or high school teachers. Each group with dsintinctly different personalities and classroom responsibilities. High school teachers’ days aren’t easy but they can’t comprehend the physical and emotional demands of an elementary classroom.
"Elementary school teachers are nurturers by nature, most comfortable pushing our young students to challenge themselves. High School teachers are activists by nature, pushing their older students to challenge ideas and convention.
"For years, elementary teachers’ 2 to 1 numerical advantage over high school teachers resulted in an elementary teacher elected union president. A nurturing union president who calmly managed crisis and built consensus.
"With the June 11 runoff looming, I’m concerned that if we elementary teachers don’t pay attention and get out our vote, the election may result in an activist President disposed to confrontation and ultimatum. In these times, I believe a show down with the Board will only show us the door.
"Elementary teachers have always been the solid, dependable center of our union. Now more than ever our union needs a solid, dependable elementary teacher to be our president.
— Mary Orr
"On June 11 vote twice — once for Mary Off and the UPC officer slate and again for the UPC convention delegates"
Readers know that Mary Orr is no longer just another elementary teacher. She is one of four UPC candidates for the top offices in the union. Marilyn Stewart (a former elementary teacher who has been in union office for six years) is running for a third term as president. Mark Ochoa, who is completed his second three-year term out of the classroom (he once taught at Logandale) is now running for vice president (the post from which Marilyn Stewart purged Ted Dallas, who helped elect her to her second term in May 2007). Mary Orr is running for recording secretary, to replace retiring recording secretary Mary McGuire. And Keith VanderMeulen (a Prosser High School teacher) is running for financial secretary (the position currently held by Mark Ochoa).
They are all running on the slate of the United Progressive Caucus, UPC, which has a long history within the Chicago Teachers Union.
Apparently, Mary Orr hasn’t read her own caucus’s website — or bothered to pay attention to the United Progressive Caucus. The UPC history, which is on the UPC website, recognizes the fact that the UPC was pulled together in the early 1970’s under the leadership of Robert M. Healey, who led the union on four strikes (1971, 1975, 1980, 1983, and 1984) before leaving the CTU to become President of the Chicago Federation of Labor (in 1984).
When Healey left the union leadership in 1984, he made sure that his elected vice president, Jacqueline Vaughn, became president of the union. Although Jacqueline Vaughn had been an elementary school (special education) teacher before she went to work for the CTU in the late 1960s, by the time she became CTU President in 1984 she had been one of the main leaders of the most militant union in Illinois. Jacqueline Vaughn, according to veteran teachers, helped lead the 1983 strike, then led the longest strike in CTU history (19 days) in 1987. To state that Jacqueline Vaughn was in some tradition of "elementary teachers" who avoided confrontation is to do violence to the facts of union history, according to veteran union members who worked with Jackie Vaughn and who helped lead the strikes that took place when she was union president.
Jacqueline Vaughn served as President of the CTU from 1984 until her death in January 1994. But why repeat what the UPC itself has already published? Here is a UPC summary of the work of Robert M. Healey, straight from the UPC website (UPC4CTU.com). The summary of the work of Jacqueline Vaughn is available on the UPC website. Neither Robert Healey now Jacqueline Vaughn can be characterized in the way that Mary Orr is writing in 2010.
"PRESIDENT ROBERT HEALEY (1972 to 1984)
Above, a photograph of former CTU President Robert M. Healey, who was the leader of the consolidation of various factions of the Chicago Teachers Union into the United Progressive Caucus between 1970 and 1972, when the UPC was officially launched. Despite a false history of the caucus recently mailed to more than 17,000 Chicago elementary teachers, the UPC has never practiced the kind of "elementary" versus "high school" divisiveness that appeared in a mailing on June 8, 2010 by candidates Marilyn Stewart and Mary Orr. For nearly half the existence of the UPC, a high school teacher (Healey had taught at Gage Park before becoming a union official, finally president), Robert M. Healey, served as CTU president. Since Marilyn Stewart's version of the UPC took over the CTU in 2004, the history of the union has been wiped out (Stewart has refused to post back issues of the Chicago Union Teacher on the union's website), and now Stewart is even lying about the history of her own caucus. "Created one of the top salary schedules in the nation.
"Shortened school year to 39 weeks with no loss in pay.
"Reduced maximum class size in all schools and all subjects according to an understandable formula.
"Gained hospitalization insurance with full family coverage paid for by the Board of Education and major medical benefits to $100,000.
"Individual dental coverage.
"Payment for half of all accumulated sick days upon retirement at age 65 or after 35 years of service.
"$2,500 term life insurance plus one-half of accumulated sick days after reaching a minimum of 40.
"Gained paid vacations (two weeks) and personal business days (three). Gained Duty-free professional preparation periods for all teachers.
"Negotiated for teacher aides employed in elementary and high schools to relieve teachers of non-teaching chores.
"All teacher aides, including ESEA aides, added to CTU bargaining unit and represented by the Union in grievances, negotiations, and all other pertinent matters.
"Strengthened rights of teachers and other bargaining unit members by negotiating contract clauses that prevent placement of derogatory statement in files, prevent use of derogatory statements in formal action by the board without giving prior notice to bargaining unit member, provide for Union representation at board conferences where “formal action could be adverse, provide for Union representation at conferences with a parent represented by a community organization,
"improve efficiency rating procedures.
"Obtained payroll deduction for Union Teachers Credit Union savings.
"Secured emergency supply funds for classroom teachers.
"Improved supply procedures to prevent loss of budgeted funds when supplies are not delivered, and to provide carryover of supply funds to the following year.
"Improved communications with the members through newsletters, area and district meetings, the hot-line, and delegates roundtables
"Improved communication with the public by active participation and representation at parents' organizations, community groups, and civic organizations,
"increased use of the communications media to tell the CTU story including a President's radio program and newspaper column,
"increased participation in programs to improve civil rights, women's rights and human relations.
"Increased legislative effectiveness through the addition of a full-time legislative director to expedite the Union's legislative program at the state and national level and more intensive participation by members in action programs and personal lobbying trips.
"Established standing committees for political action and women's rights and welfare.
"Established joint Board-Union committees to study special education and bilingual/bicultural programs.
"Increased pay for extra-curricular activities, and increased funding for various extra-curricular programs.
"Grievance procedure with binding arbitration that has served as a model for other teacher union contracts throughout the country. Increased emphasis on implementation of ERA (Early Remediation Approach) program for socially maladjusted children, and supported efforts to mandate this through legislative action.
"Implementation of enrichment programs for those schools whose reading scores were among the lowest in the city.
"Increased investigation of the Board of Education's fiscal procedures and activities through the addition of a Director of Research.
"Continued strict enforcement of the contract.
"Secured pick-up of seven percent of pension payments for each teacher and career service member by the Chicago Board of Education."
Healey's importance to the United Progressive Caucus may be being written out of Marilyn Stewart's history books, but when Healey died in 2002, even those who had denounced him recognized how important his life had been. The Chicago Tribune devoted a half page to an obituary for Robert M. Healey on July 24, 2002.
Robert M. Healey, 1929-2002, Stalwart led labor unions to forefront of state politics, July 24, 2002
By James Janega, Tribune staff reporter.
Robert M. Healey, 72, a Chicago union leader who unified Illinois' already considerable labor movement to enhance its political clout in statewide elections, died of lung cancer Monday, July 22, in Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
During a career that started in the late 1960s, Healey pulled off an unprecedented trifecta in Illinois labor politics: heading one of the state's largest unions, leading the Chicago Federation of Labor to statewide significance and serving as director of the Illinois Department of Labor.
His tenure at the helm of the Chicago Teachers Union in the 1970s and 1980s led to paid vacations for teachers and the introduction of class-size limits. Later, he became president of the CFL and reinvigorated the group to involve more than 300 unions and locals and presided over its subsequent rise to political prominence.
"You're talking about somebody who was physically imposing--he was 6-foot-4--so he had that going for him. But he was also extremely intelligent and articulate," said Don Turner, president emeritus of the Chicago Federation of Labor.
Healey was a soft-spoken, introspective man who represented an older style of union leadership marked by accommodation rather than confrontation. He built political relationships across party lines in Illinois, a feat capped by his 1999 appointment as director of the Department of Labor under Republican Gov. George Ryan.
"Robert Healey was a great advocate for working men and women throughout his career, until the very end of his life," Ryan said in a statement Tuesday.Mayor Richard M. Daley described Healey as "a champion for Chicago's educators as president of the Chicago Teachers Union and for the working men and women of this city as president of the Chicago Federation of Labor."
The core of Healey's accomplishments was to solidify support within Chicago unions and then to encourage them to "be more political, be involved, and make sure working men and women know who their friends are, whether they're Republicans or Democrats," said Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon.
Healey knew that unions "needed to work with everybody in the state and everybody in the labor movement," said Margaret Blackshere, president of the Illinois AFL-CIO. "And the way to do that was politics. ...He became a key confidante to politicians ranging from George Ryan and Jim Thompson to Mike Madigan. He never stopped in one party."
Healey's labor philosophy was the result of his childhood memories of his father's struggles during the Depression and the crowded three-bedroom apartment he shared with four siblings in the Woodlawn neighborhood.
He and a friend lied about their ages and joined the Army in 1946 when they were 16. Healey served as a military policeman in Korea until 1948. He returned to Chicago and in the 1950s earned a bachelor's degree from DePaul University and master's degree from the University of Chicago.
From 1956 until 1968, he taught English at Gage Park High School, where he eventually chaired the English department, started a debate program and, most controversially, started a poetry club that allowed children to sit on the floor and wear jeans.
Although the club wasn't shut down, Healey said the affair made him realize how little control he had over his own profession and prompted him to run for office in the Chicago Teachers Union.
He served as financial secretary of the union from 1968 to 1972 and as its president from 1972 to 1984. At the same time, he served in executive capacities at the American Federation of Teachers from 1974 to 1990, and from 1971 to 1989 as president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, where he spearheaded the formation of its political outreach group.
He rose in the ranks of the Chicago Federation of Labor, beginning as an executive board member in 1977 and serving as the federation's president from 1987 to 1994.
A member of the Illinois State Labor Relations Board from 1994 to 1999, Healey was director of the state Labor Department from 1999 until last April, when he stepped down to serve as chairman of the local panel of the Illinois Labor Relations Board.
Healey is survived by his wife of 30 years, Catheleen Kahn Healey; four daughters, Amy, Kathleen Healey Adams, Meg and Elizabeth; three sons, Michael Todd, Steven and Phillip; two sisters, Marguerite Oran and Delores Biggins; and eight grandchildren.
Visitation for Mr. Healey will be held from 3 to 9 p.m. Thursday in the Drake & Son Funeral Home, 5303 N. Western Ave. A funeral mass will be said at 1 p.m. Friday in the Old St. Patrick's Catholic Church, 700 W. Adams St.
By: Danielle from CORE
WOW
I thought it was the job of downtown to be divisive and the job of the union to... I dunno... unify??