Another dirty trick by Marilyn Stewart... Stewart again uses CTU 'Executive Board' for her CTU dictatorship... Denies House of Delegates its Constitutional rights
Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Marilyn Stewart has once again shown her disrespect for the union's House of Delegates.
O'Keere Elementary School teacher Lois Ashford survived the 'turnaround' of Copernicus Elementary School in June 2008 and became an active member of CORE and a very active citizen. On August 19, 2009, Ashford (above) testified at the third hearing on the proposed Chicago Board of Education 2009 - 2010 budget at Black Elementary School in Chicago. Ashford is holding one of the rare copies of the proposed budget, which CPS officials, for the first time in history, did not print and distribute to schools, libraries and ward offices across Chicago. CPS spokesman Monique Bond claimed that making the proposed budget available on the Board's Website was fulfillment of the Board's legal obligation, and claimed that refusing to distribute the budget books was a progressive example of "going Green." Ashford was one of dozens of teachers and parents who went to CPS headquarters in the Loop, got copies of the budget, and studied it prior to the August hearings. Marilyn Stewart and the Chicago Teachers Union leadership ignored the hearings. The CTU officially had nothing publicly to say in opposition to the claim by Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman that a supposed 'budget deficit' and escalating pension costs would take money away from children's education in Chicago. Substance caption and photo by George N. Schmidt. At the October 2009 House of Delegates meeting, one of the "Items for action" asked that the House approve a recommendation from the Executive Board to endorse incumbent pension board trustees, Reina Otero and Nancy Williams.
Both Otero and Williams are members of the United Progressive Caucus (UPC), Marilyn Stewart's political party within the 31,000-member union.
After hearing from all six of the pension board candidates and a long debate, a motion was made and passed that the House would endorse all candidates as qualified for the trustee position. Democracy and transparency had made its way back into the House!
In this week’s mail, CTU members received a postcard from the union in regards to the trustee election. Most CTU members reported receiving the post card on October 21, 2009. The card states that, “the Executive Board endorses the incumbents Reina Otero and Nancy Williams.” Below those words, it continues, “the House of Delegates endorses all of the following candidates” and goes on to list Reina Otero, Nancy Williams, Aspasia Demoros, Rosemary Finnegan, Jay Rehak and Lois Ashford — in that order. Marilyn Stewart's faction even reverses alphabetical order in order to play last-minute electoral games. Elementary teacher Lois Ashford is one of two candidates endorsed by the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators (CORE), and is last on Stewart's list of "candidates endorsed by the House of Delegates. The other CORE candidate is Jay Rehak, a teacher at Whitney Young Magnet High School. How quickly democracy and transparency had slipped away from the House!
The post card (above), mailed to all active duty teacher members of the Chicago Teachers Union, arrived at the homes of most on October 21 and October 22, 2009. The expensive mailing was a violation of the CTU Constitution and serves as another example of how CTU President Marilyn Stewart is willing to waste tens of thousands of dollars of the union's dues money to promote her own factional political agenda. Once the House of Delegates voted on October 7 to endorse all six candidates for teacher pension trustee reps, the "recommendation" of the union's Executive Board was overridden. Nevertheless, Stewart and members of her dwindling faction within the union's staff authorized that the union spend more than $10,000 to promoted the candidates of the United Progressive Caucus (UPC) with the above mailing. Never in the union's 75-year history has the union's constitution been undermined so regularly and flagrantly by a union officer. Although some of the details of the above post card are laughable (such as reversing the alphabetical listing of candidates endorsed by the House to place Stewart's UPC candidates first and the CORE candidates last, when 'Ashford' should be first), the mailing represents another serious attack on a 75-year tradition of fierce democracy within the largest union in Illinois. Substance caption by George N. Schmidt. PDF of the post card by Jim Cavallero). What’s interesting to and other teachers with whom I've spoken is that the postcard clearly says "the Executive Board endorses..." Nowhere in the CTU Constitution can anyone find where the Executive Board has the power to make an endorsement once a decision has been reached by a vote of the House of Delegates. According to Article VIII Executive Board Duties Sec. 1: The Executive Board shall be directly responsible to the House of Delegates, and shall report there to all of the official acts of the Board, together with such recommendations as it may deem desirable. The Executive Board recommendation was voted down by the House. Therefore, the only endorsement that should have been on the postcard was the one made by the House for all six candidates.
Like Lois Ashford, Whitney Young High School teacher Jay Rehak (above right, with microphone) studied the CPS budget and challenged Ron Huberman's attacks on the pension fund at Board of Education hearings and meetings. Above, Rehak devoted a second day of testimony to the proposed CPS 2009 - 2010 budget at Marshall High School on August 18, 2009. By that time, Rehak had already spoken at the July 22 Board meeting, drawing an exchange with Huberman. Huberman has been assigned by Mayor Daley to try to gut the teachers' pension as he did at with transit workers' pensions at the CTA. Rehak had studied both the proposed budget (as part of the CORE budget study committee) and CTPF actions. Marilyn Stewart's endorsed candidates, by contrast, were truant from the CPS budget hearings on August 17, 18, and 19 2009. They have yet to appear before the Chicago Board of Education to challenge the claims of Ron Huberman. Rehak's testimony at the budget hearings exposed the fact that CPS had invested in risky 'derivatives' and had lost at least $1 million following the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Many observers believe the derivatives investment is the tip of an iceberg, where multi-million dollars losses were taken by both CTPF and CPS becuase of the risks undertaken during the years of the housing bubble. Substance caption and photo by George N. Schmidt. Substance video, above, being made by Al Ramirez.In October of 2008 Marilyn and her administration used the Executive Board to make a recommendation/endorsement for two other UPC candidates for pension trustee. Then she canceled the October 2008 House meeting so there wasn’t any possibility of her candidates being voted down.
Thus a postcard went out to the membership with her two UPC candidates as the anointed ones. Those two candidates went on to win the two trustee seats.
Stewart also used the Executive Board as a kangaroo court to oust her own vice president, Ted Dallas, from union membership, a ploy that reportedly has cost the union hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees resulting from a court case that Dallas brought, along with additional hundreds of thousands of dollars reached in a secret settlement with Dallas. Dallas has been re-elected vice president of the union in May 2007 on Stewart's UPC slate, only to run afoul of Stewart following the way in which Stewart negotiated the five-year contract which she brought to the membership in August and September 2007.
Former pension trustee Rosemary Finngean (above right, at a joint meeting of PACT and CORE in September 2008) is also a candidate in the October 30, 2009 election for teacher trustees of the CTPF. Like the two CORE candidates and independent Aspasia Demoros, Finngegan's rights were violated when Marilyn Stewart issued the post card received by teachers on October 21 and October 22 on behalf of the UPC candidates but disguised as a union mailing. Substance caption and photo by George N. Schmidt.Marilyn Stewart continues to use the Executive Board as the decision making body of the CTU, thereby ignoring the elected delegates from all of Chicago's schools and the large citywide groups represented in the House of Delegates. All members of the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund (CTPF) who are working in the schools are eligible to vote on October 30 for two teachers trustees for the fund. Six candidates are running for those two offices. By authorizing the mailing of a post card which effectively gives priority to two candidates who were explicitly not endorsed by the House of Delegates, Stewart is again trying to use the union's resources (a mailing list) and finances (the cost of the mailing) to mislead the members.
Stewart's mailing on behalf of her hand-picked candidates is not the only example recently of Stewart attempting to control the union through the Executive Board. An upcoming referendum in November was put out by the Executive Board.
Elementary teacher Aspasia Demoros (above, in September 2008 outside Mart Anthony's restaurant in Chicago following the September 2008 House of Delegates meeting) was also snubbed by the Marilyn Stewart faction of the CTU when Stewart ordered the mailing of the post card that listed the UPC candidates twice and placed the other candidates at the bottom of the list. Demoros is running as an independent candidate in this year's election for teachers pension trustee. Substance caption and photo by George N. Schmidt.The Executive Board is obviously under Marilyn Stewart’s thumb. Like the Chicago City Council they vote for whatever the boss wants.
Marilyn Stewart refuses to talk with Substance, referring all questions to the union's publicist, Rose Maria Genova. Genova finally got back to Substance and explained the post card as follows:
I asked her whose decision it was to run a "dual endorsement".
Her answer: the CTU administration because both bodies, the HOD and Executive Board, are independently elected and each makes decisions. Since the two bodies had different endorsements the CTU decided to run both.
I asked her, what article in the constitution gives the Executive Board the power to make endorsements because I thought they just make recommendations to the HOD.
Her answer: I'm not sure offhand but the executive board is the overriding body of the union and has more authority. This is because they are elected systemwide. It's like the senate and house of representaives. Both bodies are elected but they do have some different powers.
My final question was: Where could I or other members find a listing of the current Executive Board members?
She said, "I think it's in the calendar book." I had mine right in front of me and told her that it wasn't actually.
She told me: "Try the website [www.ctunet.com] and if you can't find it contact me again and I'll see if I can find it for you."
The names of the members of the executive board are not listed in the Website either. Nor has Marilyn Stewart produced a directory of delegates (and executive board members) as required by union precedent for more than five years. Since many of the member of the executive board (for example, the chairmen of the standing committees) are appointed by Marilyn Stewart, the claim that the executive board is representative is not completely true.
Prior to the Stewart administration, the votes of the House of Delegates were always taken on matters referred to the House by the Executive Board, and when the House voted differently from the Executive Board, the House vote was considered to have nullified the recommendation of the Executive Board. It was only when Marilyn Stewart invoked the executive power of the Executive Board to try and convict the union's elected vice president, Ted Dallas, without referring the matter to the House of Delegates that a tradition more than 70 years old was overturned by Stewart. Because no one challenged this new procedure in court, it has grown since the Dallas trial. They are willing to push aside their brothers and sisters in the House of Delegates, the constitutional decision making body in the CTU, to further her undemocratic agenda. May 2010, you can’t come soon enough.
Final edited version of this article posted at www.substancenews.net October 23, 2009, 6:00 a.m. CDT. If you choose to reproduce this article in whole or in part, or any of the graphical material included with it, please give full credit to SubstanceNews as follows: Copyright © 2009 Substance, Inc., www.substancenews.net. Please provide Substance with a copy of any reproductions of this material and we will let you know our terms — or you can take out a subscription to Substance (see red button to the right) and make a donation. We are asking all of our readers to either subscribe to the print edition of Substance (a bargain at $16 per year) or make a donation. Both options are available on the right side of our Home Page. For further information, feel free to call us at our office at 773-725-7502.
By: Can't anything stop the Stewart dictatorship?
What $1,000 per year union dues gets us!
This is just another example of what our $1,000 per year Chicago Teachers Union dues gets us. Can't someone sue to stop Marilyn Stewart from promoting here own factional 'UPC' agenda wasting union dues in the process. First the October union newspaper gives us "Hispanic Renaissance Man" (you might have missed that election profile of Mark Ochoa), and now this post card thing. Can't anyone stop these people before they lie, cheat and steal again?
By the way, where does a union member get a current list of the people who are on the so-called 'Executive Board'? I know who my school delegates is, but I can't find a listing of the 'Executive Board' anywhere. Did we vote for these people? If so, who are they and whom do they represent (if anyone other than Marilyn Stewart)?