Thousands working without full pay while union quietly complains
September 11, 2007. Even as she was announcing the claim that the new five-year teachers’ contract had been approved at a press conference at the Chicago Teachers Union’s expensive Merchandise Mart offices, CTU President Marilyn Stewart (above, behind microphones) was facing growing criticism for the sellout not only from her opponents in the union’s rank-and-file, but from her own closest aides. Not everyone was smiling when Stewart announced that the membership had supposedly voted in favor of the deal in the September 10 referendum as Stewart stood with her officers and one other in front of the city’s press corps to announced that the teachers had guaranteed Mayor Daley five more years of labor peace in the city’s public school system. Left to right above: Financial Secretary Mark Ochoa, Treasurer Linda Porter Milton, June Davis (who’s always included in press events like this because Stewart didn’t slate and ESP for a top union office), President Marilyn Stewart, Recording Secretary Mary McGuire, and Vice President Ted Dallas. Reliable sources are telling Substance that Stewart is increasing isolated from her own cabinet and staff, partly because the contract is widely viewed as having sold out the union’s membership and partly because her treatment of the union’s own employees is being viewed as the worst of any union administration. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
Complete Report on the October 3 meeting of the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates
The CTU (Chicago Teachers Union) House of Delegates met at Plumbers Hall, 1340 West Washington Blvd., on October 3, 2007, after a tumultuous month during which stunned delegates witnessed their union chiefs ramrod through, by any means possible, a sweetheart deal of a contract for the mayor. And as the opening months of school unfolded, CTU members discovered that the contract didn’t even say when they would get their pay raises, how soon they would get their back pay, and why those who worked overtime were being paid less than they had in previous years.
“They got away with it…”
A dozen or so delegates walked out immediately after CTU President Marilyn Stewart opened her President’s Report with her apology that was no apology regarding her shenanigans at the previous meeting when she ordained the contract to have been voted in, though she had not taken a No vote.
In that group walking out in anger and frustration were two women delegates whom George Schmidt, the editor of
Chicago teachers, other school workers, deprived of pay earned by new computer system…
Substance, did not know, but who hugged him in the foyer of Plumbers Hall where he sells Substance during the meetings. They thanked him for sustaining Substance “so the truth could be printed somewhere.”
One said, “And they got away with it [the pretense that the contract was voted in]!” Many of the other delegates who stormed out of the meeting furious and cussing Stewart also thanked Schmidt.
Delegates exhibit post-traumatic stress
There was a hushed, eerie quality to this meeting that I’ve never before witnessed.
It was as if the delegates had fully realized after the last meeting the utter contempt CTU President Marilyn Stewart has for them and saw that they were between the proverbial rock and the hard place, between the mayor’s CPS (Chicago Public Schools) and the mayor’s CTU.
Union President Stewart had shown at the August 31st special meeting for ratifying the contract a complete disregard for a legitimate vote on the contract she presented. Obviously fearing that the No vote would be greater than the Yes vote, she brazenly refused to call for the No vote and refused to give a vote count saying that the Yes vote was great enough to pass the contract by a simple majority plus one. She ignored the calls for the No vote and later calls for a roll call vote.
While scores of delegates chanted, “No vote” and “Roll call vote” and stood on chairs or stamped their feet, Stewart and her officers ran to a locked-door press conference where she gave the media press releases obviously prepared before the delegates meeting about the contract being voted in overwhelmingly. She also gave the press the vote tally, later including a number for the No votes even though she had never called for a No vote. For other details of how she pushed through a disastrous contract for the membership at the August 31st meeting, please see my article beginning on page ten of the September, 2007 Substance and the George Schmidt article on page one. The September 2007 Substance is now on the new Substance website in PDF format at www.substancenews.net.
On October 24, 2007, while some insiders snickered at the joke, CPS CEO Arne Duncan avoided any accountability for Stewart’s complaints and even managed to deflect the union’s criticisms from Duncan’s friend, technology chief Robert Runcie. Instead of answering the union chief’s challenges himself or demanding that Runcie explain why both of his major computer systems (the payroll system and IMPACT) had failed, Duncan called on M. Hill Hammock (standing at far right) to answer Marilyn Stewart’s questions. The joke was that Hammock, who is currently serving as “Chief Administrative Officer/Chief Operating Officer” of CPS (at $170,000 per year), knows nothing about CPS. Hammock would flunk even the most basic test about the city’s more than 600 public schools. Hammock, a banker, was appointed on orders from the city’s corporate chiefs to fill the post “CAO” position formerly held by David Vitale, Vitale had earned the honorary title “Chief Privatization Officer” during his four years working for CPS, and Hammock was expected to follow in Vitale’s footsteps. While Stewart publicly seethed, Hammock expressed his concerns about the plight of teachers who hadn’t been paid, told the public he was very sorry that things had gotten so nasty, and promised to do his best to solve the problems brought up by Marilyn Stewart (above, staring at Hammock in TV monitor). Stewart, who had eliminated even the most meager research capacity at the union, didn’t even know who Hammock was until she wound up being shifted to him during the Board of Education meeting. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.In this disgraceful fiasco, Stewart had the help of her old parliamentarian, Attorney Jennifer Poltrock, who stood in for Parliamentarian Attorney Barbara Hillman from the IFT (the Illinois Federation of Teachers), whom Stewart had hired in December, 2005, lamenting in one of her editorials that it was unfortunate that we had to deal with “outsiders”. The meetings were entirely out of sync with parliamentary procedure and the by-laws of the union constitution and unfortunately they have stayed that way.
Then-parliamentarian Hillman told me in a phone interview that a parliamentarian could not step in to correct events at a meeting. She could only answer a question at the request of the president, she said. As of this October 3rd meeting, a new parliamentarian has been hired with no explanation given by Stewart for the change. He is Attorney John Murphy of the firm Rosenthal, Murphy and Kovitz. Former Parliamentarian Hillman was outside of Plumbers Hall before this October meeting waiting for the doors to open. However, she was not acknowledged for her service when Stewart introduced the new parliamentarian.
President Stewart’s apology, no apology at all
President Stewart opened her President’s Report saying that she wanted to make “a small reflection of the last time we [the House] met.”
She said, “The last meeting was extremely troubling to me…[the ellipses signify some words I could not understand above some whispers of sighs and groans at her statement].”
Stewart continued: “And I spent a lot of time thinking about it and speaking to the staff and to delegates about what happened at that meeting. And I stand here to all of you and say I apologize for any role I played in that…[applause and groans]. I also recognize that there were others whose agenda was to totally disrupt the meeting…[applause again from her claque in their mostly well-defined seating arrangement in the hall and groans from others].”
She said, “That’s behind us….We can’t unring that bell. I’m not here for applause. Now having said that, I want to thank you all for the work you did in making the contract pass. 74 percent of the membership voted. The contract passed with 57 percent of the membership [who voted] voting for it, the highest passing of a contract in the last three contracts that were voted on.” [Actually, 21,000 members voted, approximately 67% of the membership. For the previous contract worked out by former President Deborah Lynch, 27,000 members voted.]
Stewart’s apology an insult to the intelligence of teachers
Why was President Stewart’s apology no apology at all? Well, she clearly never acknowledged in her apology what she did wrong. She did not even say that she did anything wrong.
She apparently has such contempt for the union delegates and members that she stood before us apologizing “for any role [she] played” (as if teachers who deal with young miscreants all the time are not masters at seeing the pretense and evasion in this sort of apology).
Having expressed confusion as to anything she may have done wrong in the role that she played, she then immediately turned the blame onto “others whose agenda was to totally disrupt the meeting.” This, as if anyone who had legitimate complaints about this disastrous contract and the insidious way it was rammed through wanted only to disrupt the meeting.
I suppose those who only wanted to disrupt the meeting were the poor elementary school delegates who were undone when they learned that Stewart hadn’t even protected in this contract the fourth weekly preparation period that Lynch had gotten for them. Nor were they getting the fifth prep period Stewart had promised them in her campaign speeches. Or perhaps it was the delegates who couldn’t believe the frightening medical plan changes, the no-changes in class size, or the pay cuts.
Stewart has eradicated all union democracy, arbitrarily silencing delegates at these meetings using parliamentary tricks or violations of protocol and all past practice, or just by shouting delegates down and having the microphones pulled out of the hands of those who disagree with her.
Or she might have them arrested. The last time those who disagreed with her won a vote in the House was in June, 2005 when the high school delegates voted by paper ballots which were counted during the meeting. The delegates elected former President Deborah Lynch as functional high school vice-president on the executive board against the candidate Stewart and her party, the UPC (United Progressive Caucus), had promoted. This was after Lynch lost as president in the union officers election of May, 2004.
Stewart’s retaliation for this victory came quickly, and Lynch was arrested at that very meeting for sitting on the main floor and taking notes during the vote count. Also playing the heavy in this atrocity was Attorney Lawrence Poltrock, father and partner to Jennifer, the sometime-parliamentarian at these meetings. Their law firm makes millions of dollars when the UPC is in power. The charges were dropped only after Lynch was arrested and forced to sit in the squad car for a while with Poltrock who pretended to the police that he was her lawyer. This is one event in a series of events meant to intimidate Lynch done by the kind of cutthroat union leadership that has contributed to the destruction of the union movement nation-wide.
When the vote count showed Lynch to be the winner, Stewart tried to adjourn the meeting without announcing who the winner was. In this case the delegates still had not been defeated enough to accept this lying down. It has taken three years now of the UPC being back in power to accomplish that.
The delegates shouted and would not let Stewart adjourn the meeting until she had made the announcement. And you could see in her hesitation when she came up with it the temptation to flip that vote as she has done with others since.
Tyrants and despots, beware!
Such tyrannical tactics need to be recognized and rebuked. However, teachers are the professionals who are not treated as professionals and they have been intimidated and silenced.
A corrupt mayor guarantees that teachers are treated as scapegoats for the sorry socio-economic conditions and school system that he has created. Teachers do not get the pay or benefits of doctors, lawyers, corporation honchos, politicians, or union chiefs. For them discretion has to be the better parts of valor, and they must practice pragmatism rather than idealism in the face of the forces lined up against them, one of these forces seemingly now being their own union.
The House is not easily bamboozled, but what would an after-the-fact outcry in the House of Delegates at the October 3rd meeting have achieved after Stewart’s machinations had already succeeded in pushing through a bad contract on August 31st? The House was the best hope for stopping this bad contract and Stewart knew it. Stewart made sure she did not leave enough time before the membership voted for the many, many new teachers and delegates to study the pitfalls of this contract.
I suggest that if things don’t break before that, that when the next union officers’ election comes up in May of 2010, and any viable candidate emerges, Stewart and company should be afraid — should be very afraid. I think teachers will vote for anybody but. Ah, the frenzy of shredding they’ll be into again. When they were voted out in 2001 and Lynch won, they had to pay back $330,000. Yes, they’re getting away with everything now, but that never lasts. In many cases justice does catch up.
On October 24, 2007, Marilyn Stewart, President of the 30,000 member Chicago Teacher’s Union (above, center at microphone and on video screen) complained to the Chicago Board of Education meeting that the union has had to file more than 700 grievance on behalf of teachers who were underpaid since the Board implemented a new payroll system in March 2007. Within the union, members were asking why Stewart had neglected to get language in the controversial new contract that specified when payrolls would be met and back pay paid. The only people with Stewart at the meeting were Sandy Schultz (left) and Molly Carroll (right). Hundreds of teachers and retired teachers would have joined a protest had the union president called. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. What Stewart did not apologize for
In this October 3rd meeting, President Stewart did not apologize for the illegal and fraudulent Yes vote that she faked and pushed through with her refusal to call for the No vote, her refusal to honor the motions for a roll call vote, and her complete violation of Roberts Rules of Order parliamentary procedure in these actions and in not allowing the mandatory debate before the vote.
She had given the delegates only three hours to comprehend the new contract, a rush job geared as part of the strategy to circumvent the delegates saying no to a bad contract. Lynch had given the delegates five days to read her first proposed contract which they turned down sending Lynch back to the negotiating table.
That Stewart already had the press release saying the delegates had voted overwhelmingly for this contract ready for distribution before the delegates meeting even took place indicates how urgent it was for her to give the mayor this contract.
Stewart even colluded with the mayor in the insulting pretense that schools would not have opened if the contract had not been ratified by the House. Here she showed contempt not only for the union delegates and members, but also for the public, the entire citizenry of Chicago. It is widely known that schools can be open while a contract is being negotiated.
Stewart acted as if being sent back to the negotiating table with a specified timeline was not an option. Lynch’s first rejected contract had the same five-year term that this contract of President Stewart brazenly sported after Stewart had promised she would never allow even a four-year contract.
But Stewart acts as if she knows that the totally corrupt can get away with anything. I hope she has studied history enough to know that despots have an uncertain shelf life and don’t get away with lying, cheating, and stealing indefinitely, not to say that she has done any stealing, unless you consider the under-covers, kept-secret, obscene perks she gives herself and her people thievery of the union treasury.
President Stewart was quoted as saying that she had been reading the Bible when she received the call in May, 2004 telling her that she had won the election for union president. I hope that the business of being union president hasn’t taken her away from her pursuit of the truth.
In March, 2007, Stewart became the secretary-treasurer of the IFT, salary unspecified. I hope that this second job doesn’t keep her from the work she needs to do for the CTU. Former President Deborah Lynch was able to change the constitution of the IFT to read that the CTU needed a full-time president, as previous CTU presidents had also been presidents of the IFT at double salary. Lynch not only refused that position but also changed the constitution.
