Continued: Marilyn leaves members to organize charter schools
Even though President Marilyn Stewart just negotiated a contract, it seems that she was so busy with granting the mayor give-backs that she couldn’t even get into the contract a no-cost item like the right to campus access of the charter schools for the union outreach to charter teachers.
On conditions of anonymity, sources have said that negotiations with CPS Arne Duncan are still underway about campus access, and Duncan can choose to grant the union access at a wide range of levels from a legally binding neutrality agreement saying that the CPS will not interfere with union activities to full and unrestricted access.
I am shocked that Marilyn walked away from the bargaining table without achieving some level of charter school organizing agreement.
When she introduced the outreach to charter schools that we, the union members, must now do, I had to wonder just how she justified her salary, benefits, and outrageous perks that may now total to $300,000 or more yearly, though she only makes public the amount of the salary.
September 11, 2007. The September 11, 2007 press conference announcing the vote on the five-year teachers’ contract was attended by all members of the CTU staff, who were expected to cheer and provide support for Marilyn Stewart. Many of the staff, however, have been shocked that Stewart herself seems to view herself more as a corporate executive than as the leader of a union. Stewart has refused to agree to a contract with the union’s field reps, who had been represented by the Teamsters under her predecessor Deborah Lynch. According to informed sources, Stewart is trying to cut the work day of the reps by nearly 20 percent, claiming that they should work no more hours than teachers (six, according to Stewart) even though the teachers and members that the reps serve have varied hours that can begin as early as seven o’clock in the morning and end as late as seven o’clock in the evening. The union’s already questionable service to its membership has become even weaker as Stewart’s labor relations theories and dictatorial tactics have eroded morale among the union’s workers. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.In their packets, delegates were given a form to duplicate for their colleagues so they could list current or former charter school teachers in order to help the CTU which “is helping to launch the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (ACTS) in order to better unite teachers in public schools throughout the city.” The form can be mailed or faxed to the union or called in to the attention of Sandy Schultz.
This is part of a nation-wide project as many unions besides the CTU have been decimated by the charters, Stewart said. In her report, she said that the charter school teachers had no protections. She said the turnover rate in the charter schools is horrendous.
When Michael Dukalis, a charter school operator, was asked if there were teachers from last year, Stewart said that he said, “We don’t expect teachers to retire here.”
“So what you do,” Stewart said to the teachers in the House, “is expendable.”
“The charter schools are the Wal-Mart of public education,” she added.
Kevin Higgins, delegate from Dever School, rose to the microphone to ask why we couldn’t go into the charter schools in Chicago to organize for the union as he and other nation-wide union members had done in summer AFT (American Federation of Teachers) programs in Texas and Georgia where he had signed up 406 people. Even though these states like Illinois, he said, had “no solicitation” anti-union laws, the union organizers were allowed into the schools to organize.
Stewart’s answer was that negotiations were underway. I say again, But they were underway when she was hammering out the contract. Why the rush to force members to accept such an inadequate contract when, I say again, it was known that schools would open on time and teachers would be there.
What else Stewart neglected to negotiate
Besides leaving the contract bargaining table with truly lousy medical plan provisions and a pay cut for after-school programs, besides rushing away without winning a binding agreement on charter school organizing, President Stewart came to the Board of Education meeting, October 24, to speak about the terrible payroll problem. There are school workers who reportedly have not received their full salary since January.
Stewart said not a word to the Board about charter schools, even though the focus of that Board meeting was mainly to approve charter schools and even though she was accompanied by Sandy Schultz, the coordinator for Renaissance 2010.
Stewart should not have walked away from the bargaining table without a deadline for retroactive pay and interest on the late pay for all the school workers owed money by the Board. Now she’s at a Board meeting talking about it and has filed a ULP (unfair labor practice). This could have been negotiated in the contract she rushed through.
Pension Board elections—vote no on pension give-aways
The only item for action on the agenda for the meeting was to approve the endorsements of two active teacher trustees (incumbent Lois Nelson and Linda Goff) and one retired trustee (Mary Sharon Reilly) to fill the vacancies on the CTPB (Chicago Teachers Pension Board). The endorsement passed.
Literature sent by the CTU to the 3,600 retiree members asked them to vote for only Mary Sharon Reilly citing her experience, while RTAC (Retired Teachers Association of Chicago) with its 10,000 plus retiree members has endorsed Vaughn Barber, Walter Pilditch, and James Ward who have vast experience.
The CTU under the leadership of President Marilyn Stewart’s party, the UPC, has participated in pension give-aways to the mayor that our pension fund has never recouped. For this reason, especially as a retiree, I would not follow the recommendations of the CTU to vote for Reilly as her “experience” involved the promotion of a pension holiday.
Barack Obama endorsed by the CTU
A motion was made to endorse presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama for president. The motion passed by a standing vote, though a good number of delegates voted No and argued in the debate before the vote that we should get all the major Democratic candidates to a House meeting and have them speak to us before making an endorsement. If it was for this reason that a delegate voted No, there was no way to indicate this while standing for the No vote, and some of these delegates felt that it was a standing vote in order to make them uncomfortable. However, Stewart did not use the same pressure tactics about Obama at this meeting that she had used previously.
She said in her report that at an AFT meeting she called Obama “our favorite son” and pushed for either no endorsement from the AFT or an endorsement for Obama. She said she argued that polls had said that John Kerry was ahead, as is now said of Senator Hillary Clinton, but that Kerry didn’t win.
Vice-President Ted Dallas said, “The CTU has endorsed Obama, and the AFT will endorse him in a week.”
Ironically, when Obama was running for senator and told the Union he needed an early endorsement, Stewart’s party, the UPC, supported Dan Hines, while former President Deborah Lynch pushed through an endorsement of Obama.
Random information gleaned from the question periods
The new raises would appear on checks in December because the Board still can’t work the new computer system, according to Vice-President Dallas.
If a school worker works three-quarters of a day, he/she gets paid for the whole day. There is no such thing as docking, according to President Stewart.
City-wide personnel should build in preparation time into their schedules for doing their paperwork, according to Field Representative Molly Carroll.
The Board has approved the new contract at its September meeting. It wasn’t waiting for Board approval that kept the raise from appearing on the checks, according to Dallas.
If tutoring companies like Huntington and Programmed Learning are paying the hourly rate and the Board is now only paying $37.50 per hour, then “the hell with the Board; go work for those companies after school,” said Dallas.
Incorrect sick and personal days must be corrected and hard copy received, even when the computer shows the numbers correctly while they are wrong on pay stubs, said Dallas.
Teachers are told to do their record-keeping during preps because of the Impact software which must be used and which presents teachers with tremendous glitches. Prep time is therefore, according to Veronica Rieck of Lafayette School, no longer self-directed. She stated that Impact should be available in teachers’ homes. Stewart responded that teachers really should not want it in their homes—believe her—and that a meeting is to be held with the Board in two weeks about these problems.
The 2004 teacher evaluation form is the current form in use.
Debra Blackmon-Parris, delegate from Songhai School, expressed the dissatisfaction of teachers in crowded schools with overcrowded classrooms with the measly $250,000 the new contract provided on top of Lynch’s $2 million in the old contract for the reduction of, say, kindergarten class sizes in a few schools.
The delegates still have not received copies of six amendments to the old contract made by the Stewart team off-contract by agreement with the Board. Retiree Delegate Lou Pyster has asked at meetings for the delegates to receive copies since early spring. One is regarding the Fresh Start evaluation program which the present contract merely states is going forward and is subject to day-to-day changes. This is a deal wherein certain schools would agree to allow teachers to be evaluated by other teachers, and is a deal like many others which the House of Delegates should not be in the dark about. Dallas said he would consult Recording Secretary Mary McGuire about the possibility of copies for the delegates.
Of course, the rights of the delegates in the House have been abrogated by every possible means, including the arbitrary refusal of the union chiefs to publish the Delegates Handbook as had been done for over thirty years, as Pyster keeps pointing out. This is obviously to keep the delegates from being able to communicate with one another. I’m glad that Veronica Rieck’s name, for example, appeared in the old directory published by Lynch, or I wouldn’t have been able to spell her name nor designate her school, since it’s difficult to catch everything at meetings in my notes.
Another side-deal agreement the CTU has agreed to this spring that has not been given to the delegates, as Pyster has pointed out, is the merit pay proposal, acronym REAL, and possibly a really poisonous deal. The teachers must agree to it, and ten schools will be added each year to a total of 40 schools. Shocking, as our union has always argued against merit pay as something there was no fair way to implement.
Pyster also requested copies for the delegates of the budget adopted June, 2007. According to Pyster, the budget indicates a surplus of $3.7 million. However, since the CTU is supposed to pay $13.1 million to its affiliates, IFT, AFT, CFL, and possibly AFL-CIO, and has only paid $8.9 million, it would seem that the surplus is not a surplus, according to Pyster. He stated that a copy of this budget and an explanation of this discrepancy should be given to the delegates.
Whew! I’m glad retiree delegates are allowed to speak at the mikes again. Their experience in union matters is a gem without price. It was a sorry thing that Stewart initiated a gag order on the retirees during the three contract meetings in August, 2007. Her excuse was that only active teachers should speak, as they would be the ones affected by the contract.
But what if they are new teachers and new delegates, Marilyn? Is that what you’re counting on? That they’re inexperienced and they won’t know when you’re pulling the wool over their eyes? We know you want all your stuff unchallenged.
The meeting was adjourned after committee reports.
Fun and games
In contrast with how contract “victories” were treated in the past, the House was subjected to only one praise speech for the new contract and the officers who created it. Traditionally under the UPC, a long string of sycophants would waste time at the microphones singing the praises. Even this one praise song faltered after the second sentence, with the House totally silent while three women at a mike near me cheered and hooted like madwomen. When I looked at them quizzically and booed, I realized by their complicit smiles that they were being sarcastic and putting an end to the praise song.
As Sarah Loftus, former delegate from Marquette School, now retired, says, “There’s nothing like a new contract to make an old contract look good.” And I did have criticisms of the old contract.
I received an e-mail from the Union with an invitation to the CTU Halloween Party. The invitation wished me “a really spooky Hallowe’en.” I’m grateful for the invite, but I feel that all I have to do to have a really spooky time is to attend a CTU House of Delegates meeting. What happens there at least nine meetings a year is spooky enough—and sometimes really scares me. I guess I should be glad that elected retiree delegates aren’t allowed to attend the Delegates Workshop which replaces one monthly meeting, as retirees were able to under Lynch.
If you’re a delegate who needs to vent after the meetings, join “The Teachers Forum” for libations and union discussion right after the delegates meetings at the Billy Goat Inn at 1535 W. Madison St., the corner of Madison and Ogden, just east of Ashland, with a large parking lot at the Billy Goat.
