Collective Bargaining and Political Struggle: The Chicago Teachers Union Experience

Abstract

In November 2003, members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) ratified a four-year contract. Although the agreement yielded sizeable gains for union members, the contract became yet another bone of contention in an ongoing struggle for union leadership.In the spring of 2001, CTU members ousted leaders whose party had been in power for thirty years. Many members believed that leadership had been passive in the face of several antiteacher reforms, unresponsive to calls for union democracy, and ineffective at the bargaining table. Members wanted a new regime to challenge policy changes that had stripped the CTU of the right to negotiate over class size and layoffs.The new leadership immediately sought to revise the relevant law. We argued that the voice of front-line professionals was the missing ingredient in meaningful school reform and that these bargaining rights had to be restored to provide this voice. After intensive negotiations, the rights were restored in the spring of 2003.CTU also entered into an agreement with the Board of Education to jointly turn around ten schools in danger of closing. This effort, which saved hundreds of union jobs, gave our members a voice in the selection of a school-wide reform model, injected additional resources into these schools, and provided implementation assistance from the union.