Vote yes.
I’m a teacher union member. But not a member of the Chicago Teachers Union.
If your read this blog regularly you know that I never tell teachers in another local or another union whether they should accept a contract or not. Members know best.
In fact, our local is negotiating a contract as I write this and if a tentative settlement were to be reached tomorrow (which it won’t be), I wouldn’t vote on it. It’s not a contract I, as a retiree, will be bound by.
However, Chicago Teacher Union members will be voting tomorrow and for several days after that. Voting yes will authorize their leadership to call a strike if necessary.
I urge the members to vote yes.
Not just because the deal, a 2% raise over the life of the contract, is insulting.
But because it is essentially a vote on the right to strike.
When the Illinois General Assembly passed Senate Bill 7, the IEA and the IFT and Stand for Children conspired to put language in the bill that required 75% of CTU members voting yes before a strike could be authorized.
Not just 75% of those voting. But 75% of all members. Imagine if the President of the United States needed 50% of the votes of every citizen in order to be elected.
Jonah Edelman of SFC has said that they did the research and found that 75% of all members was an insurmountable number and would have the same result as a no-strike clause.
I urge a yes vote so show that Edelman was wrong. That the IFT and IEA leadership were wrong.
Workers – teachers – have a right to collectively bargain. The right to collectively bargain is meaningless without the right to strike.
They’re voting in Wisconsin today for the right to collectively bargain a contract.
CTU members will be voting tomorrow, not just to authorize a strike if one is needed. But for the right to strike.
We all have a stake in that.
Vote yes.
If your read this blog regularly you know that I never tell teachers in another local or another union whether they should accept a contract or not. Members know best.
In fact, our local is negotiating a contract as I write this and if a tentative settlement were to be reached tomorrow (which it won’t be), I wouldn’t vote on it. It’s not a contract I, as a retiree, will be bound by.
However, Chicago Teacher Union members will be voting tomorrow and for several days after that. Voting yes will authorize their leadership to call a strike if necessary.
I urge the members to vote yes.
Not just because the deal, a 2% raise over the life of the contract, is insulting.
But because it is essentially a vote on the right to strike.
When the Illinois General Assembly passed Senate Bill 7, the IEA and the IFT and Stand for Children conspired to put language in the bill that required 75% of CTU members voting yes before a strike could be authorized.
Not just 75% of those voting. But 75% of all members. Imagine if the President of the United States needed 50% of the votes of every citizen in order to be elected.
Jonah Edelman of SFC has said that they did the research and found that 75% of all members was an insurmountable number and would have the same result as a no-strike clause.
I urge a yes vote so show that Edelman was wrong. That the IFT and IEA leadership were wrong.
Workers – teachers – have a right to collectively bargain. The right to collectively bargain is meaningless without the right to strike.
They’re voting in Wisconsin today for the right to collectively bargain a contract.
CTU members will be voting tomorrow, not just to authorize a strike if one is needed. But for the right to strike.
We all have a stake in that.
Vote yes.
