Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A strike now seems very likely

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: A strike now seems very likely:

A strike now seems very likely

by Mike Klonsky

Photo by Jesse Sharkey

A teachers strike is looking more and more unavoidable. The Mayor has pushed the union to the wall by stonewalling serious negotiations, sticking to his 2% pay-raise offer, and seeing if he can force the union to fold at the last minute. By playing chicken with the union he is not only gambling with the lives of the city's children and families, but with Obama's election chances as well.

From the looks of things, fold doesn't appear to be part of CTU Pres. Karen Lewis' dictionary. At yesterday's meeting the union's House of Delegates gave Lewis the power to serve the CPS board with 10-day notification of a strike as required by state law. Hundreds of teachers are already manning informational picket lines despite board's campaign of intimidation and spying/reporting on teacher union activists.

Emanuel, who has resorted to using paid, anti-union protesters at board meetings has now enlisted his machine cronies at UNO in a divisive and cynical scab campaign directed at parents, using radio ads to boast that their charter school teachers will still be on the job while their public school brothers and sisters are walking picket lines. The mayor has also told his hand-picked board to come up with $25 million to be used to try and break the strike. The easily found the money, proving once again that the school district's financial picture was not nearly as dire as the mayor and the board members have said it was

Lewis at news conference outside CPS headquarters | John H. White~Sun-Times

The ramifications of a teachers strike go far beyond Chicago since those leading the anti-union charge as well as the assault on teacher pensions and healthcare benefits are not wild-eyed Tea Party Republican radical governors, but rather, as my brother eloquently points out,  traditional machine Democrats, Emanuel, Quinn