School board wants to throw out CTU strike vote
e Chicago Board of Education is asking the state's educational labor relations board to invalidate the recent strike authorization vote by teachers, arguing that the three-day process was "inherently flawed."
The Chicago Teachers Union said last week that 88 percent of eligible members authorized union leaders to call a strike, well above the 75 percent threshold required before a walkout. The union has maintained that it could call for a strike authorization vote at any time during talks to replace a contract that expired June 30.
The school board disputes the union's position in a memo attorney James Franczek sent last week to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. The board says the union cannot vote on a strike until contract talks have gone through a final stage known as "fact-finding," which has yet to begin.
"A vote taken prior to conclusion of mediation, prior to issuance of the fact-finder's report, prior to exchange of comprehensive proposals is indicative of nothing," Franczek wrote.
"Nothing in 20 years worth of legislative tinkering with the impasse resolution process applicable to CPS supports a conclusion that the General Assembly merely wanted some generalized expression of employee support for its union leadership at some point in the process."
The board also wants the labor relations panel to create procedures and legal standards to monitor and verify the voting process.
CTU attorney Robert Bloch disputed the board's take on the law. "They're trying to impose conditions in the impasse procedures that don't exist in the law," Bloch said. "It's CPS' Hail Mary pass that they will (do so)."
Chicago Public Schools questioned the integrity of the union's voting process before the 2012 strike but lost its bid to have the labor board preserve vote-related documents. The district stopped short of demanding the results be tossed out.
In a separate charge filed last week with the labor board, CPS said the CTU "violated its duty to bargain in good faith," arguing that the union improperly demanded to proceed to fact-finding and refused to participate in "good-faith mediation" with a go-between brought in over the summer.
While CPS wants to continue mediation, the union says that process has run its course. The fact-finding stage can take up to four months and must be completed before the teachers can strike.
The CTU has filed its own claims with the labor board, including one after the school board rejected union demands to move talks to the fact-finding stage. By putting off fact-finding, the district can delay the possibility of a strike until after the school year.
Bloch noted that CPS is not questioning the strike authorization vote tally.
"They're not claiming the union didn't achieve the full 75 percent because they know it's true," he said. "All they're doing is trying to throw up procedural roadblocks that don't get to the core obligation of whether the members authorized the strike."
The growing stack of claims heading to the state labor relations board could carry big implications for how labor negotiations proceed. Three of the board's five members were appointed by Gov. Bruce Rauner, who is working to weaken public-sector unions.
The CTU's latest claim won't be heard until late next month at the earliest.
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