CHINATOWN — Chicago Teachers Union leadership announced Wednesday they will ask teachers for a second time whether they are willing to strike this year, if efforts to ink a contract with city officials fail.
The Chicago Teachers Union held a meeting Wednesday where members approved a Sept. 21 date for a strike authorization vote, union President Karen Lewis said at a press conference in the union hall.
If a strike is authorized, teachers could walk off the job as early as October.
The strike vote was set after another bargaining session between the union and city Wednesday failed to net a labor contract. Both parties have been negotiating for two years, and the union said it is willing to strike if the city does not drop clauses that would mean a drop in take-home pay for teachers.
Lewis said an increase in healthcare costs and a 3.5 percent increase in pension contributions from teachers is not acceptable. The city and Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the concessions are needed to keep classroom and school resources level.
"Basically, it's a loss in pay," Lewis said of the deal offered by the city. "They'll have to come to us with something different than what they have."
A teacher strike in October would be the first since 2012. In April 2016, the union held a "day of action" to protest state and city cuts to education that have lead to thousands of teacher layoffs and millions in cuts to school funding for CPS.
Lewis said teachers are being undermined because of the cuts in education funding. Therefore it is not acceptable to ask teachers to take a pay cut when they are having to teach larger classrooms without the help of aids or fine arts teachers, which were let go in droves, the union said.
Teacher Michelle Gunderson said she is in favor of a strike.
"If you treat us like you've been treating us, you're asking us to strike," she said. "If you're well intentioned, it doesn't take you two years [to negotiate a labor contract]."
Lewis railed against Emanuel touting the record graduation rates that CPS has recently achieved. She said it was disingenuous of the mayor to tout the records while demeaning teachers with his contract offers.
"The mayor didn't get those gains," she said. "Who got those gains? The people who did the work."
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