Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups'

theodp writes "The striking Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is holding a massive 'Wisconsin-style rally' Saturday as ongoing negotiations try to bring an end to the strike that has put education on hold for 350,000 of the city's schoolchildren. 'The 30,000 teachers, school social workers, clerks, vision and hearing testers, school nurses, teaching assistants, counselors, and other school professionals of the Chicago Teachers Union are standing strong to defend public education from test pushers, privatizers, and a national onslaught of big money interest groups trying to push education back to the days before teachers had unions,' explains the CTU web site. 'Around the country and even the world, our fight is recognized as the front line of resistance to the corporate education agenda.' Some are calling the strike — which has by most accounts centered on salary schedules (CPS salary dataset), teacher performance evaluations, grievance procedures, and which teachers get dibs on new jobs — a push-back to education reform that has possible Presidential election implications. The big winners in the school strike, Bloomberg reports, are the city's largely non-union 100+ charter schools, which remained open throughout the strike. Charter school enrollment swelled to 52,000 students this fall as parents worried by strike rumors sought refuge in schools like those run by the Noble Charter Network, which enjoys the deep-pocket support of many wealthy 'investors.'"

Comments

Que the standard comments...

[jbwolfe]

blasting unions as greedy, corrupt, and featherbedding saps on the "American Dream". Too many people are unaware or uneducated about what they owe to unions for the battles fought in the past and for the issues harming us today. Here's a short list: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/05/148930/top-five-things-unions/?mobile=nc/. Before some ignoramous says unions are no longer necessary, I'd ask you to take a look at the last decade and see what's happened to the middle class.

As for my perspective, yes I'm a union member and no I haven't had a pay raise for 10 years, my pension is gone, I work twice as much for 55% of the pay (in 2001). If the unions are so all-powerful and greedy, why has my standard of living dropped so much? Did unions in Wisconsin fare better? If union haters get their wish, the middle class is toast and the plutocracy will eventually prevail leaving the US with no backbone to hold it up. I don't have all the answers, but I know ragging on the unions and real attempts to bust them is a just wrong-headed.