The school board has rejected the Chicago Teachers Union’s demand to move contract talks to a final stage, setting up a new fight as teachers prepare to vote later this week on whether to authorize their leaders to call a strike.
The union filed an unfair labor practice on Monday with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, demanding talks proceed to a fact-finding phase. Three of the board’s five members were appointed this year by Gov. Bruce Rauner, who has made it his mission to weaken public employees’ unions.
The move could test a law enacted before the 2012 teachers strike that governs how contract talks can unfold.
The city and the CTU agreed in August to enlist a mediator’s help to reach a new contract as part of that legal process. CTU believes those talks have run their course and wants to move negotiations to a three-person fact-finding panel. CPS says the mediator’s work should continue.
“We have to let the mediator do his job and actually mediate between the parties, which has not yet begun,” said district CEO Forrest Claypool, who spoke to reporters Monday about the district’s budget and labor talks.
The union’s attorney accused the district of trying to delay talks to avert a possible strike until the end of the school year.
“For them to say three months is not a reasonable period (of mediation) today is just maneuvering,” CTU attorney Robert Bloch said. “They’re trying very hard to slow down the process and prevent the union from exercising its rights under the law.”
Despite more than a year of negotiations to replace a contract that expired June 30, the two sides remain far apart on several issues.
According to the district, CTU wants more than 1,000 new school nurses, psychologists and social workers; hundreds of counselors and case managers; a 3 percent salary increase; and pay for snow days. The district also asserts it would have to hire more than 5,000 teachers to accommodate a union demand to shrink classroom sizes.
The union’s wish list would cost well over $1 billion, CPS says.
CPS says that is unrealistic as it considers a combination of new borrowing and layoffs next year if it doesn’t get state help to deal with a half-billion dollar budget shortfall.
CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey didn’t dispute the district’s summary of the union’s position.
“There’s a degree to which CTU’s contract demands reflect everything people on a school level think are needed,” Sharkey said. “I’m not saying that at the end of the day those things are going to stay in our package.”
Sharkey said the school board “has rejected every demand to improve conditions in our schools and asked for a contract that amounts to $653 million in cuts, not counting the staff cuts.”
The union formally demanded a start to the fact-finding process late last month, the same day it rallied members in Grant Park.
Under state law, both sides must move to appoint a panel within three days of a fact-finding demand by either party.
CPS doesn’t want the process to begin until February. “The mediator is supposed to be engaged with the parties, helping them prioritize what their demands (are). Helping them to figure out how to narrow things. That’s what mediation is, and that process hasn’t even begun,” school board labor attorney Joseph Moriarty told the Tribune.
The 2011 state law requires 75 percent of all CTU members to authorize a strike. CTU’s roughly 27,000 members will begin a three-day vote Wednesday.
That vote wouldn’t allow teachers to walk off the job until the state-mandated legal process plays out. CPS’ strategy to delay fact-finding would keep teachers in classrooms until nearly the end of the school year.
“Consider whether pushing the impasse procedures to that time of year makes sense,” Bloch said. “(CPS) would be graduating seniors who may not be able to conclude their courses and get the grades they need to go to college. A number of students need help at the end of the semester to pass their classes.”
Claypool repeated his stance that the union should join CPS’ efforts to pressure state lawmakers into rescuing the district’s dire finances and overhauling how Illinois pays for education.
“It is that unequal funding that is at the core of this crisis,” Claypool said.
“So the answer is not a strike. The answer and solution leads through Springfield and getting equal funding for Chicago’s schoolchildren.”
Twitter @PerezJr
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