T he Chicago Teachers Union is cementing its place as Chicago’s new political machine. After handpicking Brandon Johnson, one of its own employees, to run for mayor, it funneled over $2.3 million into his campaign to ensure his election. Now it’s seeking billions of dollars in returns on that investment. A leaked copy of CTU’s 142 pages of demands shows that the union is looking to negotiate its most radical, expensive contract yet.
It’s a blueprint that’s likely to be replicated by other strong government unions if CTU succeeds: pour millions into a local election, then get billions’ worth of political gains through contract negotiations. Zero accountability or transparency required. Moreover, the union, through its collective-bargaining agreement, is forcing policy reforms that would otherwise have their merits debated and then voted on by the Chicago City Council or the Illinois General Assembly.
This new way of unions doing business is sneaky. It’s designed to circumvent the democratic process. And that’s bad for everyone who isn’t a union leader, but especially for taxpayers.
CTU’s power play really started heating up when it put loads of cash and manpower behind Johnson’s $100 million real-estate-transfer tax hike, called Bring Chicago Home, which failed on the March 19 primary ballot. CTU planned to use the funds generated for its own purposes, but rather than admit defeat, the union doubled down on affordable housing provisions in its demands for the replacement of the contract that expires on June 30, 2024. These expensive demands include a program to assist teachers in buying homes, converting and staffing schools as dormitories for “unaccompanied youth,” and using schools as shelters for homeless families.
While CTU’s leadership has a long history of progressive activism, this year’s list of demands, with more than 700 provisions, reads like a progressive party’s political platform — not a teachers union contract.
In addition to the minimum 9 percent annual wage increases that will yield $51,000 in raises for the average teacher over four years and at least 45 days off each school year, the union is demanding “climate justice” reforms, such as a 100 percent electric bus fleet, which could cost as much as $500 million to implement. It also wants to institute a pilot program to retrofit schools to be carbon-neutral, with the district fully carbon neutral by 2035.
The union’s demands also include environmental, social, and governance (ESG) provisions in its pension funds. It wants the school board to coordinate with the Chicago pension funds to move away from any investments that are allegedly contributing to climate change. With ESG investing, pension funds place environmental and social-justice factors ahead of return on investment when determining how to invest, thereby putting a political agenda over fiduciary duty and creating more taxpayer liability.
On the social-justice side, CTU is demanding 100 percent abortion coverage for employees and $2,000 per student for asylum seekers. It also wants to remove school-resource officers, or on-campus police, from every Chicago school, despite schools seeing a 26 percent increase in violent crime in 2023.
Then there’s mandated secrecy from parents regarding their children’s pronouns, with provisions requiring teachers to distinguish “student preference in the classroom versus when communicating home to families in order to respect students’ privacy.” Employees will be encouraged to ask students how staff should refer to them when interacting with family before all events that include family members. And, of course, all of that is accompanied by requirements that all counselors, clinicians, social workers, psychologists, and other wellness staff are “queer competent” and, as a job qualification, have annual training.
To further enshrine its progressive goals and staff ranks in the school system, the union also wants an array of new positions at every school, such as restorative-justice coordinators, newcomer liaisons, “climate champions,” and gender-support coordinators — to the tune of an estimated $1.7 billion in new personnel.
The list goes on and on.
These types of reforms belong in debate among the city’s aldermen or the state’s lawmakers, not in a teachers’-union contract. That’s especially true when the Chicago Public Schools are already facing a $391 million deficit next year and nearly $700 million the following year.
If you need more proof that CTU isn’t focused on doing what’s best for students, just look at one of the few education reforms it is pushing. There are currently 20 “sustainable community schools” in the district. CTU describes them as “community hubs designed to provide wraparound academic, health and social support for the entire community.” The union is demanding 180 more of these schools — a tenfold increase. But students at these sustainable community schools have, on average, lower reading and math proficiency, higher absenteeism, higher high-school-dropout rates, lower graduation rates, and lower postsecondary enrollment rates compared with all other public schools in the district.
CTU president Stacy Davis Gates recently held a press conference in front of Richards Career Academy, a sustainable community school. Not a single student tested proficient in reading or math on the SAT last year, and yet she stated, “We have committed as an entire union to using our contract to create more sustainable community schools like Richards Academy.”
By pushing these disastrous schools on families, CTU can all but guarantee an exponential growth in teachers and dues-paying members and, therefore, in its ability to influence politics.
Of course, there are typically two sides at the bargaining table. A union can start with an outrageous set of demands, but there is give-and-take through the process. The final contract can look very different.
But CTU is negotiating with itself. Brandon Johnson was CTU’s former legislator coordinator, and CTU has indicated that it expects a non-adversarial negotiation because “this time, CTU’s contract demands are aligned with the Mayor’s education transition report.” According to CTU, the mayor will be saying not “no” but rather “how shall we fund this transformation of Chicago Public Schools?”
That means no one is at the table bargaining on behalf of the people. No one is there with the best interest of students in mind. That’s not a negotiation. It’s collusion. And if CTU is successful, no doubt other teachers’ unions will try the same scheme.
Davis Gates previously stated, only ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek, that CTU’s contract would “cost $50 billion and 3 cents. And so what? That’s audacity. That’s Chicago.”
“So what?” Never mind that $50 billion would be roughly five times the current Chicago school budget. Never mind that just one in four students can read at grade level or that chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed and enrollment is dropping. All while CPS’s per-pupil spending has increased and is higher than state and national averages.
This is what she really thinks of Chicagoans — of the taxpayers and students who would be paying the price, whether financially or in the classroom — for this “audacious” political coup the union is trying to pull.