Chicago public school teachers are getting ready to strike on October 17 if they can’t reach a deal with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and school district management by that point—but they won’t be striking alone. Another 7,000 school workers represented by SEIU, including security guards and custodians, and 2,500 parks employees have also announced a strike for October 17, expanding the possible impact of a strike in a reminder that solidarity creates power. Announcing that plan, Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey said “The schools don’t work without all of us, and our unity is our strength.”
”We prefer to reach a contract settlement without a strike,” Sharkey added. “But I want no one in the city of Chicago to doubt our resolve. We mean to improve the conditions in our schools. We mean to achieve a fair contract.”
CTU is pressing for major changes in the schools to benefit teachers, students, and staff alike. They’re calling for caps on class size; hiring more social workers, nurses, librarians, counselors, and other support staff; more time for teachers to prepare their lessons; early childhood education in Chicago public schools; a move away from teaching to the test and toward culturally relevant curriculum; expansion of affordable housing; expansion of community schools; and a moratorium on charter school expansion. Lightfoot isn’t budging on much of that.
While Chicago school and park workers gear up for a strike, the strike by GM workers has now gone on for almost three weeks.
● Alaska is the latest front in the war on public workers with an administrative order requiring elaborate opt-in procedures for union members to pay union dues.
● Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called teachers "bullies." American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten has thoughts. Thoughts like “And at a time when school bullying is increasing, aided and abetted by Trump spewing hate on Twitter, labeling teachers ‘bullies’ is a new low. Unlike the secretary, teachers are in classrooms every day caring for kids, while Betsy has gone out of her way to make their lives harder by trying to cut programs, silence their voices and siphon resources into private hands.”
● Trash collectors in Marshfield, Massachusetts, continue their long-running strike—and they got powerful solidarity from Teamsters in Washington state who honored their picket line by not picking up trash for the largest shareholder of Republic Services, one Bill Gates.
● Some "Florida Man" stories are desperately unfunny.
● How have healthcare workers won improvements to patient care? Strikes. One example of many:
Since 2010, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), which represents 4,000 psychologists, social workers, and other mental health clinicians at Kaiser Permanente in California, has mounted a campaign to publicize and remedy a critical shortage of mental health workers at the state’s largest HMO. In 2011, the NUHW filed complaints to the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) charging Kaiser was violating a regulation that requires that HMOs must see mental health patients within 10 business or 14 calendar days of their request for an appointment. The complaint was accompanied by a 34 page report entitled “Care Delayed, Care Denied.”
● Big surprise, Kickstarter refused to voluntarily recognize its workers’ union.
● But workers at New York's New Museum have a first contract after they unionized.
● How New Yorkers preyed on Chicago cabbies.