It’s time for other public employee unions to oppose the CTU
Despite immense pressure from Chicago Teacher Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates and Mayor Brandon Johnson to mobilize students and teachers for the May Day protest, less than one percent of CPS students and only 13 percent of teachers participated. Have the vast majority of teachers and public school parents tired of CTU leaders — and their former colleague turned mayor — prioritizing politics over education? Will that be enough to halt the damage they’re doing to poor families and the city at large? It’s doubtful.
The CTU’s popularity has fallen to a record low: Only 27.5 percent of Chicago voters hold a favorable opinion, while 53.6 percent view it unfavorably, according to an Illinois Policy Institute poll. For every favorable voter, roughly two dislike the union; more than half of those polled are less likely to support CTU-backed candidates. Will that translate to reduced political influence? Not without support from other public employee unions whose own members are often harmed by CTU priorities.
The impact of CTU’s decline in popularity will be partly offset by its ability to raise funds and its far-superior get-out-the-vote operation in a political system designed to minimize — if not suppress — voting. Holding Chicago municipal elections in February of odd-numbered years results in turnout that is far lower than participation in November elections, giving the union greater actual strength in municipal elections than poll numbers suggest, though not in school board elections, which are held in November.
Teacher unions have become the bank and infrastructure for the radical left. Facing successive administrations — Democrat and Republican alike — that pushed greater education accountability and expanded school choice, union leaders such as Randi Weingarten in New York and Karen Lewis in Chicago sought allies on the left to build political coalitions. These alliances have gradually radicalized teacher unions as they moved beyond traditional salary and benefit negotiations to include social justice issues, political campaigns, and aggressive, often adversarial, tactics.
CTU is no longer a traditional labor union working on behalf of labor at large. Rather, it is a fully fledged political organization whose goals often conflict with traditional labor interests and whose actions hurt its members. By issuing outrageous demands, devouring a larger share of tax revenue, demonizing police, and blocking efforts to improve or provide alternatives to poor performing public schools, CTU poses a threat to education, city employees, and their public employee labor unions.
Clearly, City Hall has prioritized CTU and its schools over other public employee unions, schools, and agencies. This is evident in both salary increases and headcount growth. Contrast the city’s reduction of more than 2,100 public safety positions with more than 9,000 new full-time budgeted positions added to CPS. There are 7.5 school district employees per student, including more than 22,000 non-teaching positions at CPS — more than 10,000 more non-teachers than the total number of Chicago police officers.
CTU has used its muscle to secure an ever-greater share of Chicago’s property-tax dollars, without concern for other city unions. CPS has driven property-tax increases on residents and now consumes an increasing share of city property taxes. In addition, CPS receives massive annual city subsidies — $1.3 billion last year — which limits the city’s ability to balance its budget without additional tax hikes, fee increases, or service cuts.
City workers subject to residency requirements who refuse to send their children to underperforming and often failing neighborhood public schools — but lack clout to get them into selective-enrollment magnet schools — have one option: private schools, if they can afford them. Catholic school tuition, which is among the lowest for private schools, averages about $5,000 for elementary school and $12,500 for high school for a single child — costing roughly $100,000 over the K-12 years of schooling.
This hits hardest at SEIU, AFSCME, and CTA workers, whose salaries lag teachers’ and other city employees’. They are also least likely to navigate the magnet-school politics that CTU leaders and teachers fully exploit. As many as 40 percent of CTU member-teachers send their children to private schools, while an equal number go to selective-enrollment magnet schools. This includes CTU leaders, the mayor, and most elected officials.
Meanwhile, CTU leaders and other elected officials worked to end the state’s Invest in Kids private-school scholarship program, which benefited 15,000 lower-income families. Now they are pressuring Governor JB Pritzker not to opt in to the the Educational Choice for Children Act, which would provide hundreds of millions of dollars to public-school, private-school, and homeschooling families to help pay for tuition, tutoring, educational expenses, early-childhood services, and transportation.
To ensure the state does not enroll in the new federal voucher plan, the CTU has enlisted its appendages in the Illinois General Assembly. One of the CTU's top assets in Springfield, State Senator Graciela Guzman, is sponsoring bills to provide CTU schools more state funding and to statutorily deny federal scholarship money to both public- and private-school parents. A former CTU employee who recently received $72,000 from CTU and has collected $519,000 from teachers unions, Guzman is, in effect, moving to preempt Pritzker from even having the option of opting in, as New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently did. Twenty-nine states have elected to opt in.
Beyond driving up the cost of living for city residents in general, CTU leaders have consistently shown callousness toward other union members. For example, COVID closures were a year-long anti-solidarity exercise. CTU expected first responders and essential workers to protect and serve them while withholding education from their children for 78 weeks. This placed an enormous strain on families and the harm to students and low income families is well documented.
CTU members worked from home with pay raises and lighter workloads, while leaders gas lit in-person-learning demands. Who can forget a CTU activist’s tweet: “The drive to reopen schools is rooted in racism, sexism, and misogyny?” CTU and its national allies also fueled vaccine mandates that stressed other public employees, particularly first responders, by threatening job loss for police, firefighters, and paramedics who failed to comply with COVID mandates.
CTU funded anti-police groups, rallied to “defund” CPD, and called for “cop-free” schools. The union blamed police budgets for school disinvestment, disregarding the fact schools already receive far more funding than CPD. It also undermined respect for police among youth by campaigning to remove school resource officers, labeling police as “oppressors,” mandating specific instruction on past police abuse, and honoring controversial figures convicted of killing officers.
Current CTU leadership mistreats its own members. It blocks member criticism and dissent, has withheld financial audits, and has bullied members who question spending and demand transparency. The union has allocated less than 20 percent of dues to member services, spending the rest on political activities, including nearly $5 million to Brandon Johnson’s 2023 mayoral campaign and other expenditures made with member dues.
Meanwhile, CTU’s own members suffer from the never-ending property-tax increases and the financial burden of many who send their children to private schools because of the lack of quality school choices. Only recently, the CTU’s CORE leadership proposed amending the dues collection from a flat rate consistent with contractual pay increases to a flat rate and is attempting to secure passage of a massive dues increase. If passed at the next House of Delegates meeting at the end of May, the increases could amount to $8.5 million in additional revenue. According to the proposal, the additional revenue would not serve members, but rather cover old political debts and fund political efforts for the November school board elections.
Recent setbacks for CTU aside, it will take more to checkmate the damage being done to the schools and the city at large. It is going to be up to the public employee unions, including SEIU, which has accused CTU of “raiding” its membership. American labor unions historically played a critical role in checking the influence of socialism and communism during the 20th century. CTU is not a frontline labor union, but rather an existential threat to other unions and their members.
