Chicago teachers strike: Illegal under Illinois law?

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Yahoo News:

With the Chicago teacher’s strike entering its third day, both sides appear determined to settle matters behind closed doors and not in a courtroom, even though the city has authority to take the fight there – though at significant political risk, legal experts say.

Although untested in the courts, a provision added to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act last year could prohibit teachers from striking on all matters except compensation involving pay and benefits. The walkout, which started Monday, appears to be about a broad range of issues, many of which have little to do with wages.

Chicago Teachers Union representatives have acknowledged that their gripes with the city are not necessarily financial. "What I would say about the economics of this thing is that that isn’t the main issue,” Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey told reporters late Sunday.

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Indeed, Chicago teachers are paid more than any others in the state, according to a 2012 report by Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. The average public teacher salary in Chicago is $74,236, compared with a state average of $64,978. As of Sunday, the Chicago Public Schools district offered teachers a 16 percent raise over four years. On Sunday, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said the offer was “not far apart” from what the union was seeking.

So if the strike is not strictly about compensation, it may be an illegal action according to state law, which even the union recognizes. “While new Illinois law prohibits us from striking over the recall of laid-off teachers and compensation for a longer school year, we do not intend to sign an agreement until these matters are addressed,” the union said in a statement released Sunday.

Representatives from the Chicago Teachers Union would not return requests for comment Wednesday.

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Related: Should Rhambo go Reagan on them?

[Casino67]

If nothing else, after the strike Rahm should stop withholding union dues and make the teachers make the payments on their own. Easy way to starve the union out of business. Seems to have worked in Wisconsin.

[clearvision]

If nothing else, after the strike Rahm should stop withholding union dues and make the teachers make the payments on their own. Easy way to starve the union out of business. Seems to have worked in Wisconsin.

Like Rahm is going to do that.

[Casino67]

If nothing else, after the strike Rahm should stop withholding union dues and make the teachers make the payments on their own. Easy way to starve the union out of business. Seems to have worked in Wisconsin.

Like Rahm is going to do that.

 

I was holding my breath when I typed that.

[Valin]

Chicago: The new Wisconsin?

Ed Morrissey

September 13, 2012

 

When the teachers in Chicago walked out on strike this week, some wondered whether that might provide a boost to Barack Obama — perhaps an opportunity to intervene and resolve the issue. Three days later, the Washington Post doesn’t sound too hopeful. Given the fact that Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is now mayor and that teachers unions are a key part of the Democratic constituency, Peter Slevin reports that this might be a recipe for disaster:

 

(Snip)

 

 

What Can I say

 

[Valin]

STUNNING REVELATION ALERT

 

 

The Chicago Teacher Strike Is About Ideology

Nathaniel and Joy Pullmann

9/13/12

 

Much news coverage of the Chicago teachers strike, now in its third day, has included the eye-popping average Chicago teacher salary number (circa $76,000 before benefits), mounting parent frustration at 350,000 kids out of school, and that teachers rejected a 16 percent pay raise over the next four years in an era most people are glad to have a job at all.

 

Ricochet member Nathaniel Wright had a beautiful post explaining these fiscal realities soon after the strike began. Both the city’s big papers, the Sun Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as the New York Times, have run editorials telling teachers to stop acting worse than their usual charges.

 

But what a lot of people are not considering is evidence that the Chicago Teachers Union is not striking especially over material demands, although those are included. Leaders and members alike are telling us they’re striking over ideology, as I noted in talking to the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Union members see their strike as a symbolic stand, with nationwide implications, against a sea of recent efforts to introduce conservative-leaning reforms.

 

This might explain all the Che Guevara T-Shirts we see.

[Valin]

Will Obama Be Forced to Pick Sides in the Blue Civil War?

Walter Russell Mead

9/11/12

 

This isn’t how Team Obama drew up its reelection plans. Teacher unions were supposed to be coming out in force against big bad Republicans like Scott Walker, in battleground states like Wisconsin, where the campaign could sell a narrative of Koch-funded extremism to a fearful voting public. But now the teachers are striking in deep-blue Chicago, the president’s home town, against Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff and a major fundraiser:

 

Eager to improve Chicago’s schools, Mr. Emanuel has taken several steps — among them pressing the school board to rescind a promised 4 percent raise — and made numerous demands that have infuriated the Chicago Teachers Union. He wants student test performance to count heavily in evaluating teachers for tenure, even though the union insists that is a highly unreliable way to assess teachers. And with Mr. Emanuel intent on shuttering dozens of poorly performing schools, the union is pressing him to agree to strong provisions to reinstate teachers in other schools when theirs are closed.

 

Teacher unions are increasingly isolated around the country, and strikes like this do nothing to help their cause in the court of public opinion. Chicago teachers, with average pay for nine months of work that easily exceeds the median family income for people who work all 12, make unsympathetic characters. It also doesn’t help their cause that the root of the strike appears to be their resistance to being evaluated based on performance: they want to keep their life tenure jobs.

(Snip)

[Valin]

[Valin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vt7TYY2DJg&feature=plcp