As the city of Chicago reels from the devastation of intra-racial violence and spontaneous shootings of children in residential neighborhoods, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is putting kids first… by threatening not to teach them.
The CTU is threatening the city with a walk-out strike if a deal isn’t reached by Oct. 11. Ranking among the city’s most powerful unions, the CTU is demanding the city submit to its list of concessions or else.
“Should there be no agreement between the Union and the Board of Education by October 11, we will begin our third strike since 2012,” the union said in a statement on its Facebook page.
First and foremost, the union is demanding an immediate end to pay cuts. There’s only one problem though. The city is debt-ridden. It barely has the money to pay pensions, let alone keep teachers’ salaries as they are.
“Nearly 400,000 students are taught by close to 22,000 teachers at Chicago’s 660 Public Schools,” reports The Daily Caller, adding:
The teachers have not had a working contract since June 30, 2015, when the contract that was negotiated after the 2012 strike expired. The teachers are vehemently opposed to a proposal from the district that would require them to pay an additional 7 percent of their salary into pensions. The union has also demanded caps on class sizes and a moratorium on charter expansions.
According to Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the city offered a “serious deal” in February, promising to “stabilize finances.” But the CTU rejected the offer, suggesting that CPS was negotiating in bad faith.
The union’s brinksmanship couldn’t come at a worse time for the city.
“Chicago is in crisis right now and a large part of the problem centers around the gangs who already provide far too much temptation for at risk teenagers,” notes Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw. “Is this really the time to suddenly shut down the schools and potentially unleash tens of thousands of kids out on the streets during the work day? That just sounds like a formula for disaster.”