The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is a labor union that represents teachers, paraprofessionals, and clinicians in the Chicago public school system. The union has advocated for improved pay, benefits, and job security for its members, and it has opposed efforts to vary teacher pay based on performance evaluations. It also called for improvements in the Chicago schools, and asserts that its activities benefit students as well as teachers.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), pp. 3–4. "In addition to the issue of unionization, scholars have debated whether teachers joined unions to pursue monetary gains or to reform the public schools. Since teachers founded the AFT in 1916, the organization has portrayed itself as a union fighting for better salaries and benefits for its members and improvements in the public schools. Indeed, teachers' unions across the land asserted that they wanted improved pay and conditions for teachers in order to provide quality education for the students."
The CTU united several teachers' organizations in Chicago in the wake of a teachers' revolt against banks during the Great Depression. It was chartered in 1937 as Local 1 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in which it played a founding role. It was the largest and most active AFT Local until the 1960s.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), pp. 1–2. "In the early years of the twentieth century, the center of teacher unionism was found in Chicago. [...] The CTU attracted a majority of Chicago teachers and remained the largest and most influential AFT local until the 1960s." The CTU won collective bargaining rights in 1966 and conducted several strikes during the 1970s and 1980s. In September 2012, the union began its first strike in 25 years.
The CTU is also affiliated with the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and the AFL–CIO. It has more than 25,000 members. Current officers come from the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, elected in 2010 to replace the longstanding United Progressive Caucus. From that point until her 2018 retirement, Karen Lewis was president. Through a successors election the new officer slate became: President Jesse Sharkey, Vice President Stacy Davis Gates, Recording Secretary Michael Brunson and Financial Secretary Maria Moreno. Following the departure of Sharkey, Stacy Davis Gates assumed the role of President on July 1, 2022.
Origins and founding The CTU was preceded, in part, by the Chicago Teachers Federation (CTF), an organization of women elementary school teachers founded in 1897.
By the 1930s, Chicago teachers had formed several other different unions, some of which were still segregated by gender.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), p. 23. Unrest in the early 1930s united these groups, which had previously struggled to cooperate.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), p. 28. The Chicago Teachers Federation played an active role in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and retained their status as Local 1. In 1937, Local 1 battled New York's Local 5 over whether the AFT would remain in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) or join the newer and more inclusive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). (New York's Local 5 was at that time the Teachers' Union, which was soon expelled from the AFT after accusations of communism, and replaced by the more moderate United Federation of Teachers.) Soon after the convention (which decided to stay in the AFL), the Chicago Teachers Union was officially chartered by the AFT as an amalgamation of Chicago's multiple teacher unions in Chicago. At this point about 3,500 teachers were members of the new Local. The Chicago Teachers Union was formally established as a merger of the Men's Teachers Union, Federation of Women High School Teachers, Elementary Teachers Union, and Playground Teachers Union at a meeting held at the Chicago Civic Opera House, immediately receiving its charter as Local 1 of the AFT. By September 1938, it was the largest teachers union in the US, with over 8,500 members.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), p. 44. The CTF, still under the leadership of its longtime head Margaret Haley, remained separate for some years, based on concerns that the CTU would disproportionately represent the interests of males and high school teachers.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), p. 45.
Before collective bargaining: 1937–1967 When the CTU formed, teachers had become disillusioned about their status as a special class of workers. Many teachers believed they faced discrimination because they were female. At the same time, some male teachers felt undervalued. Teachers also resented the constantly increasing bureaucratic control over their classrooms.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), pp. 18–21.
Goals The CTU sought collective bargaining rights early on, but Superintendent William Johnson refused to grant them. The union also criticized evaluations (for teachers who wanted to become principals) that it said were administered in a corrupt fashion. By 1939, the CTU had more than doubled in size, to 8,500 members, and organized its members for actions such as mass letter-writing.
In 1948, amid small-scale sickouts and walkouts, the CTU authorized a strike when teachers experienced still more 'payless paydays' due to city mismanagement. The strike was averted hours before it was scheduled to begin, when the school board approved a new budget and announced that the checks due to the teachers had been mailed with all possible haste.
In addition to perennial requests for salary increases, the CTU began pushing for broader changes to Chicago's public schools. It asked the Chicago Police Department to station an officer in each of Chicago's 43 high schools; CPD refused. The CTU continued to pursue the school violence issues, arguing that teachers were being endangered by violent students. During this period the union also sought shorter hours for students and teachers. It also called attention to a mounting teacher shortage, citing over a hundred classrooms without regular or substitute teachers.
During this period, Fewkes and the CTU consistently opposed merit pay policies, proposals which would vary teachers salaries based on evaluations.
John Fewkes and anticommunism The CTU's first president was John Fewkes. Fewkes had been the most prominent leader of "Voluntary Emergency Committee" (VEC), a male-dominated group that formed in 1933 and gained prominence by advocating and coordinating militant action. The VEC had been aggressive but not radical, and explicitly sought to exclude communists.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), pp. 38–39.
The union, urged on by Fewkes, participated in the AFL's anti-communist purges, and in 1941 voted 5,258 to 892 to expel the New York City Teachers Union, the New York College Teachers Union and Philadelphia Teachers Union from the AFT. The three expelled Locals were large, representing about one quarter of the AFT's members, but the CTU was larger, and its votes were decisive in accomplishing the expulsion.
Fewkes remained CTU President for most of this period. He left the CTU in 1943 to serve as AFT president. In 1944, he took a position with the federal War Production Board.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), p. 82. By 1947, he had returned to the CTU for a second term as its president. In 1950, the CTU governing board approved a constitutional amendment to remove limitations on presidential terms; John Fewkes was thereby allowed to run again, and remained CTU president until 1966.
Demographics and civil rights Most of Chicago's public school teachers were white single women. Public school teacher was also the most common occupation for black women in Chicago, who were treated by CPS as second-class job candidates: qualified black high school teachers worked in elementary schools or as substitutes; some could not get jobs at all.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), p. 15. "Black teachers also enjoyed fewer career prospects than did white teachers. With only two black high schools in the city, DuSable and Wendell Phillips, the vast majority of black teachers worked in elementary schools even if they were trained for better-paying high school work. Out of 321 black teachers who worked in the Chicago public school system in 1934, 285 of them taught in the elementary schools. With fewer opportunities for African American high school teachers, many qualified teachers from the South had to work as substitutes or take other jobs in Chicago until teaching positions opened up for them." Teachers came from a shifting mix of white-collar and blue-collar families.Lyons, Teachers and Reform (2008), pp. 16.
Campaign for collective bargaining The CTU intensified its campaign for collective bargaining rights in the 1960s, staging huge demonstrations at the Chicago Board of Education. Pressure increased after the New York recognized collective bargaining rights for the UFT in 1961, and the CTU threatened an illegal strike in 1963–1964 if the School Board would not grant it the same status. The city averted a strike by agreeing to negotiate, and, after long delays (including litigation from a rival union, the Chicago Education Association), the CTU became the official bargaining agent of Chicago teachers in April 1966.
Internal politics and organization
Caucus of Rank and File Educators In 2010, the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), led by President Karen Lewis gained control over the CTU by winning 60% of the vote in a run-off election. CORE ran an aggressive grassroots organizing campaign, and took a strong stance against school privatization. CORE accused the incumbent United Progressive Caucus (UPC) of capitulating to corporate interests, silencing dissent within the union, and collaborating with the city to prevent union outreach at schools.
CORE quickly took action to distinguish itself from UPC, reaffirm its grassroots support, and launch a campaign to defend public education. The new leadership cut pay for union officers and used the savings to expand outreach. Former CTU member John A. Ostenburg criticized Lewis and CORE in 2011 for inexperience and political recklessness, arguing that they will not successfully be able to combat Mayor Rahm Emanuel's entrenched power. CORE represented a major bloc of dissent at the 2012 AFT convention, and held signs in protest of Race to the Top during a speech from President, then Vice President, Joe Biden.
2018 merger with Charter Union Local
In spring of 2018, the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Association of Charter Teachers and Staff Local 4343 voted to merge, with the charter educators forming a new division within the CTU. On December 4, 2018, CTU members at the Acero charter school network initiated the first strike at a unionized charter school in US history. The strike ended December 9, 2018, in a major victory with the strikers who won sanctuary school protections for their students, enforceable reductions in class size and parity with the existing pay scale at district-run schools.
Collective bargaining and strikes
Strikes 1968–1987
Chicago teachers went on strike multiple times in the 1970s and 1980s: 1968: "Concerned FTBs" (long-term substitutes) and others engage in wildcat strikes against school segregation and racism—particularly systemic unfairness in the certification, hiring, and promotion of black teachers. 1969: Two-day strike results in salary increases, teacher aides, and class size maximum. 1971: Four-day strike results in salary increases and full health benefits. 1973: Two strikes, of 12 and 11 days, yield improved salary, benefits, preparation time, supplies, and class sizes. 1979-1980: Multiple strikes over a payless payday during holiday break in 1979, results in salary increase and improved sick leave and maternity/paternity leave. 1984: Four-day strike results in medical care increase and PAC checkoff. 1985: Two-day strike for salary and sick leave.