Volunteers Needed

The PJSTA will need volunteers for a few things coming up this election season.  First, we  are seeking members who can make phone calls for Tim Bishop on Monday, September 10th at the NYSUT Regional Office.  The phone bank starts at 3:00 pm, so PJSTA members could head right over after school.

Next we are seeking members who would participate in Labor to Labor walks in support of Bishop, US Representative Carolyn McCarthy, and NYS Assemblyman Phil Ramos.  These walks, where you’d be joined by other NYSUT members, will be taking place every Saturday from now until election day.  Additionally there will be one for Ramos next Thursday, September 13th, as he is involved in a primary that day.

Please contact Beth Dimino if you can participate in one of these.  You may also use the comments feature of this blog to indicate your ability to help these NYSUT endorsed candidates.

Now THAT’S How to Celebrate Labor Day!

An estimated 18,000 people rallied at Daley Plaza in Chicago before marching towards the board of education.  Members of the Chicago Teachers Union were joined by members of the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Nurses Association, the National Association fo Letter Carriers, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and several other labor unions.  The rally was held to show support for the Chicago teachers who are now a week away from a strike.

Reminding us that their fight is our fight, CTU president Karen Lewis called their battle  “a fight for the very soul of public education — not only in Chicago, but everywhere.”

For public educators across the country, there has never been a more meaningful Labor Day than this one.

“We’re tired of being bullied, belittled and betrayed…”

“We’re tired of being bullied, belittled and betrayed. We have done everything asked of us, yet we continue to be vilified and treated with disrespect.” -Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union

I think the above statement is one that we can all get behind. If a settlement is not reached by September 10th over 26,000 members of the CTU will go on strike. You can follow this situation as it unfolds by checking back here throughout the week. This week in your buildings you will hear from your PJSTA leadership on why and how we will be supporting the CTU. Remember that they are on the front lines of the war against public education. To contribute to their solidarity fund click here.

Why You Should Be Paying Attention to Chicago

Merit pay, standardized testing based evaluations, privatization of schools, the destruction of public education at the hands of billionaires.  You have been hearing about all of this for quite some time now.  We have been scapegoated as villains across the country.  It seems a day can’t go by without coming across another story about how this alleged legion of “bad teachers” are failing our country’s children and leading to the downward spiral of our once great nation.  If you are anything like me you are more than sick of it and you are breathlessly waiting for “the pendulum to swing the other way” as we have been promised that it eventually will.  Well some 900 miles west of Comsewogue things are starting to come to a head.

Now THAT’S a rally!

In what may very well prove to be a seminal moment for teacher unions and the labor movement in general, the Chicago Teachers Union is standing up to the billionaire bullies.  They are pushing back.  They are fighting our fight.  In case you aren’t up to date on the whole story, here is the play by play…

In the spring of 2011 former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel began his term as mayor of Chicago.  Some of the primary donors to Emanuel’s campaign, a handful of Chicago area billionaires, were the same people bankrolling the group called Stand for Children.  Stand for Children, an Oregon based non-profit group, who as recently as the summer of 2010 didn’t even exist in Illinois, became the best funded political action committee (PAC) in the state within five months.  Stand for Children, in spite of what it’s name suggests, exists simply to bust unions and privatize public education.  To give you an idea of who is behind Stand for Children, one only has to look at their donor list.  Among the ten donors who contributed more than $250,000 to the group in 2010 was notorious charter school advocates, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the well known anti-union Walton Family (owners of Walmart).

While helping to bankroll Emanuel’s campaign, Stand for Children pushed to pass Senate Bill 7 in Illionois.  The bill reformed tenure and seniority rights and made it more difficult for teachers in Chicago to strike.  It requires unions to have 75% of it’s membership to authorize a strike, which Stand for Children thought to be impossible.

The video embedded below features Stand for Children co-founder and CEO Jonah Edelman addressing his strategy for dealing with the teacher unions.  The good stuff really begins at about the 2:15 mark.  At the 3:15 mark he discusses how the press “never picked up on” their strategy to use individual candidates to execute a political objective of tilting their money towards the powerful speaker of the house Michael Madigan.  At the 4:50 mark he talks about how after the election Madigan was now supportive of their “reform” agenda.  At 5:45 he talks about concern from the teachers unions about speaker Madigan “switching allegiance” and their ability to jam these reforms down the throats of the unions just as they had with pension reforms.  At 9:05 he talks about Emanuel being elected and supporting their proposal.  He then talks about the talking point “that we made up and he repeated a thousand times probably on the campaign trail about Houston kids going to school four more years than Chicago kids.”  (That’s right, he admitted that they made facts up to use in a campaign!)  And finally he says at 14:30, “So our hope and our expectations are to use this as a catalyst to very quickly make similar changes in other very entrenched states.”

With the changes from SB7 in place, Mayor Emanuel canceled a promised 4% raise, proposed a lengthened day by 20% with only a 2% raise, sought to increase class sizes, and finally proposed a merit pay system that was similar to the system which had 60% of all Baltimore teachers receiving unsatisfactory ratings.  Emanuel then was featured in an anti-union movie directed by the Chicago Tea Party’s Steve Marcus for the Michigan based Education Action Group titled “A Tale of Two Missions.”  As Marcus himself noted, the matter of the Democrat Emanuel teaming up with the Tea Party to lead the charge against unions is “a case study of making very interesting bedfellows.”

On June 11th, the Chicago Teachers Union held a vote to authorize a strike in which 90% of their membership turned out for.  A staggering 98% of those present voted to authorize a strike, well over the 75% now required by law.

In July, after Edelman had bragged “the fact-finding recommendations, which are nonbinding, will favor what we would consider to be common sense.” fact-finding recommended:

  • A 12.6 percent raise to account for the finding that teachers will be working a 19.6 percent longer day and year.
  • An additional 2.25 percent cost-of-living raise.
  • Step and lane increases. (The district wants to scrap these raises based on seniority and education in favor of a merit pay program, which the union opposes.)

After Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said on June 5th, “teachers deserve a raise and will receive one that is fair. How much that raise should be is in the hands of an independent fact-finder.” However, the district rejected the fact-finder Edwin Benn’s recommendation.

Today the union plans to file a 10-day strike notice which would allow them to strike in ten days.  While such notice doesn’t guarantee a strike, the union is certainly getting close to the first teachers’ strike in Chicago in decades.  Furthermore they are standing up to the same forces that are funding nonsensical and misguided attacks against teachers and public schools across the country.  Simply put, the Chicago teachers’ fight is OUR fight as well.  It is imperative that we support them in as many ways as possible and closely monitor the outcome of this situation.  To contribute to the CTU’s solidarity fund you can click here.  While the mainstream media, funded by many of the same people battling with the CTU, aren’t covering the situation, you can follow the story on Twitter using the hashtag #CTU or by reading Kenzo Shibata’s blog at the Huffington Post.  The CTU’s YouTube channel can be found here.  At the bottom of this post you will find the video “Chicago Teachers Union vs. Astroturf Billionaires” embedded.  It is a comprehensive look at the situation and the forces at work against our brothers and sisters in the CTU.

Oh yeah, welcome back to school!