There was a tweet on the Catalyst-Chicago Twitter site that said, “Anderson: Unions’ survival depends on involvement in #edreform . Otherwise, unions that lose on “bread & butter” issues will be irrelevant.”
I didn’t count. Is that 140 characters?
“Anderson” is Jo Anderson, former Executive Director of the IEA and now a senior adviser to EdSec Arne Duncan.
It’s an oddly constructed tweet. I think I get it, but I don’t want to assume too much.
I consider Jo a friend. We saw and greeted each other just last Sunday at the rededication of Haymarket monument.
But here are some questions that occurred to me when I read the tweet.
Aren’t teacher unions involved in reform already and haven’t we been involved for a while? I mean Jo. You headed up the IEA innovation center for many years.
Isn’t that what IEA bargained contracts have been? We address working conditions and improving teaching conditions.
Does reform have content, or do we just go along with whatever from the latest proposals of the corporate/philanthropy complex?
Is the most important thing being at the table? CTU President Karen Lewis has at least suggested that Chicago teachers got screwed as a result of the latest reform effort that was passed as Senate Bill 7. She called it a bitter pill after being majorly involved.
Jo. Weren’t we just involved in the reform efforts that took away our seniority right and tenure? Now we have to go save our pensions from the same General Assembly that reformed away our union rights.
Talk about efforts being “irrelevant.” We gave away tons and now they are going to try to take away our bread and butter too.
Where we used to be able to negotiate better teaching conditions, states like Indiana now forbid us from negotiating anything other than salary and benefits.
And your US Department of Education says nothing about this.
Dead silence.
We need another tweet, Jo.
Fred Klonsky 
Say it ain’t so, Jo. Say it ain’t so.