The process of bargaining a contract has mutually agreed upon rules. The process is also is governed by labor laws.
From my experience over twenty years of engaging in the process, I can say that it works.
If both sides want it to.
Everyone expects that both sides will start far apart.
If the intention is to reach an agreement, both sides will find a way to get there. It requires work, trust, long sessions at the table and a commitment by both sides to play fair.
In Chicago, that’s the big “if.”
In the present collective bargaining process, does the Mayor want to reach an agreement?
Or is his intention to undermine collective bargaining and kill the teachers union in the process?
The first hint of the Mayor’s intentions was his cooperating with Jonah Edelman and Stand for Children in getting the hideous Senate Bill 7 passed. The bill changed the rules for collective bargaining and required a 75% approval of strike authorization by all union members. Rahm obviously agreed with Edelman in thinking this was essentially the equivalent of a no-srike provision.
Until the CTU got 98% of the votes approving a strike.
Next, Rahm and his CEO JC Brizard complained that it was wrong to take a strike vote before the arbitrator had released his recommendations.
But Rahm again showed his cards when he tried to jam the collective bargaining process by leaking the arbitrator’s report to the Tribune.
Rahm is well aware that collective bargaining is something that works best in a room between representatives of the two parties.
Not in the pages of the Tribune.
Again Rahm’s real intentions were revealed when his people spent all day yesterday leaking negative comments about the arbitrator’s recommendations.
The Tribune delivered Rahm’s response:
One thing we do know: This report is DOA. Irrelevant. Useless. Benn, who was supposed to base his recommendations on the district’s fiscal reality, isn’t living on the same planet as the rest of us.
Nobody should speculate about the CTU’s response to the arbitrator’s report. They will do what good union leaders do and follow the rules of honest collective bargaining.
CTU President Karen Lewis made that clear in a press conference yesterday.
Though Fact-Finder Edwin Benn will not be releasing his recommended report until after the parties have determined whether to accept or reject it, CPS regrettably has leaked to the Chicago Tribune information contained in the report, creating confusion in Chicago as to its contents. Due to the crush of media inquiries occasioned by the CPS leak, it is necessary to clarify some aspects of the recommended report.
The Fact-Finder has determined that CPS’s longer school day amounts to a 19.4% increase on average that teachers will have to work, and he has determined that CPS cannot expect its employees to work nearly 20% more for free or without fair compensation. Accordingly, the Fact-Finder’s report recommends both a general wage increase and an additional increase due to the length of the school day: A general wage increase of 2.25% for School Year 2012 — essentially a cost of living increase — without any changes to existing steps and lanes. He also recommends an additional increase of 12.6% to compensate teachers for working a longer school day and year. This represents a combined first-year increase of 14.85%, plus existing step and lane adjustments. CPS has estimated the total first year increase to be 15-20%, and we do not disagree with that characterization.
The Fact-Finder also recommends cost of living increases in any additional contract years.
When the entire report is released and reviewed, it will show that Fact-Finder Benn wholly supports fair pay for a fair day’s work. For this reason, we expect that CPS — which for months has publicly stated that the Fact-Finder should decide our raises — will now make an about-face and try to discredit the process it championed both to Legislators in Springfield and to the public here in Chicago.
For parents, teachers and Chicagoans who care about our schools the best thing for us to do is to show up next Wednesday morning at 9AM at the CPS offices on Clark Street. Show our support for the teachers and for a fair collective bargaining process.
Let the Mayor know.
Fred Klonsky 
I appreciate your dedication to our schools, students, parents, community, and to the advancement of public education nationwide. I live in Hawaii. We are generally behind the curve of what happens on the Mainland and, more specifically, what happens in traditionally strong teachers’ unions in NYC and Chicago.
What your latest blog indicates is a move by your politicians to narrow the negotiations through misinformation through public statements to the community at-large. To image bargaining of teachers and other ed staff as a threat to the budgetary welfare. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth.
It is clear that Rahm and his cohorts’ goal is to wrest control of public education away from the CPS system, and install a corporate charter model whereby charter CEOs, the mayor, and other appointed and elected officials can benefit financially by conflating their cronyism.
Things are just starting to heat up here in Hawaii. We have a unique system of a confluence of state, city & county operating ostensibly as one. That is, our governor appoints all BOE members, holds final decision-making power on last, best, and final offers to the HSTA, Hawaii’s teachers’ union. While your CPS leaked some information to a major newspaper, our teachers’ union dropped the ball by not communicating to teachers what was behind a yes or no vote on a negotiated agreement. Therefore, a first vote was passed to not accept Governor Neil Abercombie’s best and final offer. It was only after this first vote that the damage by the HSTA’s lack of communication was realized. There was a re-vote. With less than half the votes cast in the first vote, it passed with a yes vote.
Seeing the weakness in teacher solidarity, the general lack of interest, the lack of the teachers’ union being more active in informing teachers of the details of contract negotiations, the governor has declared the re-vote null and void. How long the current new contract issued by HSTA will stand is anyone’s guess.
Longer hours, more outside agency scrutiny, Danielson’s evaluation rubric, etc., applies only to those schools in “Zones of Innovation.” Some politician’s idea of tagging the Title I schools in the high poverty areas as failing schools. The innovations are designed to narrow curriculum, help the growth of a meritocracy, and an eventual corporate takeover. As it is, site principals are required to consider TFA candidates for a teaching positions as they complete staffing needs.
What has not come to Hawaii yet, is a strong push back as is witnessed by the actions of the CTU. The biggest issue here has been one of teacher apathy and complacency. A long tradition in Hawaii. We received $75 million RTTT money and our governor is hell-bent on keeping it. And now, in an upper hand bargaining position, what comes down may finally bring some stronger push back from our union and teachers.
I follow your comments as they are so well informed. I am encouraged by your efforts, and the efforts of the CTU. While I am seeing more and more ads on the local TV stations inviting parents to “choose the right school for your children this coming year,” I’m hoping that your example will make its way to Hawaii.
I wish you the greatest of success in your fight for public schools and the communities that depend upon them.