Chicago teachers are entering the third day of their labor strike, leaving kids without classes after only four active days in the school year. "I've been picketing for four hours, from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30, and we have a rally downtown at 2:30 p.m.," said Laura G., a teacher on the city's southwest side, while marching yesterday. She says the teacher's union's older organizers dragged out some dusty old signs from the last strike, in 1987, to hit the pavement once again in search of more pay and better treatment.
Meanwhile, in Florida... the Broward Teachers' Union says its teachers haven't gotten a raise at all in four years, and unions in our state aren't allowed to strike.
The Broward union is encouraging teachers and support staff to
wear red to school tomorrow, to show their solidarity with the (Red!
Commie! Socialist!) Chicago strikers. Apparently, this is still legal
under Florida law.
The Chicago school district, under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has been proposing a 2 percent yearly
increase in pay for teachers, which the union says isn't enough. It
cites a private study that said the teachers should get a 16 percent raise.
Broward
teachers have been frozen at the same pay level for years and lobbied
the district again last night to reallocate money from the reserve fund
to teacher pay to allow them to finally get a raise. Broward teachers
have been without a contract for months, but unlike their counterparts
in Illinois, they don't get to strike to bring attention to their
demands.
Things in education are shitty nationwide. In Chicago,
teachers have been asked to stick around for an extra hour per day
allocated toward the arts, writing, and physical education. But that
doesn't work when there aren't enough art teachers to go around --
Laura, the Chicago teacher, says her entire sixth-grade class has to sit
around in the gymnasium for an hour a day because no one's being paid
to instruct them.
But Chicago looks like heaven to a Florida
teacher. Not only is the state more friendly to organized labor but pay
is astronomically better up north. A Broward union official cites the
average Illinois teacher's salary as $64,500. The number down here?
It's $45,732.
Teachers in Florida are aghast at a recent letter that Rick Scott sent to
the state's educators. "The selfless practice of teaching means that
you share knowledge, encouragement, and compassion with your students on
a daily basis," he panders, before basically telling them all to stop
whining about "teaching to the test."
Broward's own
superintendent, Robert Runcie, came from Chicago Public Schools last
year and brought some administrative staff with him. Labor disputes are
common no matter where the district, but he's certainly had more
bargaining power down here with a union that isn't really allowed to
make much noise. And the Chicago teachers know that with the recent anti-labor steps taken in Wisconsin, they could end up looking like Florida before too long. They're gonna picket while they can.
Another thing the Chicago teachers are demanding? Air conditioning. At least that's one thing we've got on them.
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