That’s what someone who’s been on both sides of the bargaining table in public education contract negotiations said to me about the Chicago Teachers Union strike, now in its second day.
And since we’re not talking about non-unionized workers fighting for recognition, it wouldn’t be an “important strike” like the 1912 Bread & Roses strike in Lawrence MA, or the 1936-37 Flint MI sit-down strike. It would be—if the CTU loses—an “important strike” like the 1981 PATCO strike, which hastened the demise of most private sector unions in the United States.
The city of Chicago has the 3rd largest school district in the country. It’s where President Obama’s election headquarters is located (and where he’s from). Mayor Rahm Emmanuel is Pres. Obama’s former chief of staff. Chicago has been a central hub of union and community organizing since Saul Alinsky took the organizing skills he’d learned from the CIO’s United Packinghouse Workers of America, and applied them to the surrounding neighborhood and created the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council in the late 1930s.
If the CTU loses this strike, then it almost certainly signals to every governor, mayor and county executive in the US that it’s open season on public employee unions.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
