The Union is being euchred out by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Now that he is no longer connected to the White House it is fun to sit back and watch him work. The man is a political shark.
The Czar of Muscovy has the analysis at The Gormogons:
Counter-StrikeSwiped in full as it defies excerpting. This is pure political genius. The teachers are told essentially to get their own house in order or they will not see a single dime. The Chicago Teachers are already paid the highest in the nation. From John Fund at The Corner:
The Czar cannot promise that all aspects of Chicago Public School (CPS) politics will be very interesting, but today�s CPS strike is intensely fascinating if largely inside baseball.
Here is our assessment.
Chicago elected Rahm Emanuel its first non-Richard M. Daley mayor since 1989. During Daley�s tenure as mayor, the Chicago Teachers�s Union (CTU) became intensely powerful, allowing Chicago�s teachers to be among the best paid in the nation, with the least amount of time actually spent in a classroom. In many ways, the CTU came to own CPS, and in so doing, felt that the mayor of Chicago worked for them. Not figuratively like a politician fighting for their cause, but pretty much literally like a well-positioned servant.
Rahm Emanuel did not take well to some of the strong arm tactics put before him by the CTU. But Emanuel is a cagey, clever fellow: he knew that CPS was failing, and that the CTU is largely responsible. Heck, they could easily destroy his mayorship; even unintentionally.
So the CTU needed to be reined in. But how to do it without looking like Governor Scott Walker up North? Could there be a way to improve CPS and push down the CTU without looking like a, you know, Republican?
This is the sort of challenge Rahm Emanuel loves. And so he did it: he proposed an increase in the length of the school day to meet national averages, and made teachers accountable for the success or failures of individual students in exchange for another increase in pay.
There. Facetime and accountability would almost certainly improve CPS�s disastrous reputation somewhat. But how to curb the CTU�s out-of-control management?
He announced it in the early summer of an election year. This gave time for the public to hear about the proposal gradually but took the wind out of the sails of the on-vacation teachers. Although horrified emails ricocheted back and forth between CPS teachers, the teachers would not have much of a chance to organize in time. At least not until September.
And what would happen, Rahm Emanuel wondered, if they called for a strike (as they inevitably would, given the hate-filled messages) when they returned to conspire in September?
The public backlash against them would be catastrophic for their PR. One of the old rules of politics, which Mayor Emanuel obviously knows, is that a public sector union never strikes before an election. Public sentiment invariably turns against the strikers.
The CTU was obviously unaware of this political rule; evidence is now coming out that the CTU intended to strike no matter what concessions the city made. And as they are on strike, the teachers are shocked to learn that the city residents are positively appalled. Disgusted. Irate. Some lifelong union Democrats are calling for Rahm Emanuel to fire all striking teachers. The story in Chicago media at the moment is not about the teachers� demands, but about the public outrage. The story is spreading nationally, and the White House has refused to take a side in the cause.
Who is teaching whom the lesson?
Meanwhile, 45,000 kids in Chicago�s thirteen all-above-average charter schools are in class today, learning. And the non-union teachers therein are all at work. Those wishing to show solidarity with the CTU are asked to help out in the picket lines after school hours; the Czar expects less than a dozen will, citywide.
Rahm Emanuel might have put it this way: what if you had a revolution and nobody showed up? Ben Franklin might have put it another way: if the CTU and public don�t hang together, the CTU will surely hang separately.
Chicago Bled Dry by Striking Teachers� UnionsAnd of course, this money is well spent -- one bit more:
The smartest parents in Chicago right now are those whose kids attend charter schools, private schools, or parochial schools. Those institutions don�t employ Chicago�s unionized public-school teachers, who went out on strike this morning for the first time in 25 years.
The coverage of the strike has obscured some basic facts. The money has continued to pour into Chicago�s failing public schools in recent years. Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city at $76,000 a year before benefits. The average family in the city only earns $47,000 a year. Yet the teachers rejected a 16 percent salary increase over four years at a time when most families are not getting any raises or are looking for work.
The city is being bled dry by the exorbitant benefits packages negotiated by previous elected officials. Teachers pay only 3 percent of their health-care costs and out of every new dollar set aside for public education in Illinois in the last five years, a full 71 cents has gone to teacher retirement costs.
Just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading and only 56 percent of students who enter their freshman year of high school wind up graduating.Morlocks and Eloi all happening before our eyes...
