CTU is Going on Strike

[bmags]

Gentrification can have negative impacts, too.

 

Largely related to housing policy.

[southsider2k5]

They're definitely not full-throated in support of it, but the headlines of the studies they link seem to range from positive to neutral-with-both-good-and-some-concerns.

 

It could just be her interpretation of it too.

[NorthSideSox72]

I think your prediction flies in the face of every trend right now. There aren't more people in the city because people couldn't sell their house (if you can't sell your house, you can rent it to the booming rental market right now and pay your new mortgage.), there are more people in the city because more people are moving into the city. I think realistically you are going to add a nice tax base of younger people who will not be having kids or will move before they do, which will support those who do have kids in school. Once the economy recovers and even more move in, it should be fine, except we have a massive debt to the pensions which needs to get solved.

 

I think you are about a decade or two behind. See below...

 

I can't speak to Chicago in particular, but over the last 10 years, the exact opposite has been happening nationwide (on average). Fueled mainly by Fuel prices, but also by the fact that the neighborhoods have become more liveable/walkable, the trend has been people moving back closer to cities and urban areas rather than into the suburbs where the commutes are longer and more expensive.

 

Population of the city of Chicago:

 

1960 3,550,404 −1.9%

1970 3,366,957 −5.2%

1980 3,005,072 −10.7%

1990 2,783,726 −7.4%

2000 2,896,016 4.0%

2010 2,695,598 −6.9%

 

See the urban flight that peaked in the 80's... then a recovery in the 90's/2000's, as the city's renaissance was at its height... and now it is headed back down again.

 

But the Metro as a whole (srroy, no %'s on this chart)...

 

1960 6,794,461

1970 7,612,314

1980 7,869,542

1990 8,065,633

2000 9,098,316

2010 9,461,105

 

Population continues to increase all along, even as the city shrinks. From 2000-2010, the city shrank by about 200k, and the suburbs grew about 650k. The direction, lately, has clearly been outbound, not inbound., at least on a broad scale. I can't necessarily find numbers for 2010-2012, because there just isn't any hard data. I did find a number showing that most of that 200k drop (150k of it or so) was in the 2005-2010 half of the decade.

 

So I think we can definitely say, the trend has been AWAY from the city. Where it gets harder to evaluate, is looking at the more detailed effect of population changes versus number of students in the 2008-2012 (or similar) period...

 

Now, the city schools, the population of students has been relatively level in recent years, decreasing slightly. If my posit is correct, the population of students from, say, 2009 (when the economic situation really took hold, and the housing market was in free fall), should have either increased, stayed the same, or lost fewer people than the city. Well, in 2009, CPS had 417k students. For this year, they were looking at 407k coming in (was 405k last year). So that is a net decrease of ~2.4%. What did the city population do from 2009-2012? The general trend from 2005-2010, the best grouping I could find data for, is that it lost about 30k per year, which would be 90k over 3 years. That is 3.5%. So, yeah, the student population is holding stronger than the population growth. This falls in line with my theory.

 

The final aspect of my theory can't really be proven statistically - is there a big bulk of people who will leave when they can? Knowing a lot of couples with young kids (being in my 30's), the answer in my admittedly small sample size is a big yes. Renting isn't an option for everyone either, because they can't (or won't) risk two mortgages on two properties. Others don't have the down payment or the credit or the equity. All these things are effected by the downturn. And really, this has been a cultural norm in Chicago - it has been common for a long time for couples to start in the city, but move to the suburbs at some point to raise their kids in the better schools, etc.

 

[flippedoutpunk]

ive read that in certain unions, strikers are given strike pay in order to try to compensate for not getting paid by their employers. Is this true of the CTU? If so, it would help explain why a lot of my anti-union CPS friends are downtown dressed in red and smiling for the camera with $300 sunglasses on.

[Balta1701]

ive read that in certain unions, strikers are given strike pay in order to try to compensate for not getting paid by their employers. Is this true of the CTU? If so, it would help explain why a lot of my anti-union CPS friends are downtown dressed in red and smiling for the camera with $300 sunglasses on.

A lot of unions will keep "Strike funds" to compensate struggling workers during a strike, to keep unanimity and to keep them from reaching a point where they feel compelled to cross picket lines. People's mortgage payments come due whether they're on strike or not.

 

But usually, that money is no where near the amount they earn while actually working.

[StrangeSox]

ive read that in certain unions, strikers are given strike pay in order to try to compensate for not getting paid by their employers. Is this true of the CTU? If so, it would help explain why a lot of my anti-union CPS friends are downtown dressed in red and smiling for the camera with $300 sunglasses on.

 

Many unions have strike funds that they build up so that members aren't living completely without income during a strike. I'm not sure if CTU has one or not. Without a strike fund, management/boards would not have to wait very long for members' resolve to break. See the NFL players lockout for an example of that.

 

I don't understand your post, though. Your friends are CPS teachers that are anti-union but are out there on the streets?

[flippedoutpunk]

I don't understand your post, though. Your friends are CPS teachers that are anti-union but are out there on the streets?

 

Like Balta said, the mortgage has to get paid. They dont get a cent if they stay at home and watch Jerry Springer. Get a little bit of strike pay and look like your supporting the cause, its win-win

[StrangeSox]

Like Balta said, the mortgage has to get paid. They dont get a cent if they stay at home and watch Jerry Springer. Get a little bit of strike pay and look like your supporting the cause, its win-win

 

I just wasn't clear if that's what you meant or not. thanks for the clarification.

[mr_genius]

Should correct her on the incorrect "your" if you copied and pasted.

 

YES!

[Cknolls]

I heard on radio this morning that health insurance ends Oct 1. Anyone know if this is true for the teachers?

[MurcieOne]

NYT Editorial on CTU Strike

 

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but the New York Times just published an editorial on the issue. The seem to side with the City on this issue and aren't very complimentary of Mrs. Lewis.

[cabiness42]

NYT Editorial on CTU Strike

 

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but the New York Times just published an editorial on the issue. The seem to side with the City on this issue and aren't very complimentary of Mrs. Lewis.

 

I'm completely shocked that the NY Times would side with the President's best friend.

[NorthSideSox72]

NYT Editorial on CTU Strike

 

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but the New York Times just published an editorial on the issue. The seem to side with the City on this issue and aren't very complimentary of Mrs. Lewis.

As I said before, Karen Lewis is part of the problem for teachers. She comes off as self-righteous and has a habit of making verbal blunders. She is not helping their cause, at least not a spokeswoman.

 

[MurcieOne]

I'm completely shocked that the NY Times would side with the President's best friend.

 

Best friend? That seems like a stretch. I'm actually surprised they would side against labor. I applaud their objectivism.

[StrangeSox]

I'm not surprised to see the NY Times siding against labor. Most of the media-class liberals are tepid about labor unions in the first place.

 

 

(Liberal Blogger) Kevin Drum: Why People Hate Teachers Unions

 

As it happens, plenty of Chicagoans, liberal and otherwise, do support the teacher strike. But a lot of others don't, and I suspect that general antipathy toward teachers unions isn't hard to explain. First, teachers are viewed as pretty well paid. In the past, teachers were trying to catch up to what similar private sector workers earned, but they've mostly accomplished that. Total comp for urban teachers these days is pretty good.

 

Second, they work 180 days a year. Third, they get pretty good benefits. Fourth, teacher unions are viewed as dead-end opponents of any kind of accountability or reform.

 

Now, you can argue about all these things. Teachers still aren't paid as much as a typical college grad. They're paid less than they are in most other countries. Their benefits aren't any better than those for most white-collar workers (it's police and fire fighters who generally get the primo benefit packages). And "reform" can be just a thinly disguised attack on teachers themselves.

 

Nonetheless, this perception, I suspect, is pretty widespread. Add to that the fact that teacher salaries do indeed come out of taxpayers' wallets — taxpayers whose incomes haven't risen in a decade — and that teacher strikes hurt people's children, and is it any wonder that teachers unions aren't always especially beloved? I agree with Matt: you don't really need a lot of armchair psychologizing to figure this out.

 

(Progressive blogger/professor who usually focuses on military and transnational politics) Robert Farley: The Great Divide

 

1.All strikes are damaging and inconvenient; it’s the point of having a strike, which is what this controversial Dylan Matthews piece largely misses. Moreover, all strikes are damaging and inconvenient for the general public, regardless of whether workers are paid by the state or by private actors. If a private sector union wins higher wages or other concessions, the costs of those concessions will very often be passed to consumers. It follows that the fact that public union strikes are damaging, inconvenient, and costly to the general public is by no means determinative of how progressives ought to think about the strike.

 

2.Unions (public or private sector) contribute to progressive political goals above and beyond the issues at stake in any particular labor dispute. They provide an organizational political counter-weight against actors (corporations, etc.) broadly associated with the capital half of the capital/labor divide. Large, powerful, happy, successful unions are good for progressive politics, again completely apart from the issues of any particular labor dispute. Moreover, unions tend to improve the lot of non-unionized employees in their regions by providing more robust employment options. Conservatives understand this. Consequently, progressives should begin by giving unions (including public sector unions) the benefit of the doubt during disputes.

 

3.As Yggy surely knows, the state and the public are different things, often with profoundly divergent ends. Assuming a coherence between state interest and public interest is beyond sloppy; it’s simply wrong. While the focus on Rahm in this particular case probably hasn’t been helpful, union advocates have made a relatively clear case that the city of Chicago is serving the public interest poorly through its spending priorities. This is hardly an unreasonable position; indeed, it is incredibly likely that the city of Chicago (like any other subset of the state) could spend money more effectively in pursuit of the public interest, or (perhaps more to the point) that the city of Chicago should weigh the needs of public workers (who make up a very substantial portion of the public, after all) more heavily in its evaluation of what constitutes the public interest. Strikes and other labor disturbances are a way of making that point in a very clear, public way. It may nevertheless be true that the taxpayers of Chicago will have to pay higher taxes (or different taxpayers will have to pay different rates) in order to provide for a robust public school system, but again this does not distinguish public sector unions from their private sector counterparts.

 

4.“Benefit of the doubt” does not mean “absolute adherence to everything the union says!” This is so obvious as to barely be worth mention, but then Yggy (among others) felt the need to write the “labor’s alleged friends” etc. line. Labor unions, like every other political actor, tend to exaggerate their case. Their memberships may be unreasonable or have a poor understanding of the stakes. Their leaderships may be corrupt, foolish, or misguided, both as to the prospects for the success of any particular action and to the larger economic fundamentals that limit the viability of a state or firm. “Friends of labor” should indeed scrutinize the claims of particular unions. However, this has very little to do with anything that Matt mentions above, which relies on the aforementioned nonsense about taxpayers having to pony up more dough, etc.

 

(Leftist prof/blogger/author) Corey Robin is less kind: Why Do People Hate Teachers Unions? Because They Hate Teachers.

Like Doug Henwood, I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out why people—particularly liberals and pseudo-liberals in the chattering classes—hate teachers unions. One could of course take these people at their word—they care about the kids, they worry that strikes hurt the kids, and so on—but since we never hear a peep out of them about the fact that students have to swelter through 98-degree weather in jam-packed classes without air conditioning, I’m not so inclined.

 

Forgive me then if I essay an admittedly more impressionistic analysis drawn from my own experience.

In my childhood world, grown ups basically saw teachers as failures and f***-ups. “Those who can’t do, teach” goes the old saw. But where that traditionally bespoke a suspicion of fancy ideas that didn’t produce anything concrete, in my fancy suburb, it meant something else. Teachers had opted out of the capitalist game; they weren’t in this world for money. There could be only one reason for that: they were losers. They were dimwitted, unambitious, complacent, unimaginative, and risk-averse. They were middle class.

 

No one, we were sure, became a teacher because she loved history or literature and wanted to pass that on to the next generation. All of them simply had no other choice. How did we know that? Because they weren’t lawyers or doctors or “businessmen”—one of those words, even in the post-Madmen era, still spoken with veneration and awe. It was a circular argument, to be sure, but its circularity merely reflected the closed universe of assumption in which we operated.

[Soxbadger]

lol

 

Yep, I hate teachers unions because I cant get blood from a stone.

 

Id be glad to give every school air conditioning, Id be glad to give every a brand new shiny computer and every resource imaginable.

 

But where is the money coming from?

 

 

[StrangeSox]

It could come from elsewhere in the Chicago budget or from increased or different taxation. Part of the message of the strike would be that the government (Emmanuel, school board) are not best-serving the interests of the public in that they're under-funding education. Farley's point 3 discusses that. Those links are broader discussions than what specifically CTU is striking over, though.

 

Edit: just keep in mind that they're pieces of political rhetoric and they're mainly about some upper-crust liberals not really supporting labor unions. The first two are in response to Yglesias' piece here, which I forgot to link.

Edited September 12, 2012 by StrangeSox

[bmags]

2.Unions (public or private sector) contribute to progressive political goals above and beyond the issues at stake in any particular labor dispute. They provide an organizational political counter-weight against actors (corporations, etc.) broadly associated with the capital half of the capital/labor divide. Large, powerful, happy, successful unions are good for progressive politics, again completely apart from the issues of any particular labor dispute.

Surely the recall election can put an end to all this yeah? They couldn't even deliver all of their members, and were terrible at delivering union households.

[StrangeSox]

Surely the recall election can put an end to all this yeah? They couldn't even deliver all of their members, and were terrible at delivering union households.

 

They also lacked any sort of national support. But no, I don't think one recall election puts an end to the idea that unions a good base support for progressive politics. Recall elections are rare, usually unsuccessful and widely disliked.

[flippedoutpunk]

It could come from elsewhere in the Chicago budget or from increased or different taxation.

 

We already have a freakin water bottle tax. I think they're running out of ideas for ways to tax us Chicagoans.

[Balta1701]

lol

 

Yep, I hate teachers unions because I cant get blood from a stone.

 

Id be glad to give every school air conditioning, Id be glad to give every a brand new shiny computer and every resource imaginable.

 

But where is the money coming from?

The other way to look at it is...if you don't give the kids enough resources to actually get a quality education in the first place, you're taking money away from the future.

[StrangeSox]

We already have a freakin water bottle tax. I think they're running out of ideas for ways to tax us Chicagoans.

 

That was a waste/littering thing, like the DC plastic bag tax that drastically cut down on the number of plastic bags winding up in the Potomac.

[Soxbadger]

It could come from elsewhere in the Chicago budget or from increased or different taxation. Part of the message of the strike would be that the government (Emmanuel, school board) are not best-serving the interests of the public in that they're under-funding education. Farley's point 3 discusses that. Those links are broader discussions than what specifically CTU is striking over, though.

 

Edit: just keep in mind that they're pieces of political rhetoric and they're mainly about some upper-crust liberals not really supporting labor unions. The first two are in response to Yglesias' piece here, which I forgot to link.

 

 

The solution of: more money is simply not a solution in this economic climate.

 

The other way to look at it is...if you don't give the kids enough resources to actually get a quality education in the first place, you're taking money away from the future.

 

I agree entirely, the problem is that when you have limited resources, you have stay within your resources. I wish every kid in the US could go to the type of school district I went to. I didnt even benefit from it, I literally would sit in class doing my homework while the teacher would help other kids, or ask me to try and help. But I understand that having access to the best resources does give a pretty unfair advantage. Even if its just that i had access to AP classes which let me start college as a second semester sophomore.

[StrangeSox]

The solution of: more money is simply not a solution in this economic climate.

 

Part of what they are fighting for is more equitable distribution of resources among CPS schools, so "more money" is a realistic option for many of the struggling schools. I believe they could also shift money from other parts of Chicago's budget or even from other parts of the CPS budget (like, say, recent administrator raises). There is nothing that says they only have exactly $x dollars and that this amount is completely inflexible.

 

edit: I'm looking to see if I can find something about proposed budget or funding from CTU. The above is my supposition.

 

I agree entirely, the problem is that when you have limited resources, you have stay within your resources. I wish every kid in the US could go to the type of school district I went to. I didnt even benefit from it, I literally would sit in class doing my homework while the teacher would help other kids, or ask me to try and help. But I understand that having access to the best resources does give a pretty unfair advantage. Even if its just that i had access to AP classes which let me start college as a second semester sophomore.

If you started college with 1.5 years worth of credit, you definitely benefited. Hell, the fact that you were able to go to college shows that you benefited from better schools.

Edited September 12, 2012 by StrangeSox

[Y2HH]

It could come from elsewhere in the Chicago budget or from increased or different taxation. Part of the message of the strike would be that the government (Emmanuel, school board) are not best-serving the interests of the public in that they're under-funding education. Farley's point 3 discusses that. Those links are broader discussions than what specifically CTU is striking over, though.

 

Edit: just keep in mind that they're pieces of political rhetoric and they're mainly about some upper-crust liberals not really supporting labor unions. The first two are in response to Yglesias' piece here, which I forgot to link.

 

WTF how about no on the taxes. We already pay one of the highest taxes on everything in the states. It's getting harder and harder to live with all these taxes.