Chicago, IL – On Monday night, Oct. 10, just before the midnight deadline, the bargaining committee of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) tentatively accepted a new contract offer from management.

What the teachers beat back

First, the attempt by the city to make them pay 7% more into their pension each year. New hires will have to pay an additional percentage, but then will receive additional raises equal to that loss, so they lose nothing. This is important, because the creation of a lower, second tier of wages or benefits for new employees is one of the ways that bosses have divided union workers against each other.

Second, they hung onto steps and lanes, raises that come with anniversaries of hiring dates, and with advances in education level by teachers.

What was won

Overall raises were modest: 2% and 2.5% in the last two years of a four-year agreement.

Some things were won for students. As Sarah Chambers, the youngest member of the 40-member bargaining committee said the morning after the settlement, “The biggest wins for our students are that counselors will be able to counsel instead of doing case manager duties, and there will be teacher assistants added to kindergarten to second grade classes with over 32 students.”

In a move that surprised veterans of the union movement, the Mayor Rahm Emanuel conceded to turn over to the schools’ $87 million of the $175 million surplus in the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds. The rest of the $175 million will also go to the city’s general fund for the first time ever, helping to pay for many services for working people.

TIFs are schemes where Emanuel has control of real estate taxes in areas featuring politically connected developers. These tax dollars are kept from funding schools and other needs, and instead fund playgrounds for the wealthy. Teachers even held a one day strike on April 1 with the main demand to get Emanuel to spend this money on the needs of the people. Getting Emanuel up off of the TIF funds is a major victory for the CTU.

Recognizing that these are big wins, Chambers warned that the teachers and their communities have a struggle in front of them. “We are going to have a bumpy ride under the austerity conditions of the next three years. More crisis is coming. Get ready to fight like hell, you all.”

All of these elements of the contract were won since the city brought an offer to the union in January. The union’s House of Delegates – 800 elected teachers and professionals in the schools – rejected that offer overwhelmingly. The gains were made because of a credible strike threat and the willingness of the rank and file members to fight.

#ChicagoIL #ChicagoTeachersUnion #DefendEducation #TeachersUnions #CTU

The union organized the actions to show support for their negotiating committee which is in contract negotiations with the school district. The negotiations have dragged on for months and are in mediation. The union expressed the urgency of taking action in a message on their Facebook page, saying, “Top down decision making in our schools has created inequitable, understaffed learning environments where suspensions are on the rise and gaps are widening. Our students can't wait any longer for site driven solutions that empower families and teachers. They can't wait for fully staffed schools and guaranteed access to high quality pre-K. Our students cannot wait any longer for access to arts and physical education.”

#StPaulMN #DefendEducation #TeachersUnions

Jacksonville, FL – With more than 50 activists and community members present, the Duval County School Board voted unanimously, Dec. 16, to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School. The historic vote by the school board comes at the end of a six-month campaign by the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition (JPC) and other forces to drop the local high school's racist namesake.

“We have to change the name of this school because this city can no longer honor a slave trader, war criminal and grand wizard of the KKK,” said Richard Blake, a Teamster and member of the JPC who spoke at the school board meeting before the vote. “The heritage of Nathan B. Forrest is not our heritage – it is that of the oppressor.”

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti began the school board meeting by sharing the board's findings in polling the community about the name change. A poll conducted last week by the school board at Forrest High School found that about 64% of the student body favored changing the name. He then made a recommendation to the board to change the school's name, which was approved by every board member.

Paula D. Wright, one of the school board members who spoke out in support of the name change, said, “We talk about what's in a name. A name does matter because it can service the foundation of how we think of ourselves and how we move beyond the particular place we're in at the time.” She shared with the board and the audience her own story of attending school and receiving second-class treatment as an African American student. “This moves our entire city towards equality and justice.”

The campaign to rename Forrest High School drew hundreds of community activists together, who attended forums, gathered petitions and protested the school's racist name. More than 160,000 people signed an online petition at change.org started by Jacksonville community activist Omotayo Richmond. The JPC spent months gathering more than 2000 hand-written community surveys, which overwhelmingly showed support for changing the name. Supporters of the name change also brought their energy and arguments to several town hall forums called by the school board, which pressured the board into changing the name.

Forrest High School, named after the infamously racist slave trader and Confederate general Nathan B. Forrest, received its name in 1959. The United Daughters of the Confederacy chose the name as a stunt to protest the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated all-white schools throughout the country. To advance their racist agenda, they ignored the students' vote to keep the school named Valhalla High School.

The name Nathan Bedford Forrest is a blunt reminder of racist hatred, violence and terror. Forrest was a brutal slave trader, ordered the infamous Fort Pillow Massacre, and led the KKK. At Fort Pillow, Forrest’s troops executed hundreds of captured and surrendering Union soldiers, most of whom were African American, which Forrest bragged about in his military dispatches. The Daughters of the Confederacy chose the name to intimidate courageous African American civil rights activists, many of them teenagers, struggling for freedom.

“Tonight was a historic blow to the racism of the Deep South,” said Fernando Figueroa, an activist with the JPC. “The neo-confederates who spoke in favor of Forrest saw the writing on the wall. We're building the freedom struggle in Jacksonville star by star.”

When Forrest High School opened in 1959, it was an all-white, segregated school. Today, 54% of the school's approximately 1800 students are African-American.

Jason Fischer, another school board member, concluded his remarks in support of the name change, saying, “We need to make today about honoring the future, which is our children.”

#JacksonvilleFL #AntiRacism #KuKluxKlan #DefendEducation #NathanBedfordForrest #NathanBedfordForrestHigh #segregation #JacksonvilleProgressiveCoalition

Minneapolis, MN – On March 12, the University of Minnesota presented the report it commissioned on its management structure to the Senate Higher Education Committee.

Cherrene Horazuk, President of AFSCME 3800 and a clerical worker in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, said of the report, “This confirms what we have been saying for years. The university has a problem with top-heavy management. We see again and again that front line staff who serve students and the community get laid off while upper management positions not only are protected, but are increased along with their salaries.”

The report uses two models for analyzing four departments handpicked by university administration. The benchmarking used by one of the models (Bain and Company) states that there should be six to seven direct reports per supervisor for expertise-based functions and eleven to thirteen direct reports for task-based functions. The U of M falls grossly below this standard, with the average manager in three of these departments (Procurement, Finance, Human Resources) supervising five people or fewer. The other model (Sibson) paints a more favorable picture but still finds 29 people in these four departments who supervise only one person. Neither model takes into account staffing changes that have occurred over time, and thus miss the greater question of how the U of M got so top-heavy.

Melanie Steinman, Chief Steward of AFSCME Local 3800 and a clerical worker in American Studies said, “AFSCME has conducted our own analysis of staffing changes from 2008 to 2012, based on numbers provided to us from the university’s Office of Institutional Reporting. Since 2008, civil service positions have been reduced by 7.5% (approximately 750 positions). Of those, AFSCME-represented clerical positions have been reduced by nearly 10% – a loss of 150 jobs. At the same time, upper management (academic administrative staff) increased by 3.8%, or 85 positions.”

Steinman continued, “Most of the AFSCME job losses came in the form of layoffs – real people losing their jobs at the height of the worst economic crisis in nearly a century while the university’s 1% grew and prospered. In the past ten years, hundreds of senior management positions have been added, while tuition has doubled – making a quality education unattainable for the children of many working class Minnesotans.”

She added, “AFSCME at the university is glad to see the governor’s proposal for an increase in funding to the University of Minnesota and MNSCU and for scholarship funds. We also welcome the call for a more accountable university.”

Horazuk stated, “We are glad to hear President Kaler express a commitment to make real changes in the staffing layers and spans at the university. It’s unfortunate that it took front-page headlines in national news outlets for this to come about. Without a serious re-commitment to the University of Minnesota’s original mission to provide accessible and affordable education, as well as a commitment to provide decent, livable wage jobs for all workers, the future for students, workers and all Minnesotans is at risk.”

Horazuk added, “We also question the allocation of nearly half a million dollars to develop a plan for reducing administrative costs when the solution to the U’s administrative bloat is quite simple: chop from the top.”

#MinneapolisMN #UniversityOfMinnesota #AFSCME3800 #DefendEducation #teachersUnions