I said in my posting earlier this week that the strike is not solely about money, and that's becoming clearer everyday. Yesterday, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union said "The assault on public education started here. It needs to end here." To those in the know, she was referring not just to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's reforms, by any means. The strike also illustrates FDR's famous warning about why collective bargaining doesn't work in the public sector and how militant union tactics exercised by government workers are a betrayal of the public trust.
Emanuel's predecessor, Richard Daley, made school reform a big issue and hired as schools superintended Paul Vallas, who expanded the use of charter schools in the city. After came Arne Duncan, current U.S. Secretary of Education, whose emphasis on school choice and merit pay has angered teachers.
The Chicago Teachers Union sees itself as having been on the front lines of education reform for more than a decade, and this is now a radicalized union, taken over two years ago by an activist faction. They went to a recent national teacher's convention and urged unions in other cities to opposes school reform, and one of their leaders told other union officials that "capitalism is destroying public schools." This, by the way, in a school system where per pupil spending averages $13,000 annually, above the national average (and well above what any socialist or communist country has ever spent per pupil on education.)
In the end, this strike illustrates the dangers inherent in collective bargaining in the public sector because of the way a single union can hold a city hostage to an extent that's largely impossible in the private sector. As FDR famously warned when he explained why he wouldn't grant collective bargaining to government workers:
The Chicago Teachers Union sees itself as having been on the front lines of education reform for more than a decade, and this is now a radicalized union, taken over two years ago by an activist faction. They went to a recent national teacher's convention and urged unions in other cities to opposes school reform, and one of their leaders told other union officials that "capitalism is destroying public schools." This, by the way, in a school system where per pupil spending averages $13,000 annually, above the national average (and well above what any socialist or communist country has ever spent per pupil on education.)
In the end, this strike illustrates the dangers inherent in collective bargaining in the public sector because of the way a single union can hold a city hostage to an extent that's largely impossible in the private sector. As FDR famously warned when he explained why he wouldn't grant collective bargaining to government workers:
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees...Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied.
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