The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is a labor union that represents teachers, paraprofessionals, and clinicians in the Chicago public school system. The union has consistently fought for improved pay, benefits, and job security for its members, and it has resisted efforts to vary teacher pay based on performance evaluations. It has also pushed for improvements in the Chicago schools, and since its inception argued that its activities benefited students as well as teachers.
The CTU united several teachers' organizations in Chicago in the wake of a teachers' revolt against banks during the Great Depression. It was chartered in 1937 as Local 1 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in which it played a founding role. It was the largest and most active AFT Local until the 1960s. The CTU won collective bargaining rights in 1966 and conducted several strikes during the 1970s and 1980s. In September 2012, the union began its first strike in 25 years.
The CTU is also affiliated with the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and the AFL–CIO. It has more than 25,000 members. Current officers come from the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, elected in 2010 to replace the longstanding United Progressive Caucus. From that point until her 2018 retirement, Karen Lewis was president. Through a successors election the new officer slate became: President Jesse Sharkey, Vice President Stacy Davis Gates, Recording Secretary Michael Brunson and Financial Secretary Maria Moreno. Following the departure of Sharkey, Stacy Davis Gates assumed the role of President on July 1, 2022.
Origins and founding
The CTU was preceded, in part, by the Chicago Teachers Federation (CTF), an organization of women elementary school teachers founded in 1897.
By the 1930s, Chicago teachers had formed several other different unions, some of which were still segregated by gender. Unrest in the early 1930s served to unite these groups, which previously had difficulty cooperating. The Chicago Teachers Federation played an active role in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and retained their status as Local 1. In 1937, Local 1 battled New York's Local 5 over whether the AFT would remain in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) or join the newer and more inclusive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). (New York's Local 5 was at that time the Teachers' Union, which was soon expelled from the AFT after accusations of communism, and replaced by the more moderate United Federation of Teachers.) Soon after the convention (which decided to stay in the AFL), the Chicago Teachers Union was officially chartered by the AFT as an amalgamation of Chicago's multiple teacher unions in Chicago. At this point about 3,500 teachers were members of the new Local. The Chicago Teachers Union was formally established as a merger of the Men's Teachers Union, Federation of Women High School Teachers, Elementary Teachers Union, and Playground Teachers Union at a meeting held at the Chicago Civic Opera House, immediately receiving its charter as Local 1 of the AFT. By September 1938, it was the largest teachers union in the U.S., with over 8,500 members. The CTF, still under the leadership of its longtime head Margaret Haley, remained separate for some years, based on concerns that the CTU would disproportionately represent the interests of males and high school teachers.
Before collective bargaining: 1937–1967
When the CTU formed, teachers had become disillusioned about their status as a special class of workers. Some elementary school teachers were paid less than janitors, and more teachers came to agree that they experienced discrimination because they were female. (Meanwhile, male teachers felt shortchanged and emasculated.) Teachers also resented the constantly increasing bureaucratic control over their classrooms.
Goals
The CTU sought collective bargaining rights early on, but Superintendent William Johnson refused to grant them. The union also targeted evaluations (for teachers who wanted to become principals) that it said were administered in a corrupt fashion. By 1939, the CTU had more than doubled in size, to 8,500 members, and organized its members for actions such as mass letter-writing.
In 1948, amid small-scale sickouts and walkouts, the CTU authorized a strike when teachers experienced still more 'payless paydays' due to city neglect. The strike was averted hours before it was scheduled to begin, when the school board approved a new budget and announced that the checks due to the teachers had been mailed with all possible haste.