Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Chicago teachers walked off the job today, closing classrooms for about 400,000 students in an effort to resist Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s efforts to change the workings of the nation’s third-largest school district.
In the city’s first walkout since 1987, picket lines began forming as the sun rose, interrupting the school year at the start of the second week of classes. Months of mounting tension between educators and Emanuel broke into open hostility late last night when Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis called the strike after disagreements during negotiations over health benefits and job security. No new talks have been scheduled.
“We have failed to reach an agreement that would prevent a strike,”, Lewis said in a televised news conference two hours before the midnight deadline. The union represents 26,000 teachers and support workers.
Emanuel, who did not participate directly in the negotiations, called the walkout “unnecessary, avoidable and wrong,” and “a strike by choice.”
Bully Pulpit
While the walkout provides the latest evidence of friction between public-sector unions and state and local governments, this strike occurs in one of the most Democratic cities in the nation and represents the first resistance to Emanuel, a self- professed nonideological problem-solver who took office in May 2011.
The former chief of staff to President Barack Obama delivered on a campaign pledge to lengthen the school day and year, saying more class time would improve student performance. He also stripped teachers of a negotiated 4 percent pay raise, prompting Lewis to call him a bully.
Teachers originally sought a 29 percent raise over 24 months while the board proposed 2 percent annual increases under a four-year contract. Emanuel said the board boosted the offer to 16 percent over four years. In his second year as mayor, Emanuel, 52, controls the operation of the district, which faces a deficit of about $700 million.
David Vitale, Emanuel’s hand-picked president of the city’s Board of Education, said the district changed its contract proposal 20 times. The mayor said his bargaining team was “available now” to resume talks. Lewis said she “didn’t understand why we couldn’t have had an agreement.”
While the previous contract ended in June, negotiators had been at the bargaining table since November. The union served notice Aug. 29 that it would strike if no agreement was reached.
Fitch Ratings said a strike would make it difficult for the district to balance its budget and improve educational standards. The New York-based company gives the district’s $5.6 billion in unlimited-tax general-obligation debt a fifth-highest A+ grade.
In the city’s first walkout since 1987, picket lines began forming as the sun rose, interrupting the school year at the start of the second week of classes. Months of mounting tension between educators and Emanuel broke into open hostility late last night when Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis called the strike after disagreements during negotiations over health benefits and job security. No new talks have been scheduled.
“We have failed to reach an agreement that would prevent a strike,”, Lewis said in a televised news conference two hours before the midnight deadline. The union represents 26,000 teachers and support workers.
Emanuel, who did not participate directly in the negotiations, called the walkout “unnecessary, avoidable and wrong,” and “a strike by choice.”
Bully Pulpit
While the walkout provides the latest evidence of friction between public-sector unions and state and local governments, this strike occurs in one of the most Democratic cities in the nation and represents the first resistance to Emanuel, a self- professed nonideological problem-solver who took office in May 2011.
The former chief of staff to President Barack Obama delivered on a campaign pledge to lengthen the school day and year, saying more class time would improve student performance. He also stripped teachers of a negotiated 4 percent pay raise, prompting Lewis to call him a bully.
Teachers originally sought a 29 percent raise over 24 months while the board proposed 2 percent annual increases under a four-year contract. Emanuel said the board boosted the offer to 16 percent over four years. In his second year as mayor, Emanuel, 52, controls the operation of the district, which faces a deficit of about $700 million.
David Vitale, Emanuel’s hand-picked president of the city’s Board of Education, said the district changed its contract proposal 20 times. The mayor said his bargaining team was “available now” to resume talks. Lewis said she “didn’t understand why we couldn’t have had an agreement.”
While the previous contract ended in June, negotiators had been at the bargaining table since November. The union served notice Aug. 29 that it would strike if no agreement was reached.
Fitch Ratings said a strike would make it difficult for the district to balance its budget and improve educational standards. The New York-based company gives the district’s $5.6 billion in unlimited-tax general-obligation debt a fifth-highest A+ grade.