April Chicago Teachers' Strike Update

Background: On April 1st, 2016,the Chicago Teachers Union picketed somewhere and walked off the job as in "stayed away" for one day in a preview of the full-on strike that is imminent partly to protest Mayor Rohm Emmanual. ********************************************************************************************************** The CTU did streak AND held a downtown rally. ********************************************************************************************************** Later,in mid-April, CTU President Karen Lewis stated,"100 percent" chance of a teacher's strike in late May. ********************************************************************************************************** It did not happen, possibly in part due to the fact that on April 1, 2016, the union issued a threat to their membership not to cross the picket line and show up for school on that day, lest they face the terrible and dire consequences. ********************************************************************************************************** A newspaper columnist also saw NO REASON to STALL THE 2016 SCHOOL SESSION: ********************************************************************************************************** Good, conscientious teachers in the Chicago Public Schools system deserve our sympathy here. The union that they are essentially extorted into joining is putting them in a difficult place. Do your job and lose your voice in the system, or walk out on your students and your paycheck for that day in an action that is possibly illegal. ********************************************************************************************************** I hope there are some brave souls in the CTU rank and file who are willing to call the union’s bluff here. It would be interesting and informative to see what the results are, both legal and otherwise, if the union’s expulsion policy were challenged. ********************************************************************************************************** This should serve as a reminder that public sector unions like the Chicago Teachers Union don’t really represent the interests of teachers. They represent the interests of teachers unions. And those two thing are not synonymous. At least one brave teacher prioritized his professional obligations and his students over the union’s demands. And Surprise! Surprise! The CTU is starkly desiring to punish him for it: ********************************************************************************************************** The same gentleman reported that math teacher Joseph Ocol’s decision to not join his teachers on the picket line during a one-day strike April 1 DID jeopardize his membership with the Chicago Teachers' Union. The CTU even had the nerve to brazenly ask Mr. Ocol to give the pay he received for working that day to the union or say why he shouldn’t have to at a June 6 hearing. ********************************************************************************************************** Math teacher Mr. Ocol stated that he worked on STRIKE DAY so he could be with his students. ********************************************************************************************************** The EXPLANATION FOR THE REBUKE gets interesting. The CTU spokeswoman’s explanation for the basis of the action the union is taking to reprimand Mr. Ocol for showing up to work and doing his job was: ********************************************************************************************************** CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin stated in an Email: (paraphrased) ,"CTU’s strike policy specifically states that members who go against the union and who are found guilty by a jury of their peers will have their membership suspended." ********************************************************************************************************** “A strike breaker will be given the option to pay a fine equal to the member’s net earnings while working in order to be reinstated, if they so choose. If they choose not to pay the fine they will be expelled from the Union.” ********************************************************************************************************** UNDERSTAND? Mr. O's in violation of their strike policy, and that’s what set in motion this Kafkaesque-sounding trial by jury that Ocol faced. There was ONE rather significant potential problem LOOMING there: ********************************************************************************************************** The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board still has to hold a full hearing on the sheer unadulterated legality of the strike. Nevertheless, a preliminary hearing panel clearly found merit in Chicago Public Schools’ argument that the CTU’s one-day strike was illegal. ********************************************************************************************************** Then board Chair Andrea Waintroob stated,“Contrary to the union’s argument, I don’t think that there’s a serious legal issue about the illegality of the strike.” ********************************************************************************************************** Can the CTU subscribe punishment on a teacher for breaking a strike even if that strike was illegal? A lawyer MIGHT know immediately but it appears that the kEYWORD is ILLEGAL. ********************************************************************************************************** So let the man KEEP his money, QUIETLY and for sure he will not call a radio station to CROW about getting to TEACH AND DO HIS JOB on strike day. ********************************************************************************************************** Still it’s an interesting question to bring up here. Still if the union can legally do what they’re doing, a more sympathetic teacher to fight this battle would be difficult to find: ********************************************************************************************************** Mr. Ocol attempted an appeal, seeking an alternative action. He even said he will offer up his pay if it’s guaranteed that it will go to the students, not CTU. He wants the money to help his chess champions travel to the White House. ********************************************************************************************************** GOD...that would JERK A TEAR FROM Obama! ********************************************************************************************************** The team is waited for confirmation for an early June visit by President Obama. Obama took the all-girls chess team, who took home a national championship trophy in May 2016, but there were 35 members on the team, not five. On or about June 10, 2016, the chess team was able to visit Washington D.C. thanks to generous funding. ********************************************************************************************************** As it turned out, Mr. Ocol sent a snail mail letter saying that he did not attend his June 6 hearing because he has practice with his students. ********************************************************************************************************** “I do not wish to be absent because I have always promised the kids that I shall always try to be with them after school even if I do not get paid,” he stated in the letter he shared with DNAinfo. ********************************************************************************************************** Mr. Ocol stated that CPS lacks the financial resources to pay coaches or mentors for any of the afterschool programs, which is why he has been volunteering his time from 4-6 p.m. for chess practice. The hearing is scheduled for 6:15 p.m. and he refuses to leave his students early to get there, he wrote. *********************************************************************************************************** Mr. Ocol also said he’s tired of the bullying he has been receiving from other union members. He filed a complaint in March of 2016. People have been sending him “nasty” messages saying that he should leave CPS and work for a charter school. ********************************************************************************************************** If he was VP Joe (Bite Me) Biden he would have advised them..."BITE ME!" ********************************************************************************************************** Is is SHOCKING TO DISCOVER that an organization led by a woman who recently compared Governor Bruce Rauner to the terrorist group ISIS would TREAD THIN ICE as to bully one of their own members for feeling that his first obligation is to his students and not to a disgraced, unethical private political organization he is ostensibly forced to join. ********************************************************************************************************** GRRR...BITE EVERYBODY Chicago Teachers' UNION! ********************************************************************************************************** Considerable QUANTITIES of TEARS may trickle when eyeballing Mr. Ocol’s incredible life story: ********************************************************************************************************** Joseph Ocol was a marked man when he migrated to the United States 15 years ago. Joseph Ocol, who was once a top planning executive of the Clark Development Corp. (CDC), had been placed on the government’s Witness Protection Program for blowing the whistle on what appeared to be a multibillion-dollar election fund-raising scam in the agency tasked to transform a former U.S. military air base into an industrial complex and economic zone. ********************************************************************************************************** For those that memory serves, Joseph Ocol had recounted in U.S. Senate public hearings how representatives of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority and CDC delivered millions of pesos bulging in envelopes to the campaign manager of the then ruling Lakas-NUCD party ostensibly to fund the presidential campaign of Jose de Venecia in the 1998 elections. Mr. Ocol claimed that those funds had come from contractors, forcibly misappropriated by government officials, resulting in substandard infrastructure and cost escalations for what was then a big Centennial Exposition project. *********************************************************************************************************** At this time here is your regularly scheduled reminder that the Chicago Public Schools system hoses away upwards of $15,000 per pupil to graduate just over half of its students, 40% of them drop out, and for the ones that make it through to 8th grade, 80% of them aren’t proficient in reading or math. What’s more, CTU teachers are the highest compensated in the country. They’re participants in a pension system that permits 60% of pensioners to retire in their 50s, make an average employee contribution of a mere $128,000 towards their pension and receive an average pension payout of $2.1 million, only 6% contributed versus their net payout, or more than a 15,000% return on their “investment.” And later in 2016, quite possibly in the fall, the leaders the Chicago Teachers Union will go on strike to demand more, but without making any significant changes to a school system that continues to fail thousands and thousands of (mostly minority) children every single year. Oh, but the one thing they won’t tolerate? Strike-breaking teachers and volunteer chess coaches who just want to do their job and help their students. Recall this story the next time the Chicago Teachers Union say that they’re doing it all “for the children.” **********************************************************************************************************