The Chicago Teachers Union is wasting no time in asking for new mayor Lori Lightfoot’s attention. They held a demonstration at the Thompson Center calling it the Keeping the Promise: Rally for a Fair Contract.
The Chicago teachers with 25,000 members see a new mayor as a new opportunity and happens to be a national day of action for education and the CTU wants to be at the top of Lightfoot’s to-do list.
Back on May 23, 2012, Chicago teachers showed they meant business with this rally thru the downtown streets. That was four months before the strike that took place when contract talks later stalled.
Might we see a teachers strike this year? Now that a new mayor has been sworn in – the union is making its demands more visible.
The Chicago teachers want a 5 percent pay raise. They also want class size decreased for the early grades, a counselor for every 250 students and librarians and nurses for every school.
The teachers say there will be a strike vote taken by the beginning of the school year next fall. Lightfoot was not the candidate the teachers supported, has not yet telegraphed exactly how much of a raise teachers deserve.
