Ten months after contract talks began and just days before a possible teachers strike, Chicago Public Schools and the teachers union are finally turning full attention to the most contentious issue on the table, pay raises.
The two sides have left the most critical issues for last — which is typical in labor negotiations — giving them little time to reach an agreement before the union’s Monday strike deadline.
CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union have scheduled talks through Friday and will meet over the weekend if no resolution is reached. Negotiations are expected to focus on wage increases, teacher evaluations, job security and the structure of the longer school day.
The union ratcheted up the pressure a bit Wednesday, filing an unfair labor practice complaint with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board that accuses the district of “unlawfully” imposing restrictions on teachers who are currently working without a contract.
The complaint says CPS has canceled automatic pay raises tied to teacher experience, discontinued the accrual of sick leave and implemented changes to teacher evaluations without the consent of the union. All of those issues remain on the table in contract negotiations.
CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll called the litigation “unnecessary.”
“It’s time to put antics aside and negotiate in good faith on behalf of our students so they can stay in classrooms with their teachers where they belong,” Carroll said in a statement.
The talks have gained steam after dragging on for months. Core teams of negotiators have haggled over seemingly minor issues like workplace bullying, lunch scheduling and work spaces for union health professionals.
CPS is led by an experienced team including attorney James Franczek and chief negotiator Joe Moriarty, who was the district’s representative on the fact-finding panel earlier this summer. Union President Karen Lewis leads the union negotiating team, aided by veteran CTU negotiator Pam Massarsky, attorneys and officers including Vice President Jesse Sharkey.
The two sides have met regularly since November, but Lewis has said talks did not get serious until this summer, after union members overwhelmingly authorized a strike in June and a fact finder’s report in July supported many of the union’s claims.
“(CPS) didn’t start negotiating seriously since we put 10,000 people in the street on May 23,” Lewis said last week. “They didn’t start really negotiating seriously until we took a strike authorization vote. Again, they didn’t start really negotiating seriously until we got the fact finder’s report back. So it’s sort of like, ‘OK, we’re going to work with you, blah, blah, blah.’ We have gone through all of these steps.”
More Top Picks Calm Down Corner Ideas For Home On A Budget
Although CPS chief Jean-Claude Brizard has said the two sides are making progress, union leaders continue to say they are far apart on the most important issues.
According to Lewis, the district on Wednesday submitted its latest offer — holding firm on a 2 percent raise for teachers in each of the next four years. CPS is no longer pushing merit pay for teachers, and, Lewis said, is offering to retain the language in the contract that includes annual step increases — although those pay hikes would not be honored.
But leaving step increases in place for future contracts is perhaps enough to win over teachers, who worried about removing raises that had been a part of their contracts since 1967.
Lewis refused to disclose details of the union’s counteroffer. As recently as two weeks ago, the union told delegates it was asking for a 19 percent raise in the contract’s first year.
Compensation is expected to be the main topic as talks go into what could be their final days.
“We’ve started talking about the big issues, but we’re not ready to announce a resolution,” Sharkey said. “We have a ways to go. We’re still far apart on those things.”
The two sides have met daily in the past several weeks, rotating among CPS’ headquarters, Franczek’s Loop office and the union’s offices in the Merchandise Mart. Although it seems unlikely an agreement could be reached in a few days after months of stalemate, one veteran of labor negotiations said things can move quickly at this point.
“You have real clarity about where you can go to, making negotiations really productive,” said Peter Cunningham, an assistant U.S. secretary of education who was at CPS during Arne Duncan’s tenure. “Once you have that clarity, it makes communications much more meaningful and an urgent calm takes over.”
Also on the district’s negotiating team are Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley, human resources chief Alicia Winckler and Brizard’s deputy chief of staff Arnie Rivera. In addition to Lewis and her top aides, the union’s team once a week includes a 35-person panel of members.
Lewis has criticized Brizard for not joining negotiations, but the chief of CPS has rarely sat in on talks in the past. Former CTU President Deborah Lynch, who led the union’s efforts in contentious 2003 negotiations, said Duncan did not come to the table until a deal was imminent.
“(Duncan) showed up in the final few minutes of the eleventh hour,” Lynch said. “I think he did it so (the district’s) chief negotiator could save face.”
Bringing district leaders in toward the end of negotiations is a common tactic, Carroll said. But speculation over Brizard’s possible ouster by Mayor Rahm Emanuel may have jeopardized his ability to finalize the contract, in which case sources said school board President David Vitale may be brought in to seal a deal.
Former CPS chief Paul Vallas, who ran the district from 1995 to 2001, said contract talks during his tenure never went down to the wire, which he attributed in part to including the union in discussions of the district’s finances and working to build an ongoing relationship.
“I think the key is to open up the channels of communication and give people access to let them see what you see,” said Vallas, who is now doing education-related work in Connecticut and Haiti. “We were very careful in not giving people a reason to rally around. You have to avoid the rhetoric.”
The relationship between the district and the union at this point seems distant at best, but both sides continue to stress that an agreement could be reached and a strike averted.
“We’ve always said there’s a real value in deadlines,” the union’s Sharkey said. “Nothing clears the mind like a deadline.”