Apples to oranges: How Rahm Emanuel and a unionized private school can have starkly different relationships with the union world

by Paul Kersey In Tuesday’s Chicago Reader Ben Joravsky essentially snarks that there must be something wrong with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, because the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools where the mayor sends his children manages to work just fine with the American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, Local 2063. Emanuel, on the other hand, remains...

by Paul Kersey

In Tuesday’s Chicago Reader Ben Joravsky essentially snarks that there must be something wrong with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, because the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools where the mayor sends his children manages to work just fine with the American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, Local 2063. Emanuel, on the other hand, remains at loggerheads with the AFT-affiliated Chicago Teachers Union. Joravsky argues that instead of working with the union constructively, Emanuel has resorted to a string of dirty tricks, none of which would be allowed under the contract between AFT and the Lab School.

Actually, there are plenty of explanations why the Lab School might get along tolerably well with its union local, while Emanuel might be completely frustrated by CTU.

First off, not all union locals are the same, even if both are affiliated with the AFT. The structure of the AFT is such that as long as they stay out of financial trouble, AFT locals have a lot of autonomy, and the local officials that schools negotiate with can have very different philosophies. CTU President Karen Lewis is radical to the point of sounding bloodthirsty at times. But that doesn’t necessarily apply to AFT Local 2063, which represents teachers at the Lab School. In fact, Local 2063 seems not to have even issued a statement in support of CTU during its strike last fall. So the Lab School and the mayor of Chicago aren’t necessarily dealing with the same sort of union.

Then there are the two schools themselves. It may seem weird to read this, considering that Rahm is the mayor of Chicago and a former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, but the Lab School is probably dealing from more of a position of strength as far as the union is concerned. The Lab School is a private school affiliated with a private college, and that gives its leaders a lot more room to maneuver when dealing with the union. The university and the Lab School do not have quite as much to fear from the union’s political clout. CTU has a massive war chest that it can use in Chicago city elections, something that Emanuel and his allies on the city council must bear in mind at all times. The administration of the Lab School doesn’t have to run for re-election, and have less to fear. This is part of why President Franklin Roosevelt, a big supporter of unions in the private sector, did not want to apply the same collective bargaining process to government.

So drawing a neat parallel between the Chicago Public Schools and the Lab School in Hyde Park is misleading. The unions aren’t necessarily the same, and the institutions definitely aren’t the same. All of which explains why Rahm Emanuel could have such hard time dealing with the teachers union, while the Lab School can get off relatively easily.