No current teachers voted to make Chicago Teachers Union their union

Chicago teachers were handed a union without the ability to choose for themselves. It’s the result of a system that props up government unions at the expense of the members they are supposed to serve.

Labor Day is a holiday unions tout for worker solidarity, but how many Illinois workers really had a choice about union representation?

In the case of the Chicago Teachers Union: not a single current teacher.

CTU won recognition as “the official bargaining agent” for Chicago teachers in 1966 and negotiated its first contract in 1967. Not a single current Chicago Public Schools teacher was working then.

The earliest hiring date of a current CPS teacher is Sept. 7, 1970, according to data received via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Despite the Illinois Constitution’s guarantee that all workers are entitled to representation by a union of their “own choosing,” there are no teachers within CPS who actually chose CTU as their union.

That’s by design. Unions drafted the language that became Illinois’ labor laws. They created a system in which once a government union is selected by a workforce, it’s practically permanent under the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act.

That means former government workers who initially certified a union can move on or retire, but new employees are stuck with whatever union was certified decades before they were hired – or in the case of CTU, maybe even before they were born.   

The only way to “decertify” a government union is through a process that can be daunting to teachers, given the necessity of putting their names on the petition. What’s more, the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board refers to the paperwork as a “Petitions for Representation Form” on its website, leading a reader to believe the form is for choosing a union to represent workers, not a form that could help them decertify a union.

This system enables unions such as CTU to abuse the process with impunity. There’s no incentive to be accountable to members.

Just look at the union’s own federal reporting in 2023. That year, the union nearly tripled its political expenditures and experienced deficit spending under the leadership of union President Stacy Davis Gates.

It also funneled nearly $2.3 million to its employee and lobbyist, Brandon Johnson, to fund his successful campaign to become Chicago mayor. At least a portion of that money came from member dues without consulting the members themselves. After an initial outcry from members who felt the union acted without their consent, CTU passed a resolution to apportion $8 a month from each member’s dues as individual contributions to the union’s political action committee, up to $2 million.

But there’s dissention in the ranks and wrangling among the internal parties. While Davis Gates’ party, the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, has held power in CTU since 2010, it was seriously challenged in 2022 in what the Chicago Sun-Times referred to as “the union’s most hotly contested race since their group came to power in 2010.” CORE received 56% of the total votes, a decrease from the two-thirds of the votes it received in the previous election. Challenger slates of candidates won a combined 44% of the vote in 2023. The ballots from 22 CPS schools weren’t counted.

That hotly contested race was before CTU’s questionable spending in 2023.

It begs the question: How many CPS teachers would vote for CTU if given a choice now?

Unfortunately, under Illinois law, CPS teachers don’t really have a choice of which union represents them, no matter what the state constitution says. That’s not something to celebrate this Labor Day.