No Illinois teacher strikes in 2024, but will Chicago Teachers Union strike in 2025?

After going on strike 63 times in the previous 13 years, Illinois teachers unions gave families a break and didn’t walk out on students in 2024. But the Chicago Teachers Union may change that soon.

The Chicago Teachers Union has rejected recommendations from a neutral third-party “fact finder” in its latest phase of negotiations with Chicago Public Schools, putting the union closer to walking out on the district’s 325,000 students.

But CTU isn’t the only union in the state that has used hardline bargaining tactics at the expense of student classroom time. While teachers strikes are illegal in the majority of states, they are allowed in Illinois – to the detriment of Illinois’ students.

Strike threats were made 188 times between 2010-2023 by local affiliates of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and Illinois Education Association by filing a 10-day notice to strike with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. Of those threats, unions walked out 63 times, according to annual reports from the board.

No IFT or IEA affiliates went on strike or even filed a 10-day notice to strike in 2024, according to the most recent annual report.

But that doesn’t mean strike threats weren’t made at the local level. The board only tracks when unions file a 10-day notice of intent to strike. For example, the local IFT affiliate at Meridian Community Unit School District 15 voted to authorize a strike in October 2024 but never filed a notice of intent to strike. So while the board’s statistics show no official strike threats in 2024, that doesn’t mean there weren’t threats at the local level that didn’t escalate to the 10-day notice.

Illinois is an exception when it comes to allowing teacher strikes. At least 37 other states, including all of Illinois’ neighbors, have laws prohibiting teacher strikes.

Among the largest 10 school districts in the nation, Chicago is one of just two districts in which strikes are allowed. Teachers union strikes are illegal in the other eight districts.

CTU provides a case study in how Illinois unions routinely use this power. In just the past 13 years, it has walked out on students five times:

• In 2012, a strike during contract negotiations kept kids out of classes for seven days.
• On April 1, 2016, the union conducted an illegal one-day strike in response to alleged “union-busting” efforts of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool.
• In 2019, a strike during contract negotiations closed schools for 11 days.
• In January 2021, classes were canceled when CTU refused to return to school for in-person learning following COVID-19 closures.
• In January 2022, CTU walked out on school children for five days. Parents were notified of the walkout after 11 p.m. on a school night, leaving them just hours to develop a back-up plan after the union decided not to show up for Chicago’s children.

But those militant tactics could be backfiring. The union is now hugely unpopular with Chicagoans. New polling shows 60% of Chicago voters have an unfavorable view of the union and more than half disapprove of the union’s president, Stacy Davis Gates. Of the 798 registered Chicago voters polled, only 29% approved of CTU, down from 44% in February 2023.

CTU, as well as other IFT and IEA affiliates, should take note: while teachers union strikes may be legal in Illinois, walking out on students is a fast way to lose people’s support.