With Chicago Teachers on Picket Lines, Students Don't Miss A Meal

Ever since the dawn of the age of unions, it has been a given that, even if society allows the concept of strikes against private business, it is illogical to allow striking against the government.

Government employers are special cases, with monopoly status, providing necessary services (at least in theory). Everyone knows you cannot allow employees of the military, the police, the fire stations, the schools, the gas and electric utilities, etc. to strike. Society simply is no longer civilized, after awhile without these building blocks of a safe and civil society.

And even so, some states do foolishly, self-destructively, allow such entities to collectively bargain and even to strike against the common good.

We Illinoisans are in this situation today. Even as I write, the 25,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union are beginning their second week of striking against the city of Chicago.

This hasn’t exactly closed the schools – the schools remain open, to serve the free meals on which Chicago’s students have become dependent. They may not need to go to any of those classrooms, but what they really need is the cafeteria.

• tangential issues like additional school nurses and social workers that may be relevant to the schools but aren’t proper for the teachers’ collective bargaining function… and

• completely irrelevant “progressive” political goals, like demanding that the city build more “affordable housing” and otherwise expand the welfare state in the already largely socialist economy of Illinois.

The expanded list of demands is part of a socialist agenda being presented in recent years as “collective bargaining for the common good.” Similar to the outrageous “intersectionality” concept popular across the extreme left nowadays, it’s part of a Democrat party goal to tie all issues together, to insist that every election, every strike, every organization, be united in the common cause of driving America to be more leftist in every way. They think that anytime you focus on the matter at hand, you are missing an opportunity to make progress on a hundred other aspects of the socialist agenda.

It would be humorous that it’s causing such a rift in Chicago, as it’s an intraparty battle between fellow leftists (it’s not like Republicans or even moderates have a seat at this table)… except that it showcases such a genuine threat to our nation.

Their goal is to use every opportunity to further all leftist causes. They want more social workers in the schools to push abortion and transgenderism. They want more lawyers in the schools to help illegal aliens agitate for the privilege of avoided well-deserved deportations.

They want higher property taxes, income taxes, transfer taxes, sales taxes, all in order to squeeze the remaining companies and individuals so that everyone plummets to the same “lowest common denominator” of the economic ladder. As both Chicago and Springfield cry out that there’s no money for all their demands, the union happily declares their proposed compromise: there’s no need to fight, BOTH jurisdictions can raise taxes!

For the first time, more than a few people are finally beginning to realize that bankruptcy is the real goal here… 25,000 teachers can’t all be so bad at mathematics that they don’t realize the unsustainability of their demands. They are careening toward bankruptcy, full speed ahead, without even a handbrake to apply... counting on the state or even the federal government to bail them out of their tens of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities and other financial sinkholes.

This is a city that has plummeted in population from 3.5 million at its peak in the 1950s to less than 2.5 million today, a city that has consciously driven its middle class to the suburbs and become a home for only the very poor and a few of the very rich. A taxing model that requires a middle class to fund it simply doesn’t fit in Chicago anymore… if indeed it ever did.

So the teachers’ union has brought things to a head, at what is arguably the worst time for it: a time when there’s a brand new socialist mayor in charge, when there are no moderates anymore, and it is just various branches of the ultra Left who must fight it out among themselves.

The public wants to support the teachers. The vast majority of Americans spent eight, nine, even 12 or 13 years in rooms led by America’s teachers. But despite the affinity we all have for them individually, it has become impossible to deny that as a group, they have gone too far.

In Illinois, not only do teachers get several times the vacation days and holidays that people in the private sector get… Their healthcare costs are infinitely more heavily funded by their employer than ever occurs in the private sector… and they can retire in their late 50s... while we in the private sector are often forced to accept the fact that we will never be able to retire. Given the above, it is more and more difficult for the average voter in the bankrupt state of Illinois to feel anything but scorn for the outrageous greed of this teachers’ union.

In addition, it has become painfully obvious that the teachers’ complaints about their often miserable conditions are the fault of their own policies, and that their current demands would only make such problems worse, not better:

Yes, teachers, it must be hard to teach a classroom in which so many different languages are spoken at home. But this teachers‘ union supports the massive illegal immigration that exacerbated this challenge, and their demands of an influx of pro-alien attorneys would draw even more into their classrooms.

The same goes for their complaints of large class sizes. Yes, teachers, it must be hard to teach a room designed for 25 that’s filled with 35 kids. But that surplus is your own fault, by insisting that Chicago be a sanctuary city, in a sanctuary county, in a sanctuary state. You have insisted on turning your classroom into a magnet for multitudes; how can you then complain about their presence there?

Yes, teachers, it must be heartbreaking to leave the classroom filled with children from broken homes, children whose parents, siblings, other relatives or neighbors are abusers. But it is your policies that have opened the doors of the prisons, flooding your neighborhoods with convicted criminals whose ridiculously short sentences don’t keep them away from your charges. The criminality in your hallways, coat rooms, and playgrounds is caused by the very gangs whom your destructive policies have nurtured. It is hard to feel sorry for the victim of a crime, when that victim voted to set the criminal free.

At this writing, it is impossible to forecast how long this particular strike will last. It could be over this afternoon, or it could take weeks to resolve. But already, it has provided one key public service, in answering one of the great questions of our time:

While the CTU has been on strike, the city has kept the schools open, so that nonunion staff could continue to serve the free meals to which these children and their families have become accustomed. There may be no classes being held in the classrooms, but there is plenty of taxpayer-funded food being served in the cafeteria.

So the schools are full of students, despite the strike. They may not learn anything, but they’re all being fed their three squares each day at the public trough, same as usual. So the parents are happy now… reassured that, no matter how long the strike goes, their kids will continue to be dependent on their fellow man for basic sustenance.

For decades, we have wondered about our big cities’ public school establishments. We have wondered whether there was really ever any interest in getting kids an education, or if the parents just view the schools as daycare nowadays.

John F Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer, writer and actor. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review.

I had real teachers back in the day....a lot of the best ones were nuns....

but generally, I have no "affinity" for them.....they make great money and the benefits are of kings and queens......don't let them tell you otherwise....

a simple education degree.....one of the easiest degrees to get along with political science,sociology,communications, etc.....

Any better reason to abolish public “education?” They are nothing more than baby sitters for indoctrination, separating children from the parents on ideological and moral grounds. They have become de facto parents, to the detriment of society and culture.

School doors are open all day?

With no teachers in the classrooms?

Does that mean students are free to roam the halls, unsupervised?

Nightmarish...

If I’m the School Superintendent. i send a memo to the current teachers saying, “We are five-deep in applications for each of your jobs, and I’m certain you want to give our new generation of instructors (adding this for extra-PC-authority) — particularly instructors of color — their opportunity to build their careers. So I must say to each of you, thank you for your service to our students. And you should take pride that new and energetic educators will be carrying on your great work. It has been a pleasure working with all of you. Goodbye.”

Good article. A few years back, after the last strike, I read that CTU officials and some CPS teachers attended a Marxist conference at Northwestern. One of the presenters commented that teachers’ strikes, and the recent CTU strike in particular, could and should be useful in achieving the revolution.

I wonder how long they are willing to stay off the job for that third demand?

I know it must make you all feel better that while the teachers are on strike, the students are still being fed up to three meals a day—because God knows that parents shouldn’t be expected to take on that responsibility themselves. And only a cold-hearted monster would even dream of deducting those tax-payer funded meals from a family’s SNAP benefits.

I taught for many years in a public school and the idea of going on strike during the school year is repugnant to me. Chicago teachers are driving their city and state into bankruptcy. Their schools are failing and yet they are demanding more money.

I would not expect the food cafeteria at 3 meals A-day for students to be shut down during a strike, that’s one h*** of a cash cow.

It’s for the children, who are not important enough to teach I guess.

9 posted on 10/25/2019 7:30:09 PM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)

“they make great money and the benefits are of kings and queens......don’t let them tell you otherwise....”

you do not know what you are talking about. I have 7 years of college and the return on that investment as a teacher is very poor. Only going back and getting my special needs masters made it so I can actually be middle class. Now with as many years of college as a doctor I make about 20% of what they do.

You are believing a bunch of BS from somewhere.

Go ahead mr big guy but the truth is there is a teacher shortage in this country of about 200,000 and the teachers will laugh at you.

This. Drives. Me. Crazy.

Parents/Guardians of children are given money by the state/fedgov to provide for the every-day needs of children, including nutrition.

Yet when the state school is not in session- strike/summertime- there is a need to feed children????

W.T.Heck?!

#1 Freaking don’t have kids if you can’t support them
#2 Freaking why are taxpayers paying for parents to provide for kids, then paying AGAIN for kids to have meals outside of the home (school).

Again. What. The. Heck.

The state I consider my home is finished.

It’s time to go.

Yes really, they are importing teachers from other countries right now.

Do you want teachers with English as a second language teaching your children.

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