(Part One, Part Two below)
Teachers in Chicago are heading back to school Friday, marking the end of a historic eleven-day strike that had shut down the nation’s third-largest school district. After weeks of tense negotiations, the city agreed to reduce class sizes, increase salaries by 16 percent over the next 5 years and bring on hundreds more social workers, nurses and librarians. The union demanded that teachers be able to make up the full eleven days of school before agreeing to return to work and eventually settled with the city on five days. Earlier this week, 7,500 public school workers with the Service Employees International Union, who had been striking also settled with the city earlier. I joined Democracy Now alongside Stacy Davis Gates, the Executive Vice President of the Chicago Teacher Union.
The end of the Chicago teachers’ strike comes amid a wave of labor movements, including the longest United Auto Workers strike in almost 50 years. I spoke with Democracy Now about the historical importance of unions, the rise of worker participation in strike actions and the significance of the Labour Party’s organizing in the United Kingdom.
journalist & author of
Work Won't Love You Back