Chicago Teachers Union overwhelmingly ratifies contract, officially ending strike

The results, announced Friday night, show 81% of the teachers who voted backed the contract.

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Nader Issa/Sun-Times

Two weeks after the Chicago Teachers Union suspended its 11-day strike and sent 300,000 kids back to school, the union’s 25,000 members approved their new contract and officially ended their strike.

With 80% of schools reporting Friday night, the union’s agreement with Chicago Public Schools was approved by 81% of teachers voting, easily surpassing the required simple majority, union officials announced.

“This contract is a powerful advance for our city and our movement for real equity and educational justice for our school communities and the children we serve,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said in a statement.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson said they were "pleased" that teachers ratified the deal, which they lauded as a "historic, fiscally-responsible agreement ... that will build on the incredible progress our schools have made and support our commitment to equity."

"We are proud of the significant benefits the agreement will provide to our staff, students and families, and we look forward to all that our school community will accomplish together over the next five years," their statement read.

The vote result is similar to the 79% that approved the deal after the seven-day 2012 strike and higher than the 72% in 2016.

Vote counting lasted late into the evening as envelopes filled with ballots streamed into the union’s Near West Side headquarters on the second of two days of voting by active CTU members at schools citywide.

Chicago Teachers Union leaders count ballots at the union’s Near West Side headquarters Friday; the final vote tally could mean the official end of the teachers strike.

Nader Issa/Sun-Times

The vote officially ends the months-long and often bitter battle with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS officials that shined a light on the district’s wide inequities between schools.

Despite some teachers’ lingering concerns over class size and other issues, Sharkey said before the results became official that he was “confident” the achievements in the agreement were enough for teachers to approve it.

“I feel as though we won the best contract that we were able to get given the balance of forces that we have,” Sharkey said. “Do I feel like we got everything we deserved in schools? No. And I hope our members aren’t satisfied. If we got everything we deserved and were satisfied, we can pack up our union and go home.”

Sharkey said he’s “not happy” teachers had to give up six days of pay in the process of reaching a deal, but he does “feel proud of our union and what it accomplished.”

One of Sharkey’s jobs since the strike was suspended, and even in the last couple days of the walkout, was to talk members off their unrealistically high hopes for the new deal — expectations that were set by Sharkey and other union leaders trying to build momentum for the strike. After the strike was suspended in an unusually close vote at a contentious House of Delegates meeting, it appeared ratification could be more up in the air than is typically the case.

But Sharkey believed cooler heads prevailed and members realized that, at least in these negotiations, there was no more left to win.

“I do think that members are going through a process now that the actual intensity and emotional roller-coaster of a strike is over, where they’re trying to weigh the balance of forces,” Sharkey said. “And when you weigh that balance, I think that people see that we achieved a lot. And that we won what there was to win in the course of this contract fight.”

One issue that’s still up in the air is veteran teacher pay. The city agreed to shell out $25 million over the next five years in raises for the most experienced teachers, but exactly how that’ll be done is still being debated.

The CTU would like to see that money added as extra “steps” in the union’s pay schedule, which would add more permanent base pay raises for teachers once they reach certain years of experience. Chicago Public Schools, meanwhile, have argued that money should be paid out as bonuses, Sharkey said, adding that the issue is “not settled yet.”

“We’ve been fighting with the [Board of Education] about the exact way that looks,” Sharkey said. “I would have loved to have had that worked out by now, but the actual written agreement says that we’re going to work it out after ratification.”

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