This Day in Labor History: September 10, 2012

On September 10, 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike. Led by Karen Lewis, a charismatic union president who had recently taken over the CTU and revitalized it on the principle of taking on the neoliberal education program of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the strike grabbed the nation’s attention. It also served as a critical inspirational moment in return of economics to the American left, the first of many successful teachers strikes over the next decade that placed teachers at the forefront of the American labor movement for the first time.

For so long, since the early 80s, the American labor movement was in the doldrums. Savagely attacked by Republicans and seen with indifference at best by the centrist Democrats who came to dominate the party, unions struggled to respond and adapt. Often struggling with out of touch leadership more interested in holding on its what power it still rather than organizing and getting workers into the streets, labor responded to this crisis with often pathetic acquiescence. That continued well into the 2000s. Even many leftists began ignoring the labor movement and focusing instead primarily on foreign policy issues, especially during the Iraq War. The return of economic democracy as a central to left-leaning discourse didn’t even have anything to with unions. It came out of the 2008 housing crisis and the anger over the lies corporate Republicans and neoliberal Democrats had pushed on the populace for the decades. This inchoate anger became a bit more concrete with Occupy Wall Street, but there was nothing Occupy that had any space to grow into something else. It was a spurt of anger. But things became to change thanks to teachers. When the vile Scott Walker signed the Wisconsin bill in 2011 to eviscerate that state’s public sector unions, teachers led the way in protesting, including in occupying the statehouse. They had no ability to make Walker change his mind, but they did demonstrate a greater taste for action than we had seen in a long time.

In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, possibly the worst major Democratic figure of the early twenty-first century, wanted to enact a serious of neoliberal reforms of the city’s schools, shuttering many and privatizing public services. Simply put, the city had no respect for the teachers’ union. Why would it? The Chicago Teachers Union had responded to previous attacks by doing nothing. But in 2010, a group of teachers led by Karen Lewis decided to take on the moribund leadership. A chemistry teacher with long roots in the city’s Black community, where she was born, Lewis led a group called Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators. They ran a campaign against the leadership about taking on the Emanuel administration directly, resisting privatization, and doing whatever they could to revitalize their union and save the city’s public education system.

Lewis won her union election but no one really knew what this would mean in reality. Lots of democratic union movements in recent American history have led to nothing after an initial victory, with incompetence usually being the biggest reason. Most certainly, Emanuel did not respect Lewis. But the CTU now started something called Bargaining for the Common Good, which meant centering community demands in bargaining. In short, a union contract wasn’t just about making more money for teachers, though sure, that was part of it. It was about saving the public school system from privatization. This proved tremendously successful when the CTU walked off the job, as most of the parents, seriously inconvenienced by the strike, actively supported the teachers. They knew what those schools were like.

The strike lasted seven days and grabbed national attention. They wanted to reduce standardized testing, win protections for teachers who lost their jobs due to school closures, and see an increase in music and art programs, as well as more PE. Emanuel and his merry band of neoliberal privatizers were completely caught off guard about what happened. His appointee as CEO of the CPS, a long time charter hack named Jean-Claude Brizard, stated, “We severely underestimated the ability of the Chicago Teachers Union to lead a massive grassroots campaign against our administration. It’s a lesson for all of us in the [education] reform community.” Now, this was a defensive strike. This was about survival, not massive gains in any way. Victory was stopping Emanuel from total victory. And it was a victory. I mean, the entire idea of engaging in mass strikes had become almost unknown by 2012. A few years earlier, in 2009, the nation had its all-time low in strikes, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

So even breaking even was seen as a big win. At first, Emanuel tried to come up with a deal and they were close, but it fell apart. So Emanuel went to the injunction to force the teachers back to work. But that didn’t work and as it reached a second week, pressure really grew on the mayor. They came to a deal that was best called a truce and the teachers returned to work on September 18, with both sides claiming victory. The deal included decent raises and a longer school day (Chicago notoriously had the shortest school days in the country, only 6 hours for elementary schools), as well as for preferential hiring for teachers laid off due to the school closures.

Lewis intended to build upon this movement to challenge Emanuel for mayor. She might have won. Internal polling had her in the lead, although it’s hard to know what that means. Alas, she came down with brain cancer. She dropped out of the raise and hung in there for a few years, but died in 2021. A real tragedy for the labor movement. But Emanuel’s reputation among Democrats never recovered from his battles with CTU.

However, the energy of the CTU spread around the country. This is the real historical significance of this strike. CTU and Emanuel battled for the rest of his term, with another strike in 2019 after Lori Lightfoot had taken over as mayor. These battles continue today. Emanuel won his share of them too, especially on school closures. But this strike gave teachers around the country belief they could stand up for themselves against the neoliberals. Horrible people such as DC schools chief Michelle Rhee soon found themselves increasingly marginalized in a Democratic Party where they had believed themselves the future. Teachers made their voices heard. In 2018, a strike wave of teachers from ruby red states such as West Virginia and Oklahoma to deep blue cities such as Los Angeles engaged in Bargaining for the Common Good strategies to fight against terrible school funding, low pay, and other issues that affect all students and their families.

All of this hardly means that neoliberalism has been defeated in education. But during the Obama years, his worst policy profile was education, where he was all in on the Emanuel-Rhee regimes and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was a true believer. Meanwhile, Biden’s Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has worked hard to avoid alienating teachers unions. That’s much more about teacher activism than any strong opinions about such things from Biden, who embraces unions more than any president since at least Truman.

Eric Blanc had a good New Labor Forum piece in 2022, exploring the broader limits and significance of this strike ten years on. Good additional reading if you want more.

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