New York Times
September 10, 2012
The high-stakes strike by 26,000 public school teachers in Chicago is only the latest episode in which the nation’s teachers’ unions have been thrown on the defensive in the face of demands for far-reaching changes.
In community after community — even in major cities with strong
pro-union traditions, like Los Angeles and Philadelphia — teachers’
unions have faced a push for concessions, whether it is to scrap tenure
protections or to rely heavily on student test results to determine who gets a raise and who gets fired.
And now comes this high-profile showdown in President Obama’s own hometown, a labor stronghold. Rahm Emanuel,
the Democratic mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, is
demanding a raft of concessions that are anathema to union leaders and
their members. At the same time, with many teachers and their unions
already viewed unfavorably by many Americans, the union is taking a
gamble by engaging in a battle over changes that some education
advocates believe are needed to improve the nation’s schools.
The battle underlines just how much teachers’ unions, which have
provided sizable donations and many grass-roots volunteers to countless
Democratic campaigns, have been thrown back on their heels in recent
years.
If the famously feisty Mr. Emanuel wins this confrontation, he could set
the table for a major setback for teachers’ unions nationwide and a
potential rethinking of teachers’ enthusiasm for Democrats in this
year’s elections. Advocates of sweeping education changes like Michelle
Rhee, the former head of the school system in Washington, will be able
to declare that if Chicago’s mighty union was willing to accept such
changes, so should teachers’ union locals across the nation.
