A state labor relations board sided with the Chicago Teachers Union Thursday, voting unanimously to seek an injunction that would stop Chicago Public Schools from offering financial incentives to teachers who add time to their days.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made a longer school day one of his top priorities, and the vote by the five-member Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board threatens to disrupt his efforts, at least temporarily.
The labor board’s decision is only the first step in a legal process. The board must petition Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to pursue the case and, if she agrees, the panel would then ask a circuit court judge to grant the injunction.
After unsuccessfully pressuring the union to agree to a longer day, Emanuel and CPS chief executive Jean-Claude Brizard began a pilot program that offers financial incentives to elementary schools whose teachers vote to waive a portion of the union contract and lengthen their school day by 90 minutes.
Three schools cashed in on the incentives just days before school started, and 10 more have followed suit.
In a complaint filed with the labor relations board last month, the teachers union said the pilot program unlawfully coerced and bribed teachers at individual schools in an attempt to circumvent the union.
Robert Bloch, the union’s lawyer, said the board’s ruling is less about preventing a longer school day than it is about preserving the union’s collective-bargaining rights. If CPS is not stopped, the administration will have “thrust a dagger into the heart of collective bargaining,” Bloch said during Thursday’s hearing.
An injunction would prevent additional schools from signing on to the pilot program and may even undo the longer day at nine of the 13 schools that have already switched to the new schedule.
CPS lawyers argued that an injunction would be a significant disruption for the schools who have already made the switch. “Those 4,000 kids cannot afford to have those 90 minutes taken away from them,” attorney James Franczek said.
“We’re dismayed,” Franczek said after the board’s vote. “It appears to me that the labor board had made up its mind before it came today.”
CPS officials issued a statement Thursday afternoon saying the decision “is not consistent with either law or the labor contract.”
The district’s lawyers contended that the pilot program did not violate the collective-bargaining agreement because it allows teachers to vote on contract waivers at individual schools. Both sides agreed that waivers have long been used to adjust schedules at individual schools. For example, a number of schools have used a waiver to implement a longer lunch and recess period in the middle of the day.
But Bloch said that by using waivers to implement a district-wide policy “the school board sought to make the union irrelevant.”
“Under the school board’s logic, it could rewrite the entire contract…as long as it did so on a school-by-school basis,” he said.
Questions remain about how the longer school day will be implemented next year. Community leaders, parent organizations, the City Council and student groups have held meetings and made recommendations to the district about what activities they would like to see in a longer school day.
Lynn Morton, a CPS parent and organizer for the group POWER-PAC, thinks it is not wise for the district to shut out the union, but said her main concern is how the district plans to pay for a longer school day.
“Based on what they’ve said, I have no clue how they’re going to fund this,” Morton said. “Where the money is coming from for the individual schools, I don’t know.”
Teachers at schools that are part of the pilot program are to receive a lump-sum payment equal to a 2 percent raise. When asked how the district planned to fund the pilot program, CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said officials will “cut into bone” to find money in the budget.
Prior to Thursday’s hearing, CTU officials said the union asked CPS to settle the labor dispute by limiting the pilot program to the existing 13 schools, validating the teacher votes and appropriately compensating teachers and other school staff for the longer work hours. The district rejected that offer, Bloch said.
For now, schools that have already added 90 minutes will continue to do so and the district will “rigorously defend a longer school day,” CPS officials said in a statement.
But the CTU sees the district’s methods as misguided. “Even the best ideas don’t excuse unlawful conduct,” Bloch said.