Despite being “surprised” by the “best fact-finding report” to date, the Chicago Teachers Union rejected a neutral fact-finder’s recommendations for a new, four-year contract Wednesday.
Instead, the union said it would return to the bargaining table with plans to reach an agreement with Chicago Public Schools because the recommendations only addressed two of the 15 issues the union raised in an 86-page brief submitted last month to fact-finder Martin Malin, an employment law expert.
However, those two recommendations affirmed CTU’s position that despite claims to the contrary, the district has the revenue to boost salaries and staffing as the union proposed, union officials said at a Wednesday news conference.
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates appeared gratified as she stood alongside her team.
“We have a landing space for this contract,” Gates told reporters. “We can get this done. If we look at the percentage points we’re apart, they’re minuscule,” she said.
Fact-finding is an advanced step in labor contract negotiations in which a third-party law arbitrator reviews briefs submitted by the union and Chicago Public Schools and then makes recommendations on ways two sides can agree. Bringing in an independent arbitrator to review both sides’ arguments typically occurs when contract discussions are stalled or there is a stalemate and is a required step before the union can go on strike. The union’s contract expired at the end of June. CTU and the district have been negotiating a new contract since April.
The union has repeatedly said the process, codified in the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act in 2010, is a hurdle that typically favors the employer rather than the employee.
In the 19-page fact-finding report released Wednesday evening, Malin, a professor emeritus at Chicago-Kent College of Law and the founder of its Institute for Law and the Workplace, did not make recommendations for other remaining contract sticking points, such as teacher evaluations, prep-time and class size, returning them to the two groups to solve, according to CTU attorney Latoyia Kimbrough. That left the union “no choice,” she said, but to reject the report, released publicly Wednesday evening, and return to the bargaining table with plans to reach an agreement.
The arbitrator’s report “exploded” the district’s claim that it cannot afford to put more financial resources into schools and recommends significant improvements in “educator compensation” and “necessary additional staffing for schools,” CTU Deputy Counsel Thad Goodchild said at Wednesday’s news conference.
CPS, which is currently facing a $500 million deficit, after federal pandemic relief funding ran out, has long maintained that it lacks the funds to meet the union’s demands to boost salaries by 5% during the first two years of the contract and hire hundreds of new teaching assistants and librarians. Their original proposal called for the district to fill nearly 14,000 new positions. CPS has countered with an increase of 400 additional staff, after adding more than 7,000 new positions since 2019.
“We do not have a way to pay for 1,000 additional positions even if they’re ramped in,” CPS Chief Talent Officer Ben Felton told the Tribune Jan. 30. “That’s a significant amount of money and whether that ultimately gets borrowed, there are very legitimate questions about our capacity to even borrow money.”
In a Wednesday night statement emailed to the Tribune, CPS said it shares the union’s view that the fact-finder’s report “will help both parties come to an agreement.”
However, the fact-finder’s “thorough and objective” recommendations underscore the district’s “financial obstacles,” a perspective “corroborated by an independent review by the Civic Federation,” according to the statement.
The district is “currently carefully reviewing the recommendations made to determine the most effective course of action in negotiations,” the statement continued and is “dedicated to providing educators with the compensation, tools, and resources they deserve, ensuring this is achieved in a sustainable and fiscally responsible manner,” according to the statement.
Now that the fact-finding report is public, CTU and the district have entered a 30-day cooling-off period, after which the union can issue a 10-day strike notice. Under the Illinois Labor Relations Act, the earliest a teachers’ strike could occur is mid-March.
However, the union has said it doesn’t want to strike.
Davis Gates told reporters last month that forcing the union’s hand “would be a “very cruel and mean joke.”
During Wednesday’s press conference, CTU officials said they will return to the bargaining table despite the “stalemate” they blame on embattled district CEO Pedro Martinez. They hope the fact-finders’ report will help inspire CPS to “get serious at the table” and move toward settling a contract.
“CEO Martinez was waiting for fact-finding. Well, fact-finding has happened, and now it’s over,” CTU’s Kimbrough said. “CEO Martinez and his team now need to show up differently to the table and let’s get this done.”
While CTU officials said Wednesday they hope the fact-finder’s report will prompt Martinez to “change his tune,” they aren’t waiting. In the coming weeks, they will brief stakeholders, including the Board of Education, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s team, City Council members and the public, on the two sides’ “final differences.”
Since 2010, the union and CPS have moved to fact-finding during three prior contract negotiation periods, two of which led to a strike.
