Chicago Teachers Union
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| Founded | 1937 |
|---|---|
| Members | 30,000 (2013) |
| Head union | Karen Lewis (president) |
| Affiliation | AFT, NEA, AFL-CIO Illinois Federation of Teachers |
| Key people |
Margaret Haley Jacqueline B. Vaughn |
| Office location | 1901 West Carroll Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60612 |
| Country | United States |
| Website | ctunet.com |
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is a labor union representing teachers, paraprofessionals, and clinicians in the Chicago public school system. The union has consistently fought for improved pay, benefits, and job security for its members, and it has resisted efforts to vary teacher pay based on performance evaluations. It has also pushed for improvements in the Chicago schools, and since its inception argued that its activities benefited students as well as teachers.
The CTU united several teachers' organizations in Chicago in the wake of a teachers' revolt against banks during the Great Depression. It was chartered in 1937 as Local 1 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in which it played a founding role. It was the largest and most active AFT Local until the 1960s. The CTU won collective bargaining rights in 1966 and conducted several strikes during the 1970s and 1980s. In September 2012, the union began its first strike in 25 years.
The CTU is also affiliated with the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and the AFL-CIO. It has more than 30,000 members. Current officers come from the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, elected in 2010 to replace the longstanding United Progressive Caucus. They are: President Karen Lewis, Vice President Jesse Sharkey, Recording Secretary Michael Brunson and Financial Secretary Maria Moreno.
The CTU originated from the Chicago Teachers Federation (CTF), an organization of women elementary school teachers founded in 1897. In its first few years, it ran a successful campaign to increase teacher pay, and its membership grew to 2500. In 1900, the CTF elected Catherine Goggin and Margaret Haley as its officers, deciding to pay them the same wages as those made by teachers.
Under the leadership of Haley and Goggin, the CTF struggled for women's suffrage, for women's rights within the labor movement, and for the right of woman workers to earn as much as their male counterparts. The CTF also launched a successful campaign against corporate tax evasion, the compensation for which was used to pay back salaries upon which the city had reneged.
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Wikipedia