School Strike Coming

The arbitrator's report was rejected by both sides - unanimously by both sides:

• The long-awaited fact-finder’s recommendation on how to solve “toxic’’ Chicago teacher contract talks was finally made public Wednesday — but nobody wanted it.

  Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked school board and hundreds of Chicago Teachers Union delegates both, unanimously, rejected the recommendations of a fact-finder both sides had picked to help resolve their stalemate.

  School board president David Vitale said the cash-strapped district just didn’t have the money to pay recommended raises next year of 15 to 18 percent, totaling some $330 million. CPS had offered four years of two percent raises.

  Though the fact-finder had recommended a fat pay hike for teachers ordered to work 20 percent more next year, Chicago Teachers Union delegates didn’t like his dismissal of their concerns about job security. They said they fear the district’s growing use of “turnarounds” and school closings that displace good teachers through no fault of their own.

So Rahm completely united the teachers into a force that just may derail his national ambitions. He gambled all of his political credibility on an end-around in Springfield that pretty much attempted to remove the teachers from the process, and he is on the losing end. This explains his going completely balls out against the police and fire with his tame reporters. He's got to win somewhere and neither of our bargaining units can strike.