The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) September 7, 2005, meeting of the House of Delegates at Plumbers Hall saw President Marilyn Stewart continue her hurtle into history as what many delegates now agree is the most openly corrupt presidency in the history of this union. During the three years that Deborah Lynch was union president, Stewart led or joined in disruptions and catcalls from the floor of the House, regularly showing disrespect for the delegates and the traditions of the union. Today, she and her supporters continue that same tradition while she runs the meetings from the podium.

Onslaught on democracy and delegates

Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart told the House of Delegates in September that a mail ballot to teachers’ homes shouldn’t be done because many teachers cheated on their required Chicago residency. Delegates criticized Stewart and her supporters for opening up the union’s members to a major public scandal because of their desire to avoid mail ballots in union elections, despite the fact that New York and Los Angeles already follow the mail-ballot procedure. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

Debbie Lynch savaged again by sleazy tricks at the September meeting

The September 7, 2005 meeting was no different from the heated meetings of the past year. The official question period — which is now the only place where the Stewart administration will sometimes let a delegate get away with making a motion — has come to be shunted to the end of the meeting. This seems to be based on the hope of the union chiefs that many delegates will have left by the time motions are officially in order. Stewart’s people can then make a call for quorum (meaning that approximately 300 delegates of roughly 1,000 must still be remaining for a vote to be conducted), effectively ending the meeting. Stewart’s people can also make a motion to suddenly adjourn the meeting if the speakers lined up at the mikes are those whose motions they fear.

The effect is a system which is guaranteeing that fewer and fewer voices from the schools are heard, and that a growing number of delegates are even leaving the meetings very early or not bothering to go at all.

This stifling of democracy happened when Debbie Lynch was to be the next speaker on Microphone One during what I will from now on call the “Official Question and Motion” portion of the meeting. Lynch was at the microphone. Suddenly, Sharon Orlowek, delegate from Johnson School (a UPC member and chair of a number of union committees, and part-time staff member of the Class-size Committee) made a motion to adjourn the meeting. Orlowek’s motion was voted down by a loud voice vote of No.

Once Orlowek’s motion for adjournment had been voted down, Lynch was able to make her motion. She moved for the reinstatement and refiling of the class action grievance on the 5 + 5 early retirement plan for teachers. This grievance had been dropped by the Stewart administration. After losing 5+5, Stewart then promoted her “victory” in getting a modest ERO (Early Retirement Option) for teachers. As was widely noted, the “5 + 5” option is much more lucrative for veteran teachers and affects a very large number of union members. The “ERO”, by contrast, is relatively expensive to members and is limited to a small number of teachers.

When the motion on the “5 + 5” question came before the House in September, it was the first time Deborah Lynch had spoken at length as a member of the House since Stewart took over the union in August 2004. She was well received by the majority remaining at the meeting, but many members of the UPC were as nasty as possible, unable to refrain from making personal attacks on the former president.

In speaking to her motion, Lynch said that she hoped that this leadership had not exchanged 5 + 5 for the ERO. The ERO benefit for 450 people paled in comparison to the 4,000 union members the 5 + 5 would have benefited. She said that under the Lynch administration, the Board of Education had signed an agreement to push for 5 + 5, or some comparable benefit to retiring teachers, and had reneged on their agreement. She said that unlike what the Stewart administration keeps implying, the Board knew that the ERO was not a comparable benefit. By dropping the class action grievance, Lynch said, the Stewart leadership allowed the Board to do nothing.

Lynch’s motion was followed by mass confusion on the part of the Stewart “team.” Attorney Jennifer Poltrock spoke to say that the officers had decided not to pursue 5 + 5 and that Lynch’s Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) against them for dropping the grievance had been dismissed. Lynch’s rejoinder was that the ULP decision was being appealed. A large number of delegates noted that the ULP appeal had nothing to do with the question before the House of Delegates, which has the right of the House to decide on matters such as the 5 + 5 grievance.

President Stewart at first tried to say that two-thirds of the House would have to vote “Yes” to pass a motion reinstating the class-action grievance. Lynch challenged the ruling and said that it was a simple majority that was needed. She said that the House had to vote it up or down.

Pam Massarsky — who served as CTU Recording Secretary for the “Old” UPC under Tom Reece, among others, during the 1980s and 1990s — is now a patronage worker for our union as a Springfield lobbyist. Nevertheless, Massarsky, although officially a retired teacher who doesn’t hold any elected union office, is now one of the most active people at every House meeting, where she usually speaks more than any delegate from any school. Without being asked by President Stewart, Massarsky rose to say that Lynch’s “5 + 5” motion had to automatically go to committee.

Diana Sheffer — like Massarsky, another retired UPC staff member also rewarded now with a union staff job — rose, without being asked by the president, to help Massarsky run the meeting from the House floor. Sheffer asked the president hadn’t she ruled it to be referred to the executive committee.

There was at this point a vote. The Ayes had it. Most people thought that they were voting on Lynch’s motion, which had wide support. Sheffer then said that the House had voted to discuss Lynch’s motion — that we had not voted on the motion itself. There were cries at this point asking, “Who’s running this meeting?” President Stewart answered, “I’m running it.”

President Stewart then declared that the House had voted to hear the motion, but had not voted on the motion. In the midst of the confusion, she then conducted a vote on the motion itself. Possibly because it was apparent that the majority had voted Yes (or “Aye”) to pass the motion, Stewart then interrupted the vote and asked Lynch to put her motion in writing, which Lynch did. The aisles weren’t cleared for the vote, as is customary. The Yes vote was then “continued” after a reading of the written motion as presented by Lynch, and many people weren’t sure as to what was happening. It wasn’t clear that those voting Yes for the motion should remain standing, but many were. Then the No vote was taken.

It was so clear to me that the Yes vote on the Lynch motion had won that I didn’t even count. Others from different parts of the large hall agreed.

Nevertheless, Stewart announced that the vote count was 72 Yes and 93 No. (Please see the Letters section of this issue of Substance for the reaction of delegates and others.) Stewart said that the Lynch motion was defeated. Amid shouts of protest, Lynch moved for a roll call vote. At that time a UPC stalwart — name unknown — called for the meeting to be adjourned. The next thing everyone knew, Stewart said the meeting was over and everyone was told to leave.

Our beloved union—a deathly stench rising?

It has become embarrassing to have friends and family who are not directly associated with the schools or the union to read these reports, and for me to have to admit that this is what our union has come to.

It is small wonder, then, that some of our union members been in discussion with the Illinois Education Association (part of the National Education Association), a rival union, about ending the 70-year relationship between Chicago’s school workers and the Chicago Teachers Union (part of the national American Federation of Teachers). Outside the September House meeting, a number of delegates were distributing a leaflet inviting union members to a meeting to explore getting another union to represent Chicago teachers and ESPs.

A week after the House meeting, a group of more than 40 CTU members attended a meeting at the Parthenon restaurant in Greektown to listen to presentations about how we could have an election in 2006 or 2007 to choose a new union to represent those currently covered by the CTU contract. According to those present, it would take roughly 10,000 - 12,000 signatures (one third of the active CTU membership) on a petition asking for such an election to be held. If such a petition drive were successful, an election to determine whether the Chicago Teachers Union or the new union — in this case, a local of the Illinois Education Association (IEA) would represent the members in negotiating the 2007 union contract. Because the election would be conducted independent of all factions within the Chicago Teachers Union, the chances of manipulation would be minimized.

The specter of a split in the Chicago Teachers Union was ironically noted during the meeting. In her President’s Report, Stewart spoke of the disaffiliation of at least four unions from the AFL-CIO at the AFL-CIO’s July national convention in Chicago and made an appeal for “labor unity.” At the AFL-CIO in July, members of the CTU were called out for a rally in support of AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, who had the backing of the national teachers’ union against the dissidents.

The issues are complex, but the boil down to who will get a contract that does better for CTU members and enables members to win back the rights that have been stripped away or surrendered the past ten years or so.

Members will need to examine what the IFT and the AFT have been doing to improve the situation of the Chicago union members in the schools. Anyone holding a union membership card can attend a meeting of the House of Delegates and watch the Stewart faction in action. Another source of information would be to call suburban school districts and ask for copies of their union contracts, comparing them with Chicago union members’ pay, benefits, and working conditions.

Thirty years ago, when Chicago first got collective bargaining, Chicago members were doing better than our suburban counterparts. In the course of the careers of many teachers now retired or approaching retirement, the opposite has happened. Suburban teachers now do better than Chicago teachers, and most suburban teachers are represented by the IEA. With the advent of the Internet, research comparing the pay, benefits, and working conditioins of members in the Chicago Teachers Union (affiliated with the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers) and members of the IEA can be easily done. Critics of the CTU have noted that many suburban teachers early larger pensions than senior Chicago teachers earn working full-time after 30 or more years in the classroom! Few suburbs offer the challenging working conditions of Chicago, and none regularly threaten teachers with termination because their schools are “failing” through no fault of the teachers.

The meeting at the Parthenon was organized by a union caucus called “CEEC”. [Deborah Lynch heads the PACT caucus, while the union’s not offices — but not the entire executive board — are now controlled by the UPC].

Bill Malugen, delegate from Roosevelt High School, and organizer for CEEC (Chicago Educational Employees Caucus), told Substance: “The single reason that the Chicago teachers and others are so behind in salary and benefits compared to the teachers in the rest of Illinois is that for three decades under the rule of the UPC, who are now back in power. The leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union failed to protect its teachers.”

Malugen spoke of the two percent raises in the 1990s and the erosion of benefits and seniority rights under former President Tom Reece and others. He also talked of ending the corruption of the “Old/New” UPC.

Also at issue is how much power the union leadership is placing in the hands of its now-retired former staff members and its expensive lawyers. A flier from CEEC distributed at the September meeting, states: “The AFT allowed its General Counsel, Larry Poltrock, to represent UPC, and they failed to acknowledge that voter misconduct took place in the last officers’ election.”

The CEEC flier also states: “Marilyn [President Stewart] saw fit to bring back the same people who were forced to return $325,000 to the CTU when they were defeated in 2001. Marilyn gave herself, officers and field staff a $2,000 Christmas bonus. Marilyn restored the 21% annuity payment to herself, officers and staff at a cost of nearly $600,000 to our members. Marilyn restored the $18,600 TAX-FREE expense accounts for herself, officers and staff…. We are returning to the days of Tom Reece and the ineffective and corrupt leadership that existed then. He’s back along with Pam Massarsky, Diana Sheffer, Gail Koffman and June Davis. IT’S TIME FOR A CHANGE.”

Doubletalk on the mail ballot

The Stewart administration is using its power to stall every democratic attempt to reform the Chicago Teachers Union. Election procedures are one example. The topic of elections now comes up at every union meeting.

At the May, 2005, House of Delegates meeting, Sandra Finkel, delegate from Franklin School, submitted to the Stewart leadership a petition from PACT (Pro-Active Chicago Teachers and School Employees), the caucus of Debbie Lynch. The petition had the signatures of 2,450 union members (many more than the 1,750 signatures required).

The petition requested that a referendum be held on the question of the mail ballot for all union elections, with safeguards in place such as double envelopes and an outside agency to conduct the election in entirety. This would eliminate the problem of unused ballots being used to cast fraudulent votes, which is a problem that can arise when voting is conducted in the schools. The mail ballot had been used for several citywide votes under the Lynch administration, but only part of the process was in place during the controversial elections held in May and June 2004. (An independent outside firm, the American Arbitration Association, collected and counted the ballots after they were cast in the schools. But the balloting in the schools that led to the controversy over fraud in the June 2004 vote was done under the supervision of the union delegate at each site).

At the June, 2005, meeting, when Sandra Finkel and Larry Milkowski, delegate from Carver High School, both asked at various times about the status of the petition, they were told that the office staff was “verifying the signatures”, but that all other work could not stop. The union officers acted as if the verification of signatures would take forever.

At the September 2005 meeting, more than 120 days had passed since the petition was submitted. When Finkel raised the question about the status of the referendum for the mail ballot during the pre-meeting question period, she was told that the staff was still working on it. When Finkel tried to ask again about the timeline for the referendum, she was told that they were still working on it. In his report, Financial Secretary Mark Ochoa stated that there were some duplications of signatures in the petition. Delegates tried to point out that the petitions had more than 500 signatures more than required by the CTU Constitution and By-Laws to mandate a referendum on the question.

What has been going on? Ignoring a petition that was already signed by so many more than the requisite number of members, what was presented at the September meeting by the Stewart team? While stalling the mail ballot petition, Stewart now has her own petition for a referendum on a different approach to the mail ballot. Stewart’s version wants a mail ballot at the workplace In what they called the “Residency Privacy Protection Amendment,” UPC members asked the delegates to gather signatures on their version of how the union should conduct elections.

A member of the Rules Election Committee, Sandra Finkel said after the meeting: “Since the Rules Election Committee was not involved in this new petition, where did it come from?”

It is as if everything is emanating from the officers with no input, or checks and balances from union members, delegates, or duly appointed committees.

Stewart’s petition is based on the admission that some union members are living outside the city and using fraudulent city address, despite the fact that everyone signed an agreement to be living in the city or to move into the city as a condition of employment. Now that their petition is public, Stewart and her caucus are planting a time bomb to be used against Chicago teachers and other union members.

“Any time the Daley administration, Arne Duncan, or the mass media decides to begin enforcing the clear residency policies of the Chicago Board of Education and exposing residency ‘cheating’ by Chicago teachers, they can now begin their stories by quoting the petition of the President of the Chicago Teachers Union,” said one long-term observer of union politics and public relations, who asked to remain anonymous. “Stewart was not thinking when she went along with this bizarre plan. Her lawyers had better be ready to defend anyone who is caught in a residency audit. Everyone has signed a legal promise to have city residency. Those who have broken that promise have also broken the law and can be fired if the Board of Education decides to go after them. This thing could lead to days of teacher bashing headlines and bad feelings all around. What was she thinking when she supported this petition?”

Union chiefs take Lynch mail ballot idea, but change it leaving a loophole for fraud

With this new petition, no longer are the union chiefs arguing that the mail ballot would be too difficult for Chicago union members to cope with and voter turnout would be low (seeing as how the unions in major cities use the mail ballot and members cope, and how the AFT recommended the mail ballot to dispel charges of election fraud).

As delegates listened to Stewart try to explain why there should be a mail ballot, but that it not be mailed to members’ homes, more questions than answers arose. Earlier, the UPC simply opposed the mail ballot. UPC leaders demanded that the cumbersome school votes (with paper ballots, under the supervision of the school delegate) be continued. This type of election was in place through the 2001 upset victory of Debbie Lynch over Tom Reece. At the dawn of the 21st Century, the technology that was used by the Chicago Teachers Union was an invitation to fraud and a joke. As the 20th Century ended, the union was still using 19th Century voting technology.

Now the crux of the UPC argument regarding the mail ballot has changed. Now the mail ballot is OK, but mailing the ballots to union members at their homes is being opposed by the leaders. The UPC states that it “is inadvisable where there is a mandatory residency requirement or where the addresses of employees have not been kept current for one reason or another.”

Stewart admitted in her report that New York and Los Angeles use the straight-to-the-home mail ballot, but claimed that because those cities don’t have a residency requirement there should be a difference with Chicago. She said the voter turnout for the mail ballot was extremely low. Her argument for this new petition says, “Mailing a ballot to the workplace is far more practical.” She didn’t say why the union — with an annual budget of more than $20 million — couldn’t clean up its mailing list in time for a major election which will not take place until 2007.

Problems with the Stewart proposal abound, but are only being discussed in the halls. Yes, I say, if you want to steal an election, it is far more practical to mail the ballots to the schools. Just as there are address irregularities and members might have to make a call if they receive no ballot at their address, there are also many mistakes on what school a union member is at, as many delegates can testify when they receive their rosters of union members. Names appear on the delegates’ rosters of members long retired, or long transferred to other schools, or even long deceased. These ballots can easily then be used to cast a fraudulent vote. Names of members who have long been at a particular school are also often missing from the roster.

Also, as we all know, there are some teachers at every school who, as everyone there knows, do not clear their mailboxes daily and would not miss a ballot. These ballots too can be used to cast a fraudulent vote. And the ballot of any teacher can be surreptitiously removed, and that teacher has the right to get another ballot….You see where I’m going….What happens if the stolen ballot is cast fraudulently?

The officers’ petition says, “Elections are the most democratic where the greatest number of participants are afforded the opportunity to vote.” Others say, “Elections are least democratic where there is the greatest opportunity for fraud.”

Are our officers by their announcements really telling the Board that there are so many union members lying about where they live? And are the few who are not living at their addresses-of-record really so dumb that they can’t get mail from the Board or the CTU at that address-of-record? If that is the case, then all the Board of Education has to do is send one mailing to those addresses and use the returned mail as the basis for a list of possible residency violators to investigate. And Stewart herself has virtually invited the Board to open this attack on Chicago teachers whenever the Board decides to! The Chicago Board of Education is the largest individual employer in the State of Illinois and maintains computer records of everything from teacher certification to employee payroll and tax records. Like the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents the majority of people who work for that employer, the Board devoted a great deal of time and resources to maintaining an accurate record of the address of every employee of the Board. Members have already given their address of choice to their employers, to their union. All members can be urged by advertisements to make sure that the Board and the CTU have correctly listed their address of choice. And the election is not scheduled for some time.

Partisan shenanigans regarding pension trustee endorsements

Dumping the incumbent pension trustees who won the mail ballot election for trustee but which election the judge overturned on the narrowest construction of pension by-laws which said there had to be a voting place designated, the UPC leadership placed the names of their cohorts for endorsement in one of the motions in the Items for Action.

Not endorsed were the winners of the first, now canceled, election: Rose Mary Finnegan, Pat Knazze, and Ernestine Murphy. These three are now the incumbents who have already served a term during the Lynch administration. Yet they were not endorsed because they were associated with PACT. Jackie Price Ward, former Recording Secretary under Lynch, is also a candidate the UPC did not choose to endorse.

Some bragging was done at the meeting from both the stage and the floor about how solvent our pension fund is, and how it has had no scandals.

Al Korach, retiree delegate, asked why the officers were dumping the incumbents then, if they had seemingly worked hard (“worked their butts off,” he said), had done a good job, and there were no scandals.

He got a fiery rebuttal from a young UPC partisan whose name, as I heard it, I could not find in the delegates’ handbook. She screamed, “What do you mean there was no scandal? These people sued other trustees who were members of the union and wasted my dues money doing it!” She sat down with a look of great satisfaction.

Unfortunately, there was no one at the next mike to explain that the trustees who were sued (some of them the new UPC endorsees) had spent $40,000 of the pension fund on a letter to all school employees to create a bogus scare during the great debates over the 2003 contract proposals brought in by the Lynch administration. At that time, they used some sleight-of-hand to get the Pension Board to send a letter claiming there was a line in the proposed contract that might allow for the Chicago pension fund to be merged with the state pension fund (which was poorly funded). This letter was mailed during a heated dispute over the contract, and was a rogue partisan action for which the four other trustees rebuked them.

The motion for the endorsement of the UPC candidate’s trustees passed. So did the other four motions which dealt with procedures for compiling contract proposals, retiree pension trustee endorsements, the replacement of Trustee Carolyn Ball with Christian Nze, and contributing $10,000 for the victims of Hurricane Katrina—note— to the AFT Disaster Fund.

Highlights and Lowlights

In the past, delegates had always been allowed to ask questions after any report that was given and to make pertinent motions. In the past year under the new leadership of President Stewart and team, neither questions nor motions were allowed. They were ruled out of order even though past practice in all the previous administrations had allowed them.

Maybe things are changing. I ventured out of my seat during Recording Secretary Mary McGuire’s report to speak about the kind of minutes we were receiving, and she told me to come to the mike. I said that the mikes had been removed to the front, an indication that members cannot speak from them. But then I scampered quickly to the mike so as to use this opening.

I said she had graciously responded immediately to my certified letter asking to see the transcripts of the June meeting — even though she said was undergoing a surgical procedure the next day. McGuire rushed in to say that I should hurry and come to see the transcripts as soon as the minutes for the June meeting were now approved at this September meeting.

Of course, being allowed to see the transcript of a meeting only after the members approve the minutes at the next meeting is useless to me in terms of writing this report as it must go in to be published before that next meeting. For example, I would love to see the transcript to get the name of the delegate who didn’t want the trustees of her caucus sued for doing the caucus work while on the pension trustee job.

I said that the “minutes” the delegates were provided violated the union by-laws and the constitution, as they did not state, as is required, what the outcomes of the officers’ motions in the Items for Action were. Nor did they state any motions made by delegates or the outcomes of those motions, as is required. I said that they were just replications of the Agenda for the last meeting, and that she ruled the corrections delegates wanted to make out of order.

McGuire stated that she was avoiding “the verbosity that would ensue.” While her devotees oooh’d and aaah’d at the fine word, I was trying to make myself heard. I said that there was no verbosity involved, that all she had to do was add the letter d to the word Approve in most cases to indicate that a proposed motion made by the officers had been approved. I said that she could easily, without much verbiage, give us minutes that reflected what had actually happened at meetings.

We’ll see if the outcomes of the motions made by the executive board and in the Agenda, as well as Debbie Lynch’s motion and its outcome, actually appear in the October meeting minutes.

On to another subject, not only have I not been allowed to see the transcripts in a timely way for the purposes of writing this report, but I only received my Chicago Union Teacher (CUT) newspaper today (as I am completing this report) at deadline on September 26th. My husband, also a retired Chicago teacher (and a former delegate) still has not received his. I wonder if this is happening to many people who do not receive the newspaper at a school, but in their homes.

Definitely a lowlight at the last June meeting, and one I failed to discuss in my previous report, was the comedy of errors surrounding the presentation of the Allen Wardell Award for 2005. The award is designed to recognize a member of the Union—regardless of sexual orientation—who has helped foster a safe and healthy learning environment for all students.

The June issue of the CUT pictured the honoree Ms. Dominique Martin, a fine arts teacher at Taft High School. The caption stated that “the formal presentation of the award” took place at the House of Delegates June meeting.

Unfortunately, when Ms. Martin tried to get into the hall to receive her award (after not being able to find a legal parking space — a frequent problem), she was not allowed into the meeting room at Plumbers Hall because she did not have a Delegate’s badge, according to Geoffrey Carlson, delegate at Taft, who accepted the award in her behalf, even though, as he said, he was not dressed for the occasion.

In the past, security at these meetings was provided entirely by union members appointed to be sergeants-at-arms and wearing armbands to signify it.

Now some of these, as well as some union notables, wear black on black shirts and ties or other variations of what some would call Chicago gangster motifs — and there are now hired security guards as well. I wonder which variety of watchdog stopped the award recipient from entering the hall. Heaven help us all.