The most recent Jacksonville District 117 teacher contract contains provisions that make the deal unaffordable for a struggling community with a poverty rate of 18 percent and incomes that are well below average for the state. The two-year agreement covered August 2012 to August 2014. Pay hikes: While the district managed to coax the Jacksonville...
Waukegan Public Schools have been closed for more than three weeks because of a teacher strike called by the Lake County Federation of Teachers. At this point, the acrimony between the union and the administration must be severe; and the children who attend the district’s schools, along with a lot of teachers, are stuck in...
Top 10 facts on labor policy in Illinois Unions are often presented as the plucky defenders of the working man or woman, whose only interest is seeing that workers get a fair shake on the job. But in reality, unions are well financed and powerful. And in government, at least, union influence goes beyond the...
The school board in Hinsdale Township High School District 86 is expected to approve a contract with the local teachers union this week, despite the fact that the school board refused to make the terms of this agreement available to the public. Luckily, on Oct. 19, the contract was obtained by the Illinois Policy Institute...
For weeks, teachers in Hinsdale Township High School District 86 threatened to strike after contract negotiations went awry. But on Oct. 9, the union and district officials reached a deal. A strike was avoided, but at what cost? Hinsdale taxpayers won’t find out until after the ink is dry on the new contract because of...
For weeks, teachers in Hinsdale Township High School District 86 threatened to strike after contract negotiations went awry. But on Oct. 9, the union and district officials reached a deal. A strike was avoided, but at what cost? Hinsdale taxpayers won’t find out until after the ink is dry on the new contract because of...
Hudson rights are important to Illinois government employees, because under state labor law unions are entitled to collect union dues – or their functional equivalent – from every worker they represent, even if the employee does not support the union. Hudson rights mitigate the harm done by forced dues, allowing workers to opt out of...
The Illinois Education Association, or IEA, has gotten even more wasteful, according to new LM-2 spending reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. IEA has a history of being a very wasteful union. In my review of union spending, I went through IEA operations spending – money that went into representation, politics and lobbying,...
Here’s what Waukegan High School student Kyra Lyons had to say to CBS Chicago on the subject of the Waukegan public-school teacher strike: “Neither of them are doing anything to help the students. It’s just about money and what they want.” Kyra is a perceptive young woman. The Lake County Federation of Teachers, which has...
On Sept. 31, a panel of judges from an Illinois appellate court found that state employees were owed back pay under the contract between the state and Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME. This has set off celebrations at AFSCME, whose position all along was that the...
A few weeks ago, Frank Manzo IV of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute teamed up with Robert Bruno from the University of Illinois Labor Education Program to release yet another demonstration of how sophisticated mathematical analysis can’t fix bad data. Their report, titled “Free Rider States: How Low-Wage Employment in Right to Work States is...
Over the course of the summer, the Illinois Policy Institute has been attempting to assess how many teachers have made use of their Hudson rights – their legal right to prevent their dues from being used for union politics – and how well Hudson rights are understood in Illinois public schools. Do teachers even know...
After a year-long campaign by the nonpartisan Mackinac Center and other groups to inform Michigan’s teachers of their right to leave their union, around 5,000 teachers have decided to do so. But more than 100,000 teachers in the state remain under union control. And the Michigan Education Association, or MEA, is claiming victory for managing...
Promote worker freedom by creating local right-to-work zones.