On Thursday, the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB) decided to ask the state attorney general to proceed to court to prevent future illegal strikes by the Chicago Teachers Union.
The move comes after Chicago Public Schools filed the complaint to the labor board in response to CTU's one-day walk-out on April 1 over unfair labor practices. Forrest Claypool, the Chief Executive for Chicago Public Schools said the Labor Board ruled that the CTU leadership cannot conduct any forms of illegal strikes whenever they want, as per Reuters.
As reported by Progress Illinois, the district believes that the one-day strike was illegal because the fact-finding process in the contract negotiations has not been finished. The CTU, however, clarified that the strike was due to unfair labor practices and promised that they will never demonstrate similar strikes again.
According to the Madison Record, the CTU thought that the strikes will highlight their proposal which also includes their claims and solution to the issue. The union wanted a new revenue source in the form of progressive tax reform that would make the super-rich pay their fair share in the state taxes. The union has been planning on making strikes at the Chicago State University and Northeastern University. The group also want to protest at the Mondelez International plant on the southwest side to increase the minimum wage to $15.
The union believes that the governor's labor board is prosecuting its war on workers. The union added that the IELRB was ignoring legal precedents for more than a decade.
The Chicago Public School administrators have already asked for a binding arbitration in order to reach an agreement and avoid any strikes in the future, but the union didn't took the bait and ended the proposal. Governor Bruce Rauner, on the other hand, wants the state to take over the Chicago public school system.
