Pension Fight Takes Front and Center Stage Amidst Massive Budget Cuts


Jesse Sharkey, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President, clarified the CTU's position on the current pension debate.

The CTU is opposed to the Madigan Plan (actually, SB 1 with the Madigan Amendments) for fairly obvious reasons—it offers draconian cuts in benefits, fails to secure any additional revenue for pensions, and is blatantly unconstitutional.

We took ‘no position’ on the Cullerton Bill.  The Cullerton Bill 2404 does not directly affect us, and many other unions supported it, including the IFT.  So we did not want to burn bridges with them, but we do not favor the Cullerton approach to our own pension—again, it offers cuts with no additional funds for the pensions.

We did support HB 1920, which would have increased the amount CPS is putting into the fund up to $350 million, though this is still less than the full $600 million they owe.   We did this based on a simple political calculation that it was the best deal we could get at that time—it did not cut benefits and it added to the amount CPS was paying by $150 million.

Obviously there were problems with this approach--increasing CPS’ payment by $150 million without granting them any extra revenue would be likely to lead to cuts in education spending, layoffs, etc.  Also, it would have still shortchanged the pension fund.  As it happened, Quinn threatened to veto the bill, and the CTPF came out strongly opposed, so the bill failed. 

Now CPS does have to put in the full $600 million. 

So we’ll see what happens next.  CPS will budget very severe cuts at the schools—layoffs etc. and attempt to use that to pressure us to accept benefit cuts.  We are going to continue to insist that the solution involves taxing the rich.

Obviously, if the legislators put together a bill we’ll get out an alert about it as soon as we are able.

Yours in solidarity,

Jesse Sharkey

Vice-President, Chicago Teachers Union