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A clip of a Chicago Tribune article published on Nov. 1, 2000, quite possibly the last time there was a teacher strike in District 209. | Screenshot
Thursday, February 17, 2022 || By Michael Romain || @maywoodnews
The teachers, who had been working without a contract since June 30, met on a Friday to discuss the district’s latest offer.
The union and the District 209 administration were at odds over salary increases and vagueness about teacher responsibilities related to an extension of the school day, among other issues. And the negotiations had gotten so tense that a federal mediator was tapped to help facilitate a resolution.
This may sound familiar, considering the present contract negotiations happening within D209, but there’s a difference. It happened two decades ago. What is past is prologue.
An analysis of Chicago Tribune articles from the period show that the very issues that currently divide the union and administration today were strikingly similar to the ones that divided the two sides back then.
Several months of tense negotiations led to Oct. 31, 2000, likely the last time D209 teachers went on strike, according to a search of newspaper archives. An attempt on Thursday to confirm this with the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board (IELRB) was unsuccessful.
That strike in 2000 lasted 10 days, but resulted in a new four-year contract for teachers that was “only marginally better than the offer they rejected just before their walkout,”according to a Tribune article published Nov. 10, 2000.
At the time, the union, prompted by a recommendation from its executive board, voted 157 to 137 in favor of the four-year agreement, which raised salaries by 7.5% in the first year and 4% in each subsequent year.
The union had initially sought a three-year contract that would have raised salaries by 9% the first year and 4% in each of the next two years, the Tribune reported.
The issues animating the contract negotiations more than two decades ago echo the ones at the heart of this most recent bargaining cycle.
In 2000, Proviso teachers emphasized that they were underpaid relative to surrounding districts while administrators emphasized students’ low test scores in an effort to more closely tie teacher pay to performance, according to Tribune reporting.
“Union officials said their survey of 34 area high school districts showed Proviso teachers rank near the bottom of the list in pay,” the Tribune reported. “Under the new proposal, starting teachers would be paid on average $31,686, about $3,000 below the average among the 34 districts.”
Other issues at the heart of the negotiations were ways of increasing instructional time by 30 minutes — a concept both sides agreed with, but that still had to be fleshed out.
If the old articles help put today’s bargaining talks into historical context, they also provide a cautionary tale for what might happen if a strike happens this year.
“Any we go on strike, we tell our colleagues they should expect a long strike,” union negotiator Tom Smith told the Tribune for a Nov. 1, 2000 article. “That certainly could be the case here. We’re hopeful that we’re wrong.”
Along with slightly higher salaries, those 10 days of picketing and negotiations ultimately yielded improved health benefits, but the pain of frayed relationships within the district may have lingered, the Tribune reported.
“Basically, we went out on strike for nothing because the contract we accepted was essentially the same thing we rejected,” Pamela Panagakos, an English teacher at Proviso West, said.
Don Varanauski, then the president of the teachers union, told the Tribune that negotiators took the offer after it became clear the board simply would not budge.
“I think there’s gong to be a lot of hard feelings,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time to heal, both inside the organization and within the administration.”
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