(The Center Square) – Chicago Teachers Union members have begun voting on a labor contract that would raise their average salary to more than $114,000 a year.
Voting was scheduled Thursday and Friday on a four-year collective bargaining agreement with Chicago Public Schools.
Mayor Brandon Johnson expressed support for the deal earlier this month.
Mailee Smith, senior director of labor policy and staff attorney at the Illinois Policy Institute, said the contract will burden taxpayers.
“It’s estimated to cost around $1.5 billion, and Johnson has said he doesn’t have a plan yet to pay for it,” Smith told The Center Square.
CPS teachers currently have an average salary of more than $93,000 per year. If they approve the tentative agreement, the number would rise to $114,429 by the end of the contract.
Smith said teachers can expect to pay more in dues to CTU.
“When government unions like Chicago Teachers Union are advocating for higher salaries for teachers and for other school employees, what they are really advocating for is a higher dues amount coming from that employee, because every time they score a win in the raise category, that means they are also going to be taking more money out of that person’s paycheck,” Smith said.
CTU raised member dues by 13% for fiscal year 2024. Teachers currently pay the union an average of more than $1,400 per year.
According to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, the agreement gives teachers their largest annual raises in over 13 years. The deal also calls for CPS to add up to 900 new positions.
“We anticipate that the agreement will increase staffing from current levels by several hundred positions over 4 years, with most of these additional staff serving our highest-need populations like our English Learners and students with disabilities,” Martinez wrote in a letter to CPS families. “The final total of additional staff will be dependent on District and school-level enrollment and need.”
In the letter, Martinez thanked the CPS bargaining team and detailed how much time and government labor went into the negotiations.
“These dedicated professionals have spent close to a year negotiating in good faith, responding to more than 700 initial proposals and countless counter proposals to get us to this point,” Martinez said.
The contract, if approved, could affect the district’s federal funding. Smith said the contract allows CPS to hide students’ preferred gender identity from parents.
“They must respect the student’s privacy, especially if parents or family members don’t know how they identify. There’s definitely language in this contract that keeps secrets from parents,” Smith said. “If that is something that a Trump administration or the current Department of Education, however that works out, places strings on with their federal funding, that could be a problem for Chicago.”
Teachers have been working without a contract since June 30, 2024, when the previous collective bargaining agreement expired.
According to the Chicago Teachers Union Local 1 website, every CTU member in the district gets to vote on whether to accept the tentative agreement with CPS.
“This [tentative agreement] only becomes our contract if a majority vote of our membership approves it and when the Board of Education votes to adopt it,” CTU posted.
In order to vote, members must have documentation to show they are a member of the union.
“A state issued ID along with either a CTU membership card or a payment stub from this year showing dues deduction will suffice,” a statement on the CTU Local 1 website read.
Results of the vote are expected to be announced on Monday, April 14.
If CTU members ratify the agreement, it would go to the Chicago Board of Education for approval. Then, according to Martinez, the board would have to pass an amendment to fund the first year of the contract.
