CHICAGO -- Chicago Teachers Union boss Jesse Sharkey talks like a working-class tough guy.

"This is a union that is prepared to strike," he said after rejecting the city's offer to boost teacher pay by 16 percent over five years, and piggyback money in the budget to boost the number of social workers, librarians and nurses. It might even be true. Chicago teachers had a rough go of it under Rahm Emanuel. Layoffs, furloughs and budget cuts so steep that some parents donated toilet paper to local schools. You can't blame rank-file-teachers for being fed up.

But what makes almost everything Sharkey says difficult to believe is that the socialist union boss privately enjoys the posh life of a rich guy who can afford to walk a picket line. [COMMENTARY]

Maybe you've seen Sharkey's snarled lip while protesting the evils of Chicago's elite that keep the working man down, and using his bully pulpit to rail against certain mega corporations. Chicago-based McDonalds, for instance. "I am here to communicate the growing concerns from people across the globe regarding the devastating impact McDonald's is having on workers, our food system, and health of our children," Sharkey said at a 2015 McDonald's shareholders meeting.

What most people don't know is that the CTU boss lives with his wife and kids in a $1.5 million Rogers Park estate — 4 bedrooms complete with a second-floor patio, a third-floor "master retreat," a sunroom and an electric car by Tesla, a non-union automaker, parked in the garage — that stretches across three lots a short walk from Lake Michigan. Go ahead, take a tour.

How can a union guy, whose wife works for a socialist non-profit book publisher, live like the wealthiest 1 percent?

It probably doesn't hurt that Sharkey's father-in-law is Richard Fain, the Republican financier who owns and operates Royal Caribbean Cruises. Here's one example: A Fain-family trust bought the lot next to Sharkey's house for $625,000 in 2006, according to public records. Not that there's anything wrong with that.