On Mon­day, the Chica­go Teach­ers Union ( CTU ) announced that its mem­bers had vot­ed in favor of amal­ga­mat­ing with the Chica­go Alliance of Char­ter Teach­ers and Staff ( Chi­ACTS ), which, since 2009, has orga­nized about 1,000 edu­ca­tors at over 30 char­ter school campuses.

With the approval of a his­toric union merg­er, teach­ers in Chica­go are posi­tion­ing them­selves to mount a greater chal­lenge to pri­va­ti­za­tion and austerity.

While coop­er­a­tion between union­ized edu­ca­tors at char­ters and dis­trict schools in the Unit­ed States is com­mon, this is the first known case in which teach­ers from both types of schools have merged into a sin­gle union local.

The move was approved by 70 per­cent of vot­ing mem­bers, accord­ing to the CTU. In a sim­i­lar vote last June, 84 per­cent of Chi­ACTS mem­bers endorsed the merger.

“These results are the out­come of a lengthy dia­logue among mem­bers,” CTU Vice Pres­i­dent Jesse Sharkey said in a state­ment. ​“We’ve declared that we’re stronger togeth­er in one big union. We’ve embraced our com­mon strug­gle to sup­port our work­ers, our stu­dents, their par­ents and our neighborhoods.”

“Edu­ca­tors in dis­trict and char­ter school share the same chal­lenges and the same com­mit­ment to our stu­dents and the pub­lic good,” said Chi­ACTS Pres­i­dent Chris Baehrend. ​“Togeth­er we can more effec­tive­ly fight for more fair, more equi­table fund­ing for our stu­dents and their needs, espe­cial­ly for our under­served Black and Brown stu­dents and their families.”

Illi­nois Net­work of Char­ter Schools Pres­i­dent Andrew Broy — who laments that ​“Chica­go has become the epi­cen­ter of char­ter union orga­niz­ing in the coun­try”— attacked the merg­er as a ​“pow­er grab” and ​“hos­tile takeover” by the CTU, despite the thumbs-up by a major­i­ty of Chi­ACTS members.

Lead­ers of both union locals say they don’t have a prob­lem with char­ter schools per se, but rather they oppose the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the char­ter sys­tem of man­age­ment, where pri­vate com­pa­nies admin­is­ter schools with pub­lic money.

“Char­ter schools are here; they’re not going any­where,” CTU Pres­i­dent Karen Lewis explained when the merg­er was first pro­posed last spring. ​“It’s the man­age­ment com­pa­nies we have the issues with, not the char­ter teach­ers, not the stu­dents, not the parents.”

Baehrend told In These Times last year that pri­vate man­age­ment com­pa­nies rep­re­sent ​“an extra lay­er of unac­count­able bureau­cra­cy” in char­ter schools, block­ing teach­ers from ​“the resources we need in our class­rooms.” ​“Char­ter pro­lif­er­a­tion does not help the char­ter schools that already exist,” he con­tin­ued. ​“It actu­al­ly spreads the pot of mon­ey more thin­ly,” lead­ing to bud­get cuts, lay­offs and low­er enrollments.

Over the past two decades, Chica­go has seen a dra­mat­ic expan­sion in the num­ber of char­ters, while dis­trict schools have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly under­fund­ed and shut down. In 2013, May­or Rahm Emanuel presided over the shut­ter­ing of 50 schools, one of the largest mass school clos­ings in history.

More recent­ly, Emanuel announced plans to close four dis­trict schools in the city’s pre­dom­i­nate­ly African-Amer­i­can neigh­bor­hood of Engle­wood, a move the CTU is cur­rent­ly fighting.

Union lead­ers hope that by orga­niz­ing teach­ers and staff at char­ter schools, and giv­ing them a voice to advo­cate for more resources through col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, the char­ter mod­el will become less attrac­tive to investors and pub­lic officials.

Between Octo­ber 2016 and May 2017, Chi­ACTS mem­bers vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to strike at three dif­fer­ent schools in order to win fair con­tracts. Each time, the work stop­pages were nar­row­ly avert­ed by last-minute agree­ments with management.

The local is cur­rent­ly run­ning cam­paigns to union­ize teach­ers and staff at Namaste Char­ter School on Chicago’s South Side and at Noble — a net­work of 18 char­ter high schools spread across the city. If the lat­ter is suc­cess­ful­ly orga­nized, it would be the largest union­ized char­ter sys­tem in the country.

Mean­while, in its most recent con­tract, approved in Novem­ber 2016, the CTU suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ed a cap on the open­ing of new char­ters schools.

As laid out by a ser­vice agree­ment signed in 2015, the CTU already assists Chi­ACTS with con­tract nego­ti­a­tions, and mem­bers of both locals have fre­quent­ly sup­port­ed one anoth­er at ral­lies and on pick­et lines.

With the uni­fi­ca­tion of the two unions into a sin­gle local, Chi­ACTS mem­bers will main­tain their exist­ing con­tracts with char­ter schools and will elect rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the CTU’s House of Del­e­gates and Exec­u­tive Board.

Sharkey says the merg­er ​“isn’t a mag­ic bul­let, but it does might­i­ly strength­en our hand against char­ter oper­a­tors,” mak­ing teach­ers ​“bet­ter pre­pared to chal­lenge Rahm, Rauner and Trump when they attack pub­lic edu­ca­tion and its workers.”