Expand Parental Leave for CPS Employees

Mayor Lori Lightfoot

Mayor Lightfoot has once again interfered with CPS operations and derailed a process that was scheduled to expand our paid parental leave rights by a factor of 6, from 2 weeks to 12, come January 25th.

Background

On November 15, CPS officials told the CTU they would ask the Board of Education vote to approve a new parental leave policy modeled on a similar policy available to city employees, starting on January 1st, 2023. The policy enables city workers to take up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave to address the needs of a new child via birth, adoption or fostering. Currently, CTU members are only guaranteed 1 to 2 weeks of paid leave, unless they are eligible for short term disability.

In December, CPS further committed to the CTU that they were working to nail down details about the policy. That included reviewing key provisions and creating an FAQ to detail and explain the new benefits – with CTU Field Representative Kathy Murray providing feedback on CPS’ draft FAQ for CTU members. CPS said they expected the new policy to be presented to the mayor’s hand-picked board of education for a vote in January.

Then the Department of Labor Relations reversed CPS’ position. Instead, Labor Relations now says CPS will be “reviewing” a “possible” policy change and that no decisions or recommendations would currently be forthcoming.

Only the Mayor could have approved this sudden policy change. To verify the interference, we’ve filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain all communication between Lightfoot’s office and CPS on this matter, while Stacy has written directly to the mayor to urge her to allow CPS to fulfil their commitment to extend paid parental leave to our members as promised. Be clear: this about-face is part of a pattern of behavior by Lightfoot to attack union educators. Over 75 percent of us are women — and ALL deserve access to this paid family leave. The majority of the developed world already offers 12 week parental leave as a recognition of this fundamental human right. The mayor and her CPS administrators are now delaying and denying benefits to CPS employees that were just granted to other city workers.

This is part of the mayor’s playbook to anyone that challenges her: rejection, retaliation and denial of equal rights. We’ve had to fight tooth and nail, lobbying legislators and even striking for basic provisions in our labor agreements, a pattern that we can expect to continue should Lightfoot win a second term. We intend to ratchet up public pressure around Lightfoot’s back-pedaling, first by demonstrating our unity with the petition below demanding that she restore the promised benefits. We will deliver the signed petitions at a press conference on January 18 at the City Council meeting to expose this double standard.

To: Mayor Lori Lightfoot
From: [Your Name]

We the undersigned write to express our extreme disappointment and outrage at your refusal to provide educators and other CPS employees with equality in the application of the new City policy for expectant mothers and parents. While you enacted an expansion of paid parental leave to 12 weeks for City employees on January 1st, 2023, a similar effort within CPS has been blocked and delayed in perpetuity — even though over 75 percent of our members, as women, are in dire need of such benefits.

We see this as grossly disparate treatment and part of a pattern of behavior that retaliates against teachers for taking principled stands — from your insistence on needlessly keeping educators on the picket lines for 11 days in 2019, to your lockout of educators for four days as we sought to keep our school communities safe and operational in the midst of a dangerous Covid outbreak.

The lack of parental leave in the United States is a tragic denial of access to necessary healthcare and family planning. Instead of acknowledging this appalling gap in key medical benefits across city agencies, you are picking winners and losers. This will only exacerbate the teacher shortage and increase the likelihood that you will once again force the CTU out on strike when our contract expires in 2024.

Family leave expansion could be a collaborative effort between the city and members of school communities to address benefit gaps holistically. Instead, given your historically unfair treatment of school personnel for the entirety of your administration, we fear these basic rights will be used to reward supporters and punish detractors.

We hope that is not the case — and that the mayor’s office and your appointed Board of Education will reconsider and immediately place approving expanded paid parental leave for CPS employees back on the agenda for the Wednesday, February 22nd Board of Education meeting.