Almost 1,700 Chicago Public Schools support staffers have joined the Service Employees International Union after the school district dropped an objection to their organizing campaign.
The so-called “miscellaneous” workers won union membership after the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board certified a petition from Local 73 of SEIU to represent them last week.
Miscellaneous workers fill in for a wide range of support roles in schools across the district, including as tutors and recess monitors. Local 73, which already represents about 13,000 support staff members throughout the district, has argued that they often perform the same work as unionized workers in the city’s schools, but for less pay and no benefits.
“If this means that there’s going to be a lot of things that are going to change for the better, we’re happier,” said Janet Romo, 43, a miscellaneous worker at R.H. Lee Elementary in West Lawn. “We love the job. We wouldn’t be there with the salary or pay rate that we have, if we weren’t so passionate.”
The workers faced a rocky road to union membership. CPS initially opposed their organizing effort, arguing they were ineligible to join the union and asking the labor board to toss SEIU’s petition out. The district later withdrew the challenge.
On Feb. 27, the labor board certified the workers’ union petition, saying it had determined 56.5% of miscellaneous staffers had signed union cards with SEIU. The union had previously said it had won the support of around 70% of the workers, with officials attributing the gap largely to staff turnover.
A CPS spokesperson said in a statement that the district is coordinating with SEIU with the goal to begin bargaining next month.
“CPS is optimistic about engaging in a productive bargaining process that aims to achieve an agreement beneficial to both the employees and the district,” the spokesperson said.
After months of back-and-forth, miscellaneous workers say they’re happy for a seat at the table. Romo has worked at Lee Elementary for about a year, assisting in a first grade classroom and monitoring recess.
She said she signed a union card after learning of the benefits enjoyed by the organized staff, including paid winter and spring breaks, benefits and annual raises.
“Those were the things that got us like, ‘OK, it would be nice to also have a voice and representation,’ especially because we’re all Latinas in that school,” Romo said.
In between shifts, she’s in classes for a teaching degree. “I really, really am very passionate. I want to make a difference,” she added.
At Mary Lyon Elementary School in Belmont Cragin, miscellaneous worker Evelia Garcia Guzman shuffles between a variety of roles — she helps students cross the street, cleans classrooms, passes out snacks and supervises lunch. All five of her own children attended the school.
“We’re very excited, because we can finally say that we’re going to have someone who will look out for us, for our future,” Garcia, 43, said in Spanish.
In recent months, Local 73’s organizing effort became a new source of tension between SEIU and its former ally-turned-rival, the Chicago Teachers Union, fueling acrimony between the two progressive and politically powerful labor unions.
Like SEIU, the CTU has argued that some of the miscellaneous workers rightfully belong to its bargaining unit but have been chronically misclassified by the district.
After CPS dropped its objection to SEIU’s petition to organize the workers, CTU pointed to its change in position as evidence that the district and SEIU had “conspired” to undermine its bargaining unit, arguing that CPS only dropped its objection after CTU sought to participate in the case.
Both the district and SEIU have vehemently denied the conspiracy allegations. SEIU has called the allegations “baseless,” telling the Tribune at the time that its “goal has been to secure low-wage workers’ representation and access to a better life.”
SEIU’s relationship with the teachers union soured more than a year ago over a conflict over other support staff members within the district. The break between the two unions, which worked together to help elect Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, has significant implications for city politics.
CTU — which says it stands by its conspiracy allegations — maintains that some of the “miscellaneous” workers could later be reclassified into its own bargaining unit.
Thad Goodchild, CTU’s deputy general counsel, told the Tribune that the union believes the unfair labor practice charge will still go forward. After arbitration, Goodchild said, a now-organized miscellaneous worker found to be performing CTU could still be reclassified to the teachers union.
“This is very much a game of Whac-A-Mole,” Goodchild said. “CPS has taken efforts to keep this model in place, and once it’s addressed in one school in one area, it’ll pop up in another.”
A CPS spokesperson told the Tribune that the district does not comment on pending litigation. “CPS is committed to ensuring that school communities are supported without disruption and that employees are treated fairly and consistently,” the spokesperson said.
Trumaine Reeves, SEIU’s division director for CPS, said the union campaign showed that “workers still see unions as being relevant for addressing their concerns in the workplace.”
Miscellaneous workers approached SEIU, not the other way around, Reeves said, after they “realized they were kind of being taken advantage of.”
