A month and a half after they ended their strike against Chicago Public Schools, 7,500 school support staff workers are finally getting their back pay Friday.
But the raises SEIU Local 73 members will see on their checks this week are only partly easing the frustration for the low-paid workers who went more than a week without pay and have yet to reap the benefits — making it harder to pay bills or buy holiday gifts.
The support staff workers repped by SEIU will see 3% raises in their checks Friday retroactive to when their previous contract expired in July 2018. That’ll account for the pay bumps they agreed to for the first year of their contract.
SEIU and Chicago Teachers Union members are also owed another 3% raise retroactive to July 1 of this year — the second year of the new SEIU deal and the first of the CTU contract, which expired this summer. Both unions say they’ve gotten no indication the money will come anytime before spring 2020.
The Board of Education approved the deals with both unions on Nov. 20.
CPS spokeswoman Emily Bolton said in an emailed statement that “the district will provide a full estimated timeline for district-wide implementation prior to the new year.”
“The district’s priority is to ensure accuracy in implementing complex pay changes and it is working diligently to build and test new salary tables in our data systems to ensure accuracy,” Bolton said.
The district pointed out that part of the agreement between CPS and SEIU 73 was that bus aides — the lowest-paid CPS employees and some of the lowest-earners in the city — received $250 bonus checks when the deal was signed in November.
Nonetheless, SEIU 73 Executive Vice President Science Meles says members are “pissed off” that they might not see their full negotiated raises for another few months.
Meles acknowledged that the complexity of the new pay structure was bound to cause delays because new pay groups were made for the first time. The union just didn’t expect it to take as long as it has.
“Members don’t understand it, and quite frankly we don’t either,” Meles said. “They should figure it out. Pay up. It’s time.”
CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates, who has posted her frustrations all week on Twitter, also said she understood going in that it could take a while for the pay system to get figured out — in 2012, she said, members didn’t get paid for three months after the agreement. Her agitation has more to do with CPS having not yet laid out a clear timeline for when people might get their money.
“I can accept that it’s complicated,” Davis Gates said. “I can even accept when you tell me it’s going to take time. What’s unacceptable is not having a timeline.
“The holidays are coming up,” she said. “Going on strike was a sacrifice for our low-wage members and they especially feel it. We’re just frustrated.”
Top CTU and CPS officials are meeting Thursday for their first big get-together since contract negotiations ended Oct. 31. The issue of retroactive pay is expected to be one of many loose ends broached, including how to dole out agreed-upon raises for veteran teachers and paraprofessionals, and job descriptions for some new positions.
