Fifteen years in the past, Dan Montgomery and Karen Lewis set out on a street journey to Springfield decided to power adjustments to a invoice they noticed as an assault on trainer unions, notably the one in Chicago.
Montgomery, an English trainer in Skokie, had simply been elected president of the Illinois Federation of Lecturers. Lewis had simply taken over Chicago’s Native 1 — the most important chapter beneath the IFT’s umbrella. Montgomery stated Lewis eyed him skeptically, anxious he was a complacent union chief just like the one she had simply defeated in Chicago.
On that roadtrip, they saved the dialog gentle. “I had opera CDs in my automobile, in order that’s what we talked about,” Montgomery remembers.
A decade and a half later, Montgomery has labored to attach the Chicago Lecturers Union with educators in the remainder of the state, and he has helped 1000’s of academics unionize.
With the training panorama reworked in Chicago and Illinois, Montgomery is stepping down from the IFT to take a brand new job, and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates is operating to switch him.
On the IFT conference this weekend, delegates from locals throughout the state will elect a brand new chief. Davis Gates is operating for the highest spot as a part of a slate that represents Southern Illinois, the northern suburbs of Chicago and better training staff. Davis Gates would stay CTU president.
Montgomery stated he doesn’t know of different candidates, however Davis Gates’ slate might be challenged on the conference ground.
Gates, an outspoken Black lady in control of the progressive, aggressively activist CTU, is a lightning rod for conservatives — and a few have already described her attainable election as an influence seize.
However up till 20 years in the past, the CTU president was usually additionally the IFT president. IFT represents greater than 100,000 academics, help workers and public workers at state businesses, together with the Illinois State Board of Training, the comptroller’s workplace and the secretary of state’s workplace.
Montgomery stated Davis Gates is planning on distributing work and energy among the many IFT govt board in a de-centralized management mannequin.
Montgomery identified he got here from what he calls a militant native. An English trainer at Niles North Excessive Faculty, he’d been on strike six instances and helped to barter sturdy contracts.
As head of the IFT, he wasn’t about to take a seat down and turn into a complacent chief.
“I had large hopes,” he stated. “I wished to make the IFT extra highly effective and extra lively.”
Montgomery received Lewis and her management group over.
“I feel they realized, ‘This man’s for actual,’” Montgomery stated. “‘He’s one in all us, he believes within the energy of the union, and that we must always have ambitions as a union.’”
Because the CTU captured the nationwide stage with its “frequent good” negotiating, Montgomery was within the background holding the statewide group collectively. He stated one in all his greatest achievements was getting each native to see the worth in what CTU was preventing for.
“It’s a must to have CTU related to the south, and you must have the suburbs related to the CTU and the central half,” he stated.
Below Montgomery, IFT has grown with 30 new locals and eight,000 extra members. He was on the desk because the state negotiated a brand new funding formulation, and he’s been together with many locals as they threatened to strike or went on strike. He was on the podium with Lewis at rallies after which, after she died in 2021, stood along with her successors.
Montgomery stated it is a difficult second for academics and different public service workers with the federal authorities pulling again funding and rising immigration enforcement. Two locals are in robust contract fights. And plenty of faculty districts have needed to make cuts and want to the state to extend funding for training.
Whereas the IFT faces exterior threats, Montgomery stated the group has loads of younger leaders who’re able to seize the second.
“It’s so sturdy that I felt, now’s the time,” stated Montgomery, who will turn into govt director of the American Library Affiliation.
The Illinois Training Affiliation, which is the most important academics union within the state with greater than 130,000 members, additionally has a brand new president after its chief unexpectedly died in September.
