This week Chicago Public School teachers are taking a stand in what they call “Work to Rule week.” The Work to Rule initiative, which has historically been used by aggrieved workers, requires that employees do no more than the minimum required by the rules of their contract. For CPS teachers, this means punching in at exactly 8:00 AM and punching out at exactly 3:15 PM. This means that many clubs will be shut down and students who need to talk to their teachers after school will be out of luck. After school activities that teachers are paid to monitor, such as sports, will not be affected.

At Whitney Young and all other CPS schools, Work to Rule will mean a drastic change in normal school life for students. Carl Abram, one of WY’s Chicago Teachers Union delegates, stressed that the action was not meant to hurt students, although he did admit that it would be an unfortunate side-effect. Abrams said, “We’re not trying to affect the students, we’re trying to display how we’re not being compensated for our extra time. We’re contractually obligated to work 6.25 hours a day, but many teachers here at Whitney Young and many other schools definitely put in more than that time.”

And Abram is not wrong. According to a study done by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor, CPS teachers work 58 hours a week. If that statistic is true, that means that the average teacher is working almost twenty seven hours a week unpaid – almost double what they are contractually obligated to do. This is a shocking statistic, and something that many students are likely unaware of.

When asked who he thought Work to Rule Week would impact, Edward Dziedzic, another one of WY’s Chicago teachers Union delegates, said, “It’s to send a message to Rahm Emanuel and Forrest Claypool who seem to think that the only way to balance the school’s budget is by taking money away from teachers, because so far that’s all they’ve done.”

Dziedzic was referring to CPS’s financial crisis, which has lead to extreme instability for teachers and students. Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool have been implementing highly criticized budget slashing tactics in order to make up for a $215 million gap in the 2016-2017 school year budget. This year alone four unpaid furlough days were put in place, and there are rumors that schools could close three weeks early in order to save money. With the budget as unstable as ever, many CPS teachers are not only upset that their pay is being cut this year, but also that they may be out of jobs next year.

While those frustrations may partly be fueling teacher’s participation in this Work to Rule week, they are not the largest factor. The entire point of Work to Rule week is that teachers want to be recognized and compensated for the actual work that they do, not just what their contracts outline.

On the flip side, teachers are salaried employees. This means that they technically do not have to be compensated for any extra hours that they work. When asked about this, Dziedzic explained, “It’s more about the fact that they choose to treat us as salaried employees when they want to and they choose to treat us a hourly employees when they want to. When they added days to the school year back in 2012 they didn’t increase our pay. So you had a longer school year and a longer school day without getting paid any additional money. Now, they are chopping days off days and chopping our pay. We’re having four fewer days and getting paid for four fewer days. So, it seems that they chose to treat us as hourly employees when it benefits them and salaried employees when it benefits them. What they need to do is pick a lane.”
Abrams’ response to the same question was, “We don’t have a problem with working the extra hours – that’s not the issue here. We’re salaried employees, so the issue is they’re making us do more work that we weren’t required to do before. We have to punch in, punch out, we have to monitor our clock time. As a salaried employee, we shouldn’t have to punch a clock. There has to be a time and place where you say, ‘This is enough’. This is one way, in this one week pilot program, to display what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”

Ultimately, the teachers have decided to go forward with the Work to Rule program, and there is no changing their minds. Although it may inconvenience students this week, it is our duty to stick by our teachers and support them. Nearly every student can recall a time their teacher went out of the way to help them, and now is our opportunity to pay the favor back.