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Conservatives are denouncing Chicago teachers for trying to defend their livelihoods against the ravages of the Bidenflation conservatives have spent 3½ years denouncing.

In September, former president Donald Trump told a Mosinee, Wisconsin rally that Biden-Harris “caused the worst inflation in American history.”

At the Republican National Convention in July, Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers declared that "American families have been crushed by inflation", while Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin denounced the “inflation unleashed by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2019-2024, prices rose 25%. Yet BLS figures show US nominal average hourly earnings  between January 2021 and May 2024. 

In the 2019-2025 Chicago Teachers Union-Chicago Public Schools contract, the average Chicago teachers’ salary . In other words, Chicago teachers lost significantly in their previous contract, similar to the losses suffered by the average American.

Moreover, in Chicago housing is  than the U.S. average, and  in the first six months of 2024.

Normally conservatives would agree with CTU President Stacy Davis Gates’ statement “We are experiencing an extraordinary amount of inflation…pay has not kept up with the prices…” Yet while Chicago teachers are exactly the type of workers conservatives tell us are getting “crushed by inflation”, the sympathy conservatives profess for American workers' struggles with inflation is nowhere to be found in their treatment of the CTU. 

For National Review, Chicago teachers are a “ group of public-sector union members” who through “corrupt self-dealing” are “increasingly captur[ing] the beleaguered city’s “tax dollars.” 

For the Wall Street Journal, the CTU’s attempt to gain back for its members some of what they lost in the inflation of the Biden-Harris era represents “.”

Nationally syndicated talk show host Joe Getty, speaking of the CTU, asks, “How do these people sleep at night? The answer is they have no shame. They're criminals, they're scammers, they're victimizers.” 

In the widespread conservative media coverage of the CTU-CPS battle, I have yet to see the words “inflation” or “prices.” 

On crime, conservatives, again with ample reason, have focused much attention on Chicago's horrendous violence. Four days after taking office, Trump announced “If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!” 

Later that year White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made a “plea for peace in our streets because far too many children have been lost” and showed the pictures of six youths ages 1 through 14 who had been victims of gun violence, most of them in Chicago.

Recent headlines on Fox News’s series tell us of a city “rocked by violence" and “turf war(s) between local gangs”. Over 80% of CPS students are black or Latino, both of whom are far more likely to be victims of violence than whites. Almost two-thirds of CPS students come from economically disadvantaged households, and nearly 20% are English-language learners. 

According to Dave Stieber, an 18-year veteran of CPS,  “you have to fight tooth and nail for literally everything — from textbooks and computers, nurses, and functioning athletic facilities to libraries and social workers. You have to fight to get crumbling asbestos floor and ceiling tiles out of the school, to get new HVAC systems so your students don’t freeze or swelter, to get your school cleaned…” 

Yet in the current CTU-CPS battle, conservatives put the blame for CPS’ low standardized test scorers squarely on Chicago teachers and their union.

The WSJ  “failing union-run schools” while the National Review –“America’s most infamously powerful and radical public-sector union”--for the “disaster” of CPS’ “plummeting test scores.” 

The horrendous problems these schools and their teachers face that drag down their test scores–problems conservatives are normally happy to publicize and blame on the city's Democratic leadership–go unmentioned. Also largely unmentioned is that many of CTU’s demands are not about salaries, but concern how to, including creating a “baseline” of sports, music, art, world language, technology, after-school, and restorative justice programs in every school. 

To be fair, conservative critics are raising legitimate questions about the cost of CPS’ plans to borrow the money it needs to give CTU the contract it seeks. Part of the problem is that the state of Illinois , a shortfall Roosevelt University Public Policy Professor Ralph Martire estimates to be $2.6 billion.

Regardless, do conservative critics expect Chicago teachers to simply write off what they’ve lost in buying power over the Biden years? Should they allow their living standards to be eaten away again during another multi-year contract until Chicago can finally “afford” to pay them properly? 

If CTU were to wait another five or 10 years for the large raise needed to recoup what they'd lose if they don’t get it in this contract, would CPS give it to them? Would conservative critics be in favor of it?

Chicago teachers are correct to seek a contract that will gain back the wages lost to inflation as well as address Chicago schools’ other needs. CTU’s demands are reasonable–how Chicago’s and Illinois’ leaders decide to pay for them is not teachers’ problem.