The Judas: How Chicago Mayor Helped Layoff Over 1,700 Employees of the Chicago School System

When former Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) organizer Brandon Johnson was elected mayor of Chicago in 2023 with the backing of progressive and self-described "socialist" groups, working-class Chicagoans were sold a familiar narrative: one of our own was taking the reins of municipal power.

Instead, the recent announcement that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will lay off 1,723 educators and staff—while slashing worker pay through mandatory furloughs—provides a stark lesson in the limits of electoral reformism under capitalism. Rather than defending public education, a "progressive" mayor and a bureaucratic union leadership have collaborated to pass the burden of a $732 million budget deficit directly onto the working class.

The Reality of the Budget Cuts

The austerity measures brought forward by CPS administrators hit the district’s most critical frontline workers:

• Mass Layoffs: CPS announced plans to eliminate 760 teaching positions, 801 teacher aide roles, and 162 central office and citywide support staff.

• The Furlough Pay Cut: In addition to the pink slips, CPS is imposing a mandatory five-day unpaid furlough on all remaining workers between January and June. This amounts to an immediate 2.3% pay cut—roughly $2,300 per teacher—effectively wiping out the wage increases won in recent contract battles.

• Impact on Seniority and Retirement: The cuts hit older educators particularly hard. Skyrocketing retiree healthcare premiums—jumping from $130 to around $700 a month—force veteran teachers to stay in the system to survive, leaving younger educators vulnerable to termination.

"Deliver Bad News to a Friend": The Role of Brandon Johnson

To understand how a self-proclaimed "public school champion" oversaw the single largest blow to Chicago’s public education workforce in years, one must look at how capitalist municipal governance operates.

During his campaign, Johnson made candid remarks about his unique ability to manage labor expectations:

"There will be some tough decisions to be made when I am mayor... And there might be a point within negotiations that the Chicago Teachers Union quest and fight for more resources—we might not be able to do it. Who is better able to deliver bad news to a friend than a friend?"

After taking office, Johnson replaced outgoing CPS CEO Pedro Martinez with Macquline King, elevated specifically to execute budget restructuring. Under King, the district framed 1,720-plus job eliminations and mandatory wage cuts as "responsible" and "student-centered."

Labor Bureaucracy and Electoral Dead Ends

The current crisis exposes the structural limitations of relying on union leadership aligned with the Democratic Party apparatus.

When the four-year contract was ratified in April 2025, union leadership celebrated it as a "victory." Yet, despite knowing that funding was only secured for the initial year and that severe structural deficits loomed, leadership avoided calling for a strike authorization vote—a departure from 15 years of CTU precedent.

Now, with contracts breached and furloughs imposed, official union strategy remains focused on lobbying state Democrats like Governor J.B. Pritzker or circulating petitions for tax redistributions. Rather than deploying collective labor power to protect jobs, the strategy channels anger back into the very political party managing the cuts.

Austerity and State Repression Target the Whole Working Class

The attack on public school employees is not occurring in a vacuum. It sits alongside broader state enforcement targeting vulnerable members of the school community.

Just days after the layoff announcement, Josue Pire Hidalgo—a CPS custodian and father of two—was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a routine check-in. His detention highlights how budget cuts, contract violations, and anti-immigrant state policy converge against working-class communities.

While union bureaucracies treat mass layoffs, pay cuts, and immigration enforcement as separate administrative issues, they represent connected fronts of the same economic pressure: working-class infrastructure is squeezed to manage municipal budget shortfalls, while state repression destabilizes the broader workforce.

The Capitalist Limits of "Progressive" Governance

The situation in Chicago offers a clear lesson for anti-capitalists: holding office within a capitalist state structure does not transform the system; the system transforms the official.

Whether municipal leadership carries a conservative or progressive label, the mandate of municipal government under capitalism remains the same—enforcing fiscal discipline, balancing budgets on the backs of workers, and managing labor unrest. Real defense of public education and public sector workers cannot rely on "friends in high places," but on independent, collective action from workers themselves.