The Chicago Tribune isn’t fond of the Chicago Teachers Union.

But even by the Tribune’s standards, the paper’s April 8 editorial was particularly brutal. A couple weeks after dubbing the CTU’s one-day strike “Tantrum Day,” the Tribune editorial board implored CTU president Karen Lewis to use her “clout to convince skeptical members” to swallow a contract deal that eliminates some raises, scales back others, and potentially cuts pension funding. It is Lewis’s responsibility, the editorial board suggested, to discipline her fellow union members on behalf of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

The Tribune has long been unsympathetic toward labor unions of all stripes, and the CTU, locked in its second protracted contract negotiation in four years, has been a preferred target. But this editorial was especially noteworthy because it distilled into a concise document the arguments of austerity partisans, whose policies of spending cuts and fiscal contraction have decimated public services and punished workers in the United States and around the world.