At three minutes to midnight on October 10 — after more than a year of negotiations — the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) signed a tentative agreement. Members voted to approve the contract in the last week of October, settling a contract campaign that many assumed would lead to a protracted strike.

Since 2012, when teachers staged a seven-day walkout, the CTU has emerged as a major political force in the city. Their fight against Rahm Emanuel has a lot more at stake than wages and pensions. By helping build a citywide coalition of teachers, students, parents, and community groups, the CTU is demanding public reinvestment and the end to austerity.

Before the settlement, Micah Uetricht, Jacobin associate editor and author of Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity, sat down with Pauline Lipman, author of The New Political Economy of Urban Education and professor of education policy at the University of Illinois-Chicago to discuss how the CTU’s contract campaign intersects with the neoliberal agenda in Chicago and across the United States.