Press Releases

ducation and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Chairman Rick W. Allen (R-GA) sent a letter to Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates regarding the union’s failure to provide CTU members with complete financial audits for half a decade.

Congress expects workers to have both transparency and a voice in how their dues are used. When unions, like the CTU, flout these obligations, they betray the trust of the very people they are meant to serve.

In the letter, Reps. Walberg and Allen write: “The Committee on Education and Workforce (Committee) is investigating whether reforms to the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) are necessary to protect union members’ rights in light of certain failures by the [CTU]. Specifically, evidence indicates that CTU has failed to provide its members with complete financial audits since 2020. This failure to disclose financial information strips dues-paying members of their basic right to understand how their money is spent. The Committee intends to determine how this breakdown in transparency occurred, which will inform its potential reforms to the LMRDA.”

The letter continues: “The Committee understands that CTU leadership has actively sought to keep complete financial information from its own members who continue to request that audits be published. For example, we understand that you impugned a member’s request that audits be published by maligning the request as a racist ‘dog whistle.’ The Committee is concerned that CTU has undertaken a half-decade long, concerted effort to deny its members the complete audit information to which they are entitled under the union’s by-laws.”

The letter concludes: “By withholding complete financial audits from its members, CTU has failed to uphold the spirit of union transparency or comply with its own by-laws. As such, the Committee is investigating this matter to better determine whether the LMRDA should be amended to strengthen its requirements so that union members have access to more robust and timely financial information. Every dollar paid by workers should serve their interests, not those of a select few operating in the shadows.”

Read the full letter here.

###