In reaction to the changes imposed on public schools across the country in the name of "education reform," the Chicago Teachers Union redefined its traditional role and waged a multidimensional fight that produced a community-wide school strike and transformed the scope of collective bargaining into arenas that few labor relations experts thought possible. Using interviews, first-person accounts, participant observation, union documents, and media reports, Steven K. Ashby and Robert Bruno tell the story of the 2012 strike that shut down the Chicago school system for seven days.

A Fight for the Soul of Public Education takes into account two overlapping, parallel, and equally important stories. One is a grassroots story of worker activism told from the perspective of rank-and-file union members and their community supporters. Ashby and Bruno provide a detailed account of how the strike became an international cause when other teachers unions had largely surrendered to corporate-driven education reform. The second story describes the role of state and national politics in imposing educational governance changes on public schools and draconian limitations on union bargaining rights. It includes a detailed account of the actual bargaining process revealing the mundane and the transcendental strategies of both school board and union representatives.

Steven K. Ashby is a Clinical Full Professor of Labor and Employment Relations in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is coauthor of Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement. Robert Bruno is a Professor of Labor and Employment Relations and Director of the Labor Education Program in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is also Director of the School's Project for Middle Class Renewal. He is the author of Steelworker Alley: How Class Works in Youngstown, also from Cornell, Justified by Work: Identity and the Meaning of Faith in Chicago's Working-Class Churches, and Reforming the Chicago Teamsters: The Local 705 Story.

The fullest account of the strike itself.... Notable for its wealth of detail, and a strong historical and political analysis, it combines the useful aspects of an academic tract - with an index, extensive footnotes, etc. - with vivid writing, engrossing warmth for the subject, and skillful portraits that make both leaders and rank and filers come alive.