A Chicago Teachers Union action from earlier this year. (Photo credit: Flickr user JeanPaulHolmes)

The Chicago Teachers Union ended its strike last week in a resounding victory for students, teachers, and parents. (See a list of what they won here.)

But anti-union forces don’t want to see working people continue to win victory’s like last week’s. Chicago AldermanAi??Patrick Oai??i??Connor, who serves as the city council floor leader for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is suggesting that the city move towards banning teacher strikes in the future:

Chicago’s first teachers strike in 25 years should trigger a debate about whether or not teachers should be allowed to strike, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Council floor leader said. […]Ai??”The anxiety leading up to the strike and the week they were off–the disruption it caused and the need for government and our constituents to scramble to find ways to keep their children safe–it’s worth discussing if you can avoid that,” said O’Connor, former longtime chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee.

37 states currently prohibit teacher strikes, and anti-labor forces are campaigning to expand these laws. Interestingly, post-Mubarak Egypt — a country which is still a long way away from becoming even an imperfect democracy — has faced momentous teacher strikes that the military government has been unable to put down. That, if anything, is a sad commentary on the lack of teacher rights in much of the United States.