Chicago has announced the largest school closing in American history, stirring resistance among parents, students, and neighborhoods that stand to lose their schools. The Chicago policy is widely seen as a wedge issue to create lower-cost, publicly funded private schools. Such schools have not built a record of superior performance, but they meet one of the objectives of people like Immanuel and Pritzker -- undermine unions, especially teachers' unions.
As the Chicago Teachers Union financial secretary told the Chicago Tribune:
"We know Penny Pritzker has a long and storied history as an anti-labor and anti-worker kind of boss. Her policies adversely affect working families. She has worked to close schools and destabilize neighborhoods, and we hope she does a better job in her new position, if she gets it."
Pritzker's father co-founded the Hyatt Hotel chain. Pritzker sits on the corporate board and holds a $400,000 stake in the company. Hyatt has a long history of anti-labor practices and is currently the target of a union-sponsored global boycott.
A group of Hyatt workers and union supporters were Commerce Committee hearing. One of them, a house keeper at Hyatt Regency Chicago, said: "I am here to just to let everybody know the abuse the workers are under at the Hyatt. I wanted to let everybody know the kind of situation Penny Pritzker puts her employees in."
Lots of Rich People
Prefer to Keep a Low Profile
The Harvard Crimson quoted a Pritzker friend describing how hard it had been for Pritzker, managing the family fortune dispute: "I admire her dignity and discretion in handling this by taking the high road. She has largely not engaged in the mudslinging. It is a tragedy for her family that this has happened, because the Pritzker family has always been very private."
What's the tragedy here? Not that they lost their money, because they didn't -- but they had to talk about it.
Pritzker's official biography on the Penny Pritzker website, begins like this:
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