Chicago Mayor Daley has announced that he will enforce the residency requirement for Chicago school teachers.

Recently Chicago newspapers reported that Mayor Daley was going to enforce the residency requirement for Chicago school teachers.  Something is inherently wrong with this decision because it seems to me as if by signing a teaching contract, teachers literally have signed over their lives.  It reminds me of company towns from an era gone by.

For those who might not remember, the employer in a company town was basically an autocrat with absolute power.  This is because employees were required to live in houses owned by the company and to frequent businesses, churches, and schools under the company’s domain. Laws were even enforced by company police. In this way, employers possessed total knowledge of the personal activities of employees. Back then, workers saw the union as a way to break this indentured servitude, which passed for employment. 
 
Arguments to revive this outmoded practice for teachers are based on what is best for the community, not the individuals in question. Residing in the neighborhood where you work shows support and commitment to the community and to the job. Money earned is reinvested into the area through local shopping and property taxes.

This type of graft is hauntingly similar to popular misuse of Eminent Domain, the practice of confiscating private property for the sole purpose the reviving blighted urban areas (not at all what the framers had in mind when they decided the express purpose of the US Constitution was to protect life, liberty and PROPERTY).  Perhaps teachers are considered not more than 3/5 citizens, not subject to the same rights and privileges as the rest of the population. 

Mayor Daley seems to have forgotten that teachers have the right to privacy.  What a teacher does outside of the school is not of concern to others unless it is in some way illegal. This obviously includes where teachers choose to live.  Yet somehow this is being turned around by saying it’s unfair for residents to pay teachers salaries if teachers spend earned income of their own choosing.
 
More reasonable people understand that the goal of any administration is to hire the “best teachers” for the job, regardless of where they live.  The residency requirement rules in question are holdovers from when city administrators had concerns about municipal workers' ability to respond quickly to an emergency.

All Chicago Public School teachers are subject to city residency requirements except those employed in shortage areas, such as; bilingual, special education, math, and science teachers. 

Where a teacher decides to live is an issue of privacy.  Teachers are not chattel.  If there was ever an express purpose for a union, the defense of the teachers against this indefensible practice would merit their operation.  But of course, the unions are too busy pushing their partisan political agenda to look out for the teachers!