LA Teachers Strike: 68,000 Education Workers in 3 Unions Set to Walk
Image by LaTerrian McIntosh.
Three unions representing 68,000 education workers are set to strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District beginning Tuesday, April 14.
United Teachers Los Angeles has been working without a contract for nine months, in contravention of the long-held labor position of “no contract, no work!”, and we have been negotiating for over a year. Service Employees International Union Local 99 and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles have also been unable to reach an agreement with LAUSD.
In 2019, UTLA struck alone. In 2023, SEIU, which represents LAUSD bus drivers, special education assistants, custodians, and cafeteria workers, launched a three-day “Unfair Practice Charge” strike, and UTLA, refusing to cross their picket lines, conducted a three-day Solidarity Strike.
This time the three unions plan to strike together.
What Is This Strike About?
LAUSD claims it is in a financial crisis and doesn’t have the money to pay the salaries and other provisions the three unions want. UTLA and its allied unions believe LAUSD is vastly overstating its financial challenges.
LAUSD started this school year with a $5.03 billion reserve, its highest ever. In fact, LAUSD has greatly underprojected reserves every year from 2013 to 2025.
Moreover, the percentage LAUSD holds in reserve is often double or triple that held by other major California school districts. Legally, LAUSD is required to hold only 1% of its budget in reserve ($188 million).
To Be Fair to LAUSD…
…the district does face real problems, as the unaffordability of housing and changing demographics have combined to shrink LAUSD enrollment, and federal immigration actions have stemmed the flow of new students into LAUSD.
Yet LAUSD attempts to link these problems to contract negotiations and greatly exaggerates its challenges in order to mislead Los Angeles education workers into accepting an inferior contract.
LAUSD Negotiator: Teachers Take Away Money from Our Students
At a recent LAUSD-UTLA session, a consultant employed by LAUSD actually told the many educators present “all teachers are taking from their students to fund teachers’ healthcare.”
As charming as this accusation was, it isn’t an outlier. In recent months LAUSD has tried to make it appear as if UTLA’s demands are outlandish, and has implied that they can’t be met, or can only be met at the expense of others. Those others include:
Younger teachers, who LAUSD implies may be displaced or laid off due to UTLA’s demands
Non-UTLA education workers, such as those at LAUSD’s central offices (aka “Beaudry”)
Students, who will lose out as money is diverted away from them and towards educators
None of this is true, but it makes good PR.
And the Master of PR Is…
…LAUSD’s Alberto Carvalho. As the battle heated up late last year and early this year, Superintendent Carvalho, having fed the media LAUSD’s financial distortions and gotten headlines screaming “Layoffs, Cuts and Closures Are Coming” and “LAUSD warns of layoffs and cuts”, etc., did a Clinton-style “I feel your pain” routine, telling reporters that when it comes to losing teachers, he cares deeply and is “working around the clock to minimize any and all impact.”
The message is: LAUSD is in deep crisis but our superintendent is doing everything he can to save teachers’ jobs and (sigh) UTLA leadership just refuses to be reasonable and understand the position he and LAUSD are in.
Except the only “crisis” is the one he’s manufactured and then is swooping in to “save” us from. This man is talented.
Will LAUSD Bring Carvalho Back?
Carvalho was put on administrative leave by LAUSD on February 27 after his home and office were raided by federal agents as part of a Department of Justice investigation into the failed artificial intelligence company, AllHere, that the district contracted with for a chatbot called Ed.
Carvalho has recently expressed a desire to come back to work, but his return in the near term seems unlikely. He is a charismatic leader, and leaving him out of the picture disrupts LAUSD’s leadership. Nonetheless, LAUSD has good reasons to leave him on the sideline.
For one, he and the story surrounding him would be a distraction, and during last-minute negotiations or a strike there could, at any moment, be a disruption from new raids, a criminal indictment, or a public revelation of more damaging information.
Also, while it is certainly possible that in the end Carvalho will be cleared of wrongdoing, there’s no doubt his starpower has been dimmed by the scandal. For LAUSD, this diminishes the potential value of his return.
While I don’t wish Carvalho any harm personally, his demise, or at least his temporary demise, is a break for UTLA. He’s very skilled at public relations and working the media, far more so than our 2019 adversary, then-superintendent Austin Beutner. Also, in a school district filled with immigrant families, he has his own heroic undocumented immigrant story, and speaks fluent Spanish. I was not looking forward to going up against him in a strike.
Carvalho has been replaced, for now, by Acting Superintendent Andres Chait.
Mr. Chait, That’s an Odd Thing to Say for a Guy on the Eve of Provoking a Strike…
On the one-month anniversary of becoming LAUSD Acting Superintendent, Chait sent LAUSD employees an email emphasizing, “We are Los Angeles UNIFIED” and tells us “From our students and families to our teachers and staff, from those who support our classrooms to our civic and philanthropic partners, we are one Los Angeles Unified.”
Why Doesn’t LAUSD Make AALA a Better Offer?
It’s indicative of how unreasonable LAUSD’s bargaining position has been that they’ve even managed to alienate their own partners in management. I assume that one reason for LAUSD’s surprising intransigence with its management partners is that whatever raise AALA gets, UTLA and probably Service Employees International Union will demand at least as much.
Still, strategically LAUSD has put itself in a bad position. In the pre-strike/strike public relations contest in the media, how can LAUSD claim they’re being reasonable when even their own school-site management is against them?
For many years, LAUSD avoided disputes with AALA because AALA had the so-called “me too”, whereby whatever pay raise UTLA won, the administrators got it too. Many in UTLA have long complained about this, but I’ve always disagreed.
“Me too” divided administrators’ loyalties, particularly during contract negotiations and strikes. One could see this in 2019 and 2023–while LAUSD principals and vice-principals followed LAUSD’s directives, for the most part their hearts were clearly not in it.
In 2023 LAUSD Labor Relations removed the “me too” clause from compensation negotiations.
Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents principals and assistant principals, is only being offered a 7% pay raise over two years–4% for 2025–26 and 3% for 2026–27.
AALA: a Prediction
As it stands right now, according to Chait, schools will be closed during the strike. He explains:
“When you have three unions, UTLA, SEIU and AALA, who have all indicated that they would strike together, it is exceedingly difficult, if not nearly impossible, to maintain schools open during that scenario.”
I think LAUSD is being foolish, and I expect they’ll make AALA a decent enough offer that they won’t strike with us. I hope I’m wrong.
Striking Alongside Our Bosses?
Striking alongside our bosses is new in LAUSD labor relations, and it does feel a little odd.
The other day my principal said, “It looks like you and I will soon be on the picket line together.” I put my arm around his shoulder and said, “Yes, all of us, comrades fighting for the proletariat against the bosses, the very essence of class struggle–I can hardly wait!”
I’m not sure how comfortable he was with the idea when it’s put that way…
LAUSD–They’re Underpaid, So You Should Accept Being Underpaid
In lecturing us on why we shouldn’t get a bigger raise, LAUSD says, “Over the past 10 years, the 20 biggest school districts in California gave an average pay raise of about 30%. During that same time, LAUSD gave a 36% increase—the highest among comparable districts in the state.” But teachers throughout the state–throughout the country–are underpaid. Because others are underpaid, should we accept being underpaid too?
It’s reminiscent of the famous story about baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio’s salary negotiations after his stellar sophomore season in 1937. DiMaggio demanded a $40,000 salary. Yankee business manager Ed Barrow told him this was impossible, after all, even Yankee Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig, Barrow claimed, wasn’t making $40,000.
Barrow expected that DiMaggio, just 22 years-old, without an agent, and in an era where baseball players were bound to their teams in perpetuity by the infamous reserve clause, would quickly fold.
Instead, the young DiMaggio looked at Barrow and plainly stated, “Then Mr. Gehrig is a badly underpaid player.”
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