Two major education worker unions just walked off the job for three days in Los Angeles, grinding the school district to a halt. Their actions resulted in a 30 percent raise.þþLast Tuesday, SEIU Local 99 — the union representing service workers and support staff including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and teaching assistants in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) — went on strike to protest unfair labor practices by the district. United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) joined them in solidarity, shutting down schools and bringing the total number of striking workers to over sixty thousand. Picket lines and rallies lasted from Tuesday through Thursday of last week, with workers returning to schools on Friday after the planned three-day strike.þþOn Friday, after stonewalling the union for months and allowing members to continue working on an expired contract, the school district reached a tentative agreement with SEIU 99. The tentative agreement includes a raise of 30 percent, retroactive pay of $4,000 to $8,000, a $1,000 one-time bonus, and full health care benefits for more classes of workers, including teacher assistants, community representatives, and after-school workers. Members will vote on the tentative agreement, which would increase the average salary of SEIU 99 members from $25,000 to $33,000 per year, later this week. Members of UTLA are still in bargaining with the district.þþDuring the strike, many SEIU 99 members told Jacobin that they work two or or three jobs to make ends meet. They find it difficult to afford living near their work — or to afford housing at all, with one in three members of SEIU 99 reporting being either homeless or at risk of being unhoused while working for LAUSD. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles is more than $2,800 a month. Nearly a quarter of SEIU members report that they have recently faced hunger.þþWhile both unions are in bargaining with the school district for higher pay and better working conditions, the strike was actually triggered not by contract negotiations but by charges of unfair labor practices, with SEIU 99 alleging harassment and surveillance of union members. The union filed unfair labor practice charges with the Public Employment Relations Board, which, in turn, made a strike legally possible.þþEven though the strike was triggered by unfair labor practices, it prompted the district to increase its offer to SEIU 99. The resulting tentative agreement gives the union the entire raise it was asking for. “Instead of demeaning us, give us more money,” an SEIU worker named Lucy told Jacobin at a rally in front of LAUSD headquarters last Tuesday. “There shouldn’t even be negotiating. Just give us the raise.” It appears that workers like Lucy were successful, thanks to the massive two-union strike.þþUTLA members joined the strike to show solidarity with SEIU 99, but also to register their own dissatisfaction with the district, which has $5 billion in reserves and yet is playing hardball with the teachers’ union in contract negotiations. “There’s no reason to have that much money in surplus,” Chrissy Offutt Kundig, a special education teacher in UTLA, told Jacobin during the strike. “I’m not an accountant, but I’m not a fucking idiot.”þþA slew of local and state politicians expressed support for the SEIU 99 and UTLA strike last week. Even former LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner, who faced off against UTLA during the 2019 teachers’ strike, went on Fox 11 to say that with record revenue, the district ought to be able to afford to increase wages for workers. He mentioned that SEIU 99 workers helped the City of Los Angeles out during the pandemic. Los Angeles schools continued to feed children who relied on school meals even when instruction had moved online.þþLos Angeles city councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said in council chambers that LAUSD was using anti-union tactics to “muddy the waters” and confuse the public. “I’ve been on the other side and had to push elected officials to express support for our actions in the union,” Soto-Martínez told Jacobin. “I don’t want to be one of those elected officials. I want to be standing alongside the workers every time.”þþBefore being elected to City Council last year, Soto-Martínez was an organizer with UNITE HERE Local 11. “Because of my own experience, I understand that the union had no choice but to strike due to the anti-union tactics that were deployed against them,” Soto-Martinez continued. “Historically, SEIU 99 and UTLA haven’t always collaborated like this, so the solidarity they are showing in this strike is pretty unprecedented, and really inspiring.”þþWhile it was more in vogue to publicly support the strike than oppose it, a few members of the Los Angeles power structure bucked the trend. For example Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry & Commerce Association and member of the powerful private LA28 Olympics Organizing Committee, tweeted that UTLA does not care about kids and that “the entire strike was theater.”
Source: jacobin.com
