L.A. school employees are going on strike, affecting more than 1,000 schools

Sarah Gambles
·3 min read
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A crowd of Los Angeles Unified School District teachers and Service Employees International Union 99 members gather in Grand Park in front of City Hall on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, in Los Angeles. Tens of thousands of workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are expected to walk off the job Tuesday, March 21, over stalled contract talks, and they will be joined in solidarity by teachers for a planned three-day strike that will shut down the nation’s second-largest school system.

Los Angeles school employees are going on strike starting Tuesday, canceling classes for 422,000 students.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second-largest public school district in the U.S., and the strike that will force the closure of more than 1,000 schools is scheduled to last three days, NBC News reported.

The teacher’s union Local 99 that represents employees in the district is calling for a 30% pay increase. The union said many district employees barely make minimum wage, which does not allow them to afford much with a high cost of living in Southern California, according to The New York Times.

Who does the LA school district strike include?

The strike includes teachers, teacher’s aides, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other workers employed by the district, which adds up to 65,000 employees who are walking out, per the Times.

“On Friday, LAUSD filed charges claiming a strike by SEIU Local 99 members was unlawful,” according to a statement from Max Arias, SEIU Local 99 executive director, per CBS News. “However, the Board’s decision today confirms that workers have a right to protest over the threats and harassment waged against them by the school district. They will continue to move forward with plans to strike this week. Their voices will not be silenced.”

According to CBS News, union officials want to wait “for a state mediator to schedule new talks, and aren’t interested in hearing the district simply reiterate previous proposals the union has already rejected.”

Part of the angst behind the strike comes not only from low wages but also “over alleged labor law violations” that the union is saying has been inflicted upon district employees. One such accusation includes saying the cafeteria doors were locked as a means to stop workers from voting to strike, as well as increasing prices of snacks in the staff lounge vending machines, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Jane McAlevey, a senior policy fellow at University of California, Berkeley Labor Center, told WSJ that even something like raised prices for vending machine snacks could be interpreted by a low wage worker as “someone sending us a message, we’ll make your life harder as you’re making demands for fairness.”

What are the demands from the LA school employee strike?

Per CNN, the demands from the strike include:

  • A 30% pay raise.

  • More hours for part-time employees.

The LA school district offered on Monday “a 23% recurring pay increase” and a guaranteed $20 per hour minimum wage, per CNN.

“Under California law, we cannot drive the school system into a bankruptcy position. We cannot drive the school system into a red position. And if we were to acquiesce to all the demands, that is exactly where we would be, that is not legally allowable,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told CNN.