Los Angeles Unified’s two largest labor groups — the teachers union and service employees — announced Wednesday they will join forces and both go on strike April 14 if no contract deal is reached before then, actions that would effectively shut down schools in less than a month.
The strike would affect close to 400,000 students in the nation’s second-largest school system and an estimated 32,000 students in the adult school. It would mean more than 60,000 essential district workers — teachers, counselors, nurses, bus drivers, janitors and cafeteria workers — would walk off the job, crippling school operations.
The strike would come at a particularly difficult time for the district, with Supt. Alberto Carvalho on paid administrative leave following an FBI raid on his San Pedro home and downtown L.A. office and hundreds of layoffs anticipated amid what he previously described as a troubled budget at its “breaking point.”
United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz and Max Arias, the executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 99, made the announcement at a large rally Wednesday afternoon in Gloria Molina Grand Park, across from City Hall in downtown L.A.
“The message to the public is, stand with educators. Stand with teachers. Stand with support professionals,” Myart-Cruz said. “Because one job should be enough, one job should be enough, and we need to get away from the victim shaming of educators.”
She said union members are “30 years old, still living with their parents because they cannot afford a place to live. We have people that are coming from the Inland Empire, driving all the way down to San Pedro schools, and do that on behalf of the school community, but mostly for our babies.”
Rosalva Barajas, a teacher at Tweedy Elementary School, joins with other teachers, union members, attend a rally at Molina Grand Park in Los Angeles, CA on Wednesday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
UTLA members are working under a contract that expired last June. The work stoppage, if it happens, would be an open-ended strike that could last until an agreement is reached. The last such strike lasted for six days in January 2019, when schools remained open, providing meals and childcare but virtually no instruction.
In March 2023, UTLA members walked out for three days in solidarity with a strike called by Local 99, which represents most employees who do not have certified teaching credentials. This walkout completely shut down schools because it was impossible to keep campuses open without the vast majority of both teaching and non-teaching employees.
UTLA represents more than 30,000 classroom teachers, psychologists, attendance counselors, guidance counselors, nurses and secondary school librarians. In late January, union members voted overwhelmingly to give their leadership the authority to call a strike at its discretion.
Local 99 members have been working under terms of an expired contract since June 30, 2024. The union represents more than 30,000 district employees, including teacher aides, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, computer techs, custodians and gardeners. Their members include some of the district’s lowest-paid workers.
Service workers are seeking a double-digit increase overall in pay over a three-year contract. Two of those three years are essentially in the past because of the protracted negotiations.
Local 99 is also seeking stable work schedules because many of its members have had their hours reduced to budget cuts. In some cases, these workers fell below the threshold of hours needed to qualify for health benefits. The union says the average salary for its members is $35,000 per year.
“You cannot have good schools if the people doing the work are worried about whether they’re going to have a place to sleep or whether they’re going to have something to eat,” Arias said. “You can’t continue to have good schools if you don’t have enough people to keep the schools clean.”
Teachers, union members, attend a rally at Molina Grand Park in Los Angeles, CA on Wednesday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
What teachers are demanding
The union estimates that its latest proposal would, on average, result in a 17% salary increase over the next two years. The proposal especially focuses on early-career teachers, raising their pay to $80,000. The top rate for an experienced educator would be $133,972.
The unusual approach within UTLA’s strategy is to greatly increase the automatic raises that occur based on years of experience and acquired education credits. If successful, this outcome would embed ongoing and significant raises — and offer a better hedge against inflation — without the union having to fight for these increases in every negotiating cycle.
Counteroffers from the district have included an 8% raise over two years with a possible higher raise in the second year if district reserves were to hold steady. Currently, the district predicts that these reserves will shrink markedly. The third year of the contract would permit new negotiations over compensation for that year.
In a statement released during the union rally, the district said it has repeatedly adjusted offers during more than a year of negotiations:
“For example, we’ve increased salary offers, proposed reducing class sizes and lowering counseling ratios,” the statement said. “We have also offered no further subcontracting of work historically and exclusively performed by Bargaining Unit employees. Our offers are among the highest in California.”
For the previous three-year cycle, UTLA won a 21% raise, with additional pay going to union members with high-demand skills, including nurses, who received an extra $20,000 bump to better compete with nursing jobs outside education.
The voice for the school district’s labor proposals and budget assessment would typically be Carvalho, who has denied wrongdoing and said he would like to return to work. Andres Chait, a senior LAUSD administrator, is serving as acting superintendent.
The FBI has made no statement, but well-placed sources have confirmed that the investigation into Carvalho relates to the failed startup AllHere, which L.A. Unified hired to create an artificial intelligence chatbot. The technology was never fully deployed and was unplugged after three months.
The district has been grappling with budget concerns for months. Carvalho and district officials have acknowledged a multibillion-dollar reserve but have insisted that ongoing commitments and declining revenue are on track to exhaust those reserves in about three years, unless the district adopts austerity measures.
Financial pressures on the district include the expiration of pandemic aid, declining enrollment and a wave of sexual misconduct settlements — which also have placed financial stress on other public agencies.
The school board — confronted with the gloomy internal forecast — narrowly voted Feb. 18 to send out layoff notices that are expected to result in 657 job cuts — moves strongly opposed by labor groups as unnecessary and harmful to students.
L.A. Unified has largely avoided layoffs in recent years — and began the school year with a $5-billion reserve as part of an $18.8-billion budget.
The other participant in the Wednesday rally was Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents about 3,000 principals, assistant principals and central and regional office middle managers. It’s a first for AALA to be involved in a joint union rally of this magnitude. AALA membership recently voted to affiliate with the Teamsters.
“We’re fighting for the same things,” said Maria Nichols, president of the administrators’ union. “All the unions have a staffing shortage. All the unions have an overabundance of work, because we don’t have human capital where we need them. And all of us feel that the district’s priorities when it comes to investing in human capital have fallen short.”
