The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the union representing teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), announced Tuesday that it will join a three-day strike next week, closing schools.
Update: UTLA will be striking in solidarity with SEIU Local 99, as local ABC affiliate KABC-7 reported:
SEIU Local 99, representing some 30,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, special education assistants and other workers, says it has reached an impasse in negotiations with Los Angeles Unified and will strike starting Tuesday.
And the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, which is undergoing its own negotiations, plans to honor SEIU’s action by also striking.
The two unions, together, will bring schools to a halt.)
The Los Angeles Times reported:
A three-day strike that would shut down Los Angeles public schools is scheduled to start Tuesday, union leaders announced Wednesday during a massive downtown rally by the district’s two largest employee groups.
L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho on Wednesday urged union leadership to negotiate “around the clock” to avert the strike, which he said would further harm more than 420,000 students trying to recover academically and emotionally from the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced them into remote learning for more than year.
Teachers are demanding a pay hike — as well as special funding directed specifically toward black students, and support for low-income housing.
The UTLA last staged a strike in 2019, keeping schools across the city closed — and working parents out of work — for several days before agreeing to a modest 6% pay increase (which, today, would be less than the pace of inflation).
The union also supported the Black Lives Matter movement and demanded that the Los Angeles School Police Department, which keeps children safe from gang violence and potential mass shootings, be defunded. School board members eventually agreed to cut one-third of the police force and redirect the funding toward programs for black students.
In 2021, the UTLA opposed a state plan for reopening schools after the coronavirus shutdowns, calling the idea “structural racism.”
The LAUSD is the second-largest school district in the country. It includes a few centers of excellence and well-regarded charter schools — and a vast array of underperforming and failing schools.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
This article has been updated.
