Los Angeles school officials defended their contract offers Thursday, saying “nobody wants a strike” — a day after the district’s two largest unions set April 14 as a strike date if no agreement is reached.
The Los Angeles Unified School District made its case in a news conference at its downtown headquarters the morning after a multiunion rally drew thousands to Gloria Molina Grand Park across from City Hall.
“Nobody wants a strike,” acting Supt. Andres Chait said. “Strikes are not good for students. They are not good for our schools. They are not good for our families. I truly believe that our labor partners also do not want a strike.”
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.
Chait adopted a conciliatory tone, addressing union leaders — who were not present.
“Please know I respect your passion, your commitment to our students and your leadership,” Chait said. “And I have even greater respect for your members who work every day to provide a quality education to all of our students.”
Chait cited pressures that he said limited the district’s ability to offer more money, including declining enrollment, uncertainty over state and federal funding, and the impact of heightened federal immigration enforcement on attendance and enrollment, which affects state funding.
“Any increases in salary must be balanced and consider the entire public school system we are here to serve,” Chait said. “We certainly recognize that the cost of living in Los Angeles continues to rise, and in response, we have committed to significant raises for our employees among the highest offers in the state.”
Unions rev up their members
The two unions that set the April 14 strike date are United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents 37,000 teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians; and Local 99 of Service Employees International Union, whose members include bus drivers, teacher aides, custodians, cafeteria workers, tech support specialists and gardeners.
At the rally, leaders from three unions told the cheering crowd that the district needs to be more serious about making the concessions needed to reach an agreement. In messaging that fired up the rank-and-file, leaders stressed their sincerity, their cause and their unity.
UTLA President Myart-Cruz warned people Wednesday not to accept the district’s gloomy scenario.
“When they say tomorrow, they don’t have the money. We’re on a fiscal cliff, are we going to believe them?” Myart-Cruz implored the crowd, which answered back with a raucous “No!”
“Because we’ve already done this two times before,” she continued, referring to strikes in 2019 and 2023.
The district’s offer to Local 99 “keeps workers in poverty,” Local 99 Executive Director Max Arias said. The offer “ignores the housing crisis. Ninety-nine percent of Local 99 members cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. The district’s offer keeps thousands of workers locked out of healthcare — many of whom are only 15 minutes away from qualifying for benefits,” he said, referring to work hours needed to qualify.
The district’s offer, he added, “continues to understaff our schools. Schools are already stretched thin and student services suffer.”
As an example, the union cited staffing ratios for custodians that it said are below the district’s own minimum standards.
Arias added that any agreement would need to include rescinding about 700 job cuts that are expected to fall heavily on his members.
The Board of Education narrowly approved the cuts in February as part of a plan to reduce a projected budget deficit.
The other union participating in the rally was Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents about 3,000 principals, assistant principals and middle managers. AALA was not part of the strike pledge, but union President Maria Nichols was on the platform with Myart-Cruz and Arias and spoke at the rally.
At the bargaining table
The district on Wednesday and Thursday highlighted offers to employees.
UTLA: The district has offered, in essence, an 8% raise over two years, structured in different ways. The third year of the contract would remain open for later salary talks, and the second could include an additional increase if union predictions about the district’s financial health turned out to be true.
The union does not want raises that depend on potentially subjective future contingencies, asserting that the district can commit to more now.
According to a union analysis, the UTLA proposal would in effect raise the average employee salary by 17%. 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.
Local 99: The district is offering 13% over three years.
The union is approaching a full two years without a contract, so the timing and amount of retroactive pay would also need to be worked out.
The union also is concerned about maintaining work hours and jobs as its members include some of the lowest-paid employees in the school system.
In its countercase, L.A. Unified officials said the district pays 100% of healthcare monthly premiums for all workers and their dependents if a worker qualifies for healthcare by working a minimum number of hours.
“Over the past 10 years, the 20 biggest school districts in California gave an average pay raise of about 30%,” according to a district statement. “During that same time, LAUSD gave a 36% increase — the highest among comparable districts in the state.”
Dispute over contracting
One union talking point focuses on the amount of money that the district spends on outside contracts. So far, the union has not provided a list of contracts that it considers wasteful or inappropriate.
At the same time, members of the Board of Education have complained that the district staff has not been entirely transparent in providing contract information in a way that would allow an independent evaluation.
One undisputed example of contracts that went awry is $6 million allotted to AllHere, a tech startup that was hired to design an all-purpose, artificial intelligence chatbot for L.A. Unified.
The district spent about $3 million of that contract for a chatbot that was never fully deployed and quickly withdrawn from service when AllHere collapsed financially. Company founder Joanna Smith-Griffin faces charges of defrauding investors. She has pleaded not guilty.
The ongoing federal investigation led to raids at the home and office of L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho. The school board placed Carvalho on paid leave pending further developments, which is why Chait presided over the Thursday news conference.
Carvalho has denied wrongdoing and said he would like to return to work.
The post “Nobody wants a strike.” LAUSD answers back after union leaders announce April 14 walkout appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
