A strike that would have shut down classes for hundreds of thousands of students in the nation’s second-largest school district was narrowly averted early Tuesday, as Los Angeles schools struck a last-minute deal with the last of three major unions.
Officials at the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District reached a tentative agreement with a union representing some 30,000 members of school support staff — including bus drivers, custodians and cafeteria workers — shortly before 2 a.m. Pacific after marathon negotiations.
Two other major district unions representing teachers and administrators had reached deals on Sunday with Los Angeles Unified. But those groups had committed to walking out on Tuesday at around dawn in solidarity with the third union, if it didn’t also reach an agreement.
Leaders of the school staff union, Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union, said that the deals with the unions representing teachers and school administrators had demonstrated that the district could afford to meet their demands.
District employees last went on strike in 2023, also in a dispute over pay for support staff that prompted a sympathy strike by teachers. They resolved their differences after three days that year.
Mayor Karen Bass, who has a long history in Los Angeles and deep backing in organized labor, interceded to help resolve those negotiations, and her office confirmed that she had stepped in again late Monday.
Los Angeles Unified includes more than 1,500 schools across Southern California, with a student body that is overwhelmingly working class. It is also one of the largest employers in Los Angeles County.
A strike would not only have upended the schedules of hundreds of thousands of students and their families but also sidelined most of the district’s work force. The union staging the walkout includes about 30,000 school employees. Another 40,000 teachers, principals and other employees had pledged to honor the picket lines.
The strike also would have been the largest labor action yet in a coordinated effort by the powerful California Teachers Association to pressure state and local officials across multiple school districts. The aligned negotiations have aimed to broaden public attention about the financial challenges faced by teachers and other school workers, and to improve union leverage.
Since December, teachers have gone on strike in recent months in the Bay Area cities of San Francisco, Richmond and Dublin and in two school districts in Sacramento. And locals have come close to striking in Oakland, Berkeley, West Sacramento, Woodland, Madera and Duarte, among other communities.
The strategy netted significant gains for Los Angeles school employees, who faced pushback from a district that is already grappling with declining enrollment and diminished federal funding.
In its tentative agreement with United Teachers Los Angeles over the weekend, Los Angeles Unified agreed to increase the pay for starting teachers to $77,000 and raise pay for all teachers by an average of nearly 14 percent over the next two years, along with other improvements in pay and benefits.
The district’s deal with Associated Administrators of Los Angeles/Teamsters 2010, which represents several thousand school principals and administrators, included a raise of more than 11 percent over two years.
The employees represented by S.E.I.U. are among the lowest paid in the district, but they are generally eligible for health benefits if they work more than 20 hours weekly. Under the tentative deal reached early Tuesday, they would receive a 24 percent average pay raise and many would receive enough additional work hours to meet the health insurance threshold.
Some education experts said a walkout could have cost the unions good will, especially after prolonged coronavirus school closures. In Los Angeles during the 2023 strike, parents said they understood why educators were pushing for more money in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. Still, another major disruption could have strained that sympathy.
“It makes sense as a tactical strategy,” said Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California. “But the impact on students and families has the potential to be quite disruptive. Even if the days get made up, parents still have to figure out in the short term what to do with their kids.”
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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