LOS ANGELES—With labor talks at a standstill and no new negotiations scheduled, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) campuses will be closed March 21, leaving more than 400,000 students without classes as service workers strike to demand improved wages and working conditions.
The 30,000 workers represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 99—including cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, special education assistants, and others—are set to begin picketing at 4:30 a.m. The roughly 30,000 members of the powerful teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), will join the picket line.
LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said at a late-afternoon news conference Monday that he had hoped to have “a transparent, honest conversation” that day for an agreement to stave off the planned three-day strike, but it never happened.
“We were never in the same room, or even in the same building,” he said.
The union plans to begin picketing at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Van Nuys Bus Yard, 16200 Roscoe Boulevard. Union leaders have already scheduled a news conference for 7 a.m. Wednesday at Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, 701 S. Catalina Street, followed by a 1 p.m. rally at LAUSD headquarters, 333 S. Beaudry Avenue.
The LAUSD on Friday filed a legal challenge with the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) seeking an injunction that would halt the strike, claiming the union’s proposed walkout was illegal. Over the weekend, however, the PERB denied the district’s request for injunctive relief because it did not find “the extraordinary remedy of seeking injunctive relief to be met at this juncture,” according to the LAUSD. But, according to the district, the PERB did direct its Office of General Counsel to expedite the processing of the district’s underlying unfair practice charge against SEIU Local 99, which alleged that the union and its members were engaging in an unlawful three-day strike.
The union has repeatedly accused the district of engaging in unfair labor practices, saying union members have been subjected to harassment and intimidation tactics during an earlier strike-authorization vote and as the possible walkout neared. Carvalho acknowledged those accusations, but said there is a process for investigating such claims, and “it takes time.” He said the union was using those allegations as an “expedited way of creating a strike opportunity.”
There was some back-and-forth between the district and union over the weekend, but with no results.
The strike will be the first major labor disruption for the district since UTLA teachers went on strike for six days in 2019. That dispute ended in part to intervention by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti, who helped spur labor talks at City Hall and broker a deal between the district and union.
Zach Seidl, a spokesman for Mayor Karen Bass, said Friday that Bass is “closely monitoring the situation and is engaged with all parties involved.”
District officials said last week that Carvalho had made the SEIU Local 99 “one of the strongest offers ever proposed by a Los Angeles Unified superintendent.”
According to the district, the offer included a 5 percent wage increase retroactive to July 2021, another 5 percent increase retroactive to July 2022 and another 5 percent increase effective July 2023, along with a 4 percent bonus in 2022–23 and a 5 percent bonus in 2023–24.
On Monday, Carvalho said the district sweetened the offer to a 23 percent increase, along with a 3 percent “cash-in-hand bonus.”
The union, which says many of its workers are earning “poverty wages” of $25,000 per year, has been pushing for a 30 percent pay raise, with an additional boost for the lowest-paid workers.
SEIU workers have been working without a contract since June 2020. The union declared an impasse in negotiations in December, leading to the appointment of a state mediator.
The unions have repeatedly said the district is sitting on a projected $4.9 billion reserve fund for 2022–23 that should be invested in workers and efforts to improve education through reduced class sizes and full staffing of all campuses. Carvalho has disputed that figure, saying an independent auditor that reviewed the district’s books found no such surplus.
The district on Friday announced the creation of a website at achieve.lausd.net/schoolupdates which will “provide resources for families during the work stoppage period” from Tuesday through Thursday. According to the district, the site has information on “learning activities, Grab & Go food locations, tutoring services, enrichment activities and cultural opportunities across Los Angeles and Los Angeles County park locations that will provide free youth programs.”
In addition to the park programs, the Los Angeles Zoo will be offering free admission for students. The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County will also offer students free admission as long as the strike persists.
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