Los Angeles Unified School District employees went on strike Tuesday, canceling classes for nearly half a million students as negotiations with administrators failed to resolve an ongoing dispute over wages.
Roughly 30,000 teaching assistants, custodians, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers began the three-day strike in order to secure a 30 percent increase in pay.
Alberto M. Carvalho, the superintendent for LAUSD, the second largest district in the nation, implored cooler heads to prevail as the city continues to grapple with residual learning loss from the pandemic. “We do not need to debate or litigate the fact that during the pandemic, kids lost a lot of ground,” Carvalho tweeted Monday afternoon.
Students “cannot afford to be out of school and that is why I am appealing directly to the union leadership to engage and negotiate in good faith and find a solution that addresses the needs of all, including our students.”
Superintendent Carvalho, the previous head of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, was criticized by Max Arias, a union executive, for being out of touch with the general public.
"I don't think he has the moral authority to walk around blaming our members for the schools being closed or the learning loss that may happen," Arias told the New York Times, pointing to Carvalho’s $440,000 annual salary.
Members of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the union representing the city’s 35,000 educators and associated employees, pledged to join the picket line.
"These are the co-workers that are the lowest-paid workers in our schools and we cannot stand idly by as we consistently see them disrespected and mistreated by this district," union president Cecily Myart-Cruz stated during a news conference.
Representative Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who recently announced his intentions to vie for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, supported the strikers’s campaign against “poverty wages.”
"People with some of the most important responsibilities in our schools should not have to live in poverty," Schiff said according to the AP.
Some concerned parents have also joined the picketers in solidarity with concerns that many school employees earn the minimum wage of $15 dollar.
"They are underappreciated, they are underpaid, and they have the most important job in the world," one parent told the Associated Press. "We care about them, and this is the least we can do."
Apart from the union’s 30 percent wage increase demand, the labor organization is requesting an additional $2 hourly boost for the lowest-paid employees. Superintendent Carvalho has proposed a counteroffer raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, a 23 percent recurring pay increase, and a 3 percent cash-in-hand bonus.
However, the two parties remain at loggerheads with no sign of an imminent breakthrough on the horizon.
Back in 2019, the union that represents the 35,000 teachers of the district held a nearly weeklong strike.
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