![]() Here’s our newsroom’s full coverage of the strike and its impacts on LAUSD.Īnd now, here’s what’s happening across California: “ good timing to flex solidarity and to flex a lot of leverage.” “There’s a lot of heightened labor consciousness all around the region,” she said, noting the recent University of California workers strike. That’s “elevating the conversation beyond just pay,” she said, and pushing people to think about “living wage jobs and better jobs people who teach in a district can actually afford to live in that district.” Chen explained the strategy:įor Chen, the LAUSD strike also comes at an opportune moment as a nationwide “reckoning” on the dignity of work continues to swell. But then organizers began to develop a “model of labor community coalition work,” which really got going with the 1990 janitors strike. was viewed as “a hub of low-wage work” by unions that didn’t think organized labor could grow, Chen explained, especially given the high number of low-wage immigrant workers. She traced that shift to the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Times played a major role).įlash back to the late 19th century: As more workers unionized across the country, Los Angeles remained a “horrible, anti-union town for the longest time,” Chen said.īut over the next century, while unions through the Rust Belt saw dwindling influence, L.A.’s union members “actually figured out how to organize immigrant workers organize whole communities,” she explained. It’s especially remarkable, Chen explained, given L.A.’s troubled, violent history around organized labor (in which the L.A. ![]() “Unions haven’t always been good about coordinating actions,” she told me. It may only be planned for three days, but the strike was “decades in the making,” according to Mindy Chen, director of the Dolores Huerta Labor Institute and professor of labor studies at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College.Ĭhen previously worked as an organizer for SEIU and noted the significance of this week’s action, which marks the first time the two unions have joined together in a strike, with UTLA willing to “voluntarily withhold pay and withhold work to actually stand in solidarity” with their schools’ nonteaching workers. Alberto Carvalho pledged to investigate the union’s complaint. LAUSD has denied wrongdoing, though Supt. Local 99 has accused the district of “impeding the rights of workers to engage in legally protected union-related activities,” Blume reported Monday. While union leaders have been bargaining for nearly a year, this week’s strike was in protest of alleged unfair labor practices by LAUSD. “And it’s sad that I have to get up today in the rain to fight for respect because the district doesn’t understand what I and so many others do.” “I love my work and the students,” Alejandra Sanchez, a special education assistant, told The Times from a picket line Tuesday. The nonteaching workers earn an average salary of $25,000, Local 99 Executive Director Max Arias told The Times last week, and the union is seeking to raise that to $36,000.
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