LAUSD workers picket outside USC as three-day strike continues

Los Angeles Unified School District workers braved the Wednesday morning rain to picket on the corner of 36th Street and Vermont Avenue. 

The rally of some 30 service employees and teachers, most of whom work at South L.A. campuses, was part of an ongoing three-day strike of tens of thousands of LAUSD workers that has captured the nation’s attention. Passing cars sounded frequent honks of support for the group, which joined larger protests in the city later in the day.

District service workers, including bus drivers, janitors, food-service staff and special education assistants — under the banner of the Service Employees International Union Local 99 — are calling for a 30% pay raise and an additional $2 per hour for the union’s lowest-paid employees. Additional demands include more full-time hours, elimination of unpaid furlough days, equitable access to healthcare and resolution of staff shortages.

The teachers’ union is striking in solidarity, grinding operations across the nation’s second-largest school district to a halt. LAUSD serves more than 565,000 students across over a thousand campuses.

“We’re overworked, we’re overwhelmed, we’re short staffed,” said Liliana Carpio, a classified employee who works with special education students. “It’s time that they treat us fairly and the way we deserve to be treated.”

This week’s strike, which began on Tuesday and is limited to just three days, is in protest of what SEIU Local 99 characterized as the district’s “harassment and intimidation of workers,” as opposed to being a prolonged tactic meant to force the district to agree to a set of demands. The union’s website notes, however, that an open-ended strike could happen in the future. 

For a brief moment last weekend, a Hail Mary legal effort offered a possible out: LAUSD leadership asked the California Public Employment Relations Board for an injunction Friday, arguing that a strike would be illegal because the stated justification was not the real reason for the walkout. The board tossed that argument Sunday.

“I was out here in 2019 fighting for the same stuff,” said John Dvorkin, a first grade teacher at Lenicia B. Weemes Elementary School, referring to the six-day teachers’ strike that year that resulted in a 6% pay raise.

Dvorkin said he explained the strike to his students — who learned about the civil rights movement of the 1960s earlier this year, so are aware of the concept of protests — but few asked any questions.

“Los Angeles Unified has made a historically generous offer to SEIU Local 99 which exceeds local, state and national comparisons,” the district wrote on its website. “We are doing everything we can to reach an agreement that is equitable, fiscally responsible and reflects the dignity of our tremendous employees.”