A tentative agreement reached Friday between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the union representing support staff won a pay raise of about 30% or more for the lowest-wage workers, one day after the end of a strike that affected schools. closed for three days.

If approved by union members, the agreement brokered with Mayor Karen Bass could prevent campuses from being closed again to 420,000 students and relieve workers of jobs that would have been hard to sustain.

Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union, representing about 30,000 workers and including bus drivers, teacher’s assistants, special education assistants, custodians and food service workers, led the strike that began Tuesday and ended Thursday. Members of United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents approximately 35,000 teachers, counselors, therapists, nurses and librarians, also went on strike in solidarity. UTLA continues to negotiate its contract.

The deal with Local 99 is not an overall raise, but spread over time and is also affected by years of service and current salary, so some employees will receive less than 30% and some more.

Here in California, this agreement will set new standards not just for Los Angeles, but for the entire state, Max Arias, executive director of Local 99, said at a joint city hall press conference with Bass and LA schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho, who called it a historic day.

Referring to the bitterness of rhetoric during the dispute, Bass said the agreement would move the parties toward cooperation.

Executive director Arias and superintendent Carvalho have taken such a big step, she said. I am hopeful that this is the beginning of a new relationship

will lead to a stronger LAUSD.

A broader context

All three leaders spoke of a strike and settlement bigger than Los Angeles and the school district and symbolic of the problems faced by working-class families.

The fact is, the majority of SEIU 99 employees don’t just work in our schools, Bass said. They are also LAUSD parents. And working full time today is just too hard for too many hardworking people to get a roof over their heads and put food on the table. This is about the high cost of living in Los Angeles. Los Angeles, as everyone knows, has become virtually unaffordable.

Said Arias: I want to thank the 30,000 members who sacrificed three days of work, despite low income, to raise the issue that we as a society need to do better for all workers, all working people, for everyone.

Carvalho said the agreement ultimately came about through common understanding.

I have said since I arrived in Los Angeles that the impossible circumstances faced by many of our employees, many of our children and their families are real, he said, whether it be the unaffordability of housing, or the fact that that many of our children do not have a home. or their parents or in some cases members of our workforce.

The Local 99 strike is part of a broader context of assertive union activism across the country, largely because of rising financial inequality, said William B. Gould IV, Stanford law professor emeritus, author, and former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.

There’s generally been a greater willingness on the part of organized labor to stand up for workers in the past year or so and greater audacity, Gould said.

The three-day strike was an attempt to reach an equitable settlement, but also an attempt to get the attention of the public, he added.

Gould wasn’t surprised that UTLA respected the picket lines: what’s unusual about this is the fact that these [Local 99] workers so marginalized are willing to set up picket lines.

Joy and relief

At the grassroots level, the deal translates into Erika Rioverde going from about $15 an hour to the new minimum of $22.52 in the district.

The elevation will provide her family with much-needed relief and security, said Riverde, who works as a community representative at Parmelee Avenue Elementary School.

She hopes to be able to buy ingredients for meals her son wants to eat, rather than just buying food on sale.

You don’t even know how happy I am, said Rioverde, who has worked at LA Unified for nine years. Finally something changes.

Veronica De La Paz, a campus assistant and parent representative at Hobart Elementary School, said she had not expected the strike to resolve so quickly.

De La Paz said she plans to funnel the money away from savings. She hasn’t been able to build an emergency fund on her current salary of about $1,100 a month, and often worries about how her family would weather a layoff or unexpected expenses.

Since she will lose three days’ pay, she began to mentally calculate how she would stretch her next paycheck. She said she was grateful for the support of the teachers’ union.

I thought: we have to fight for this. The three days were worth it, she said.

For Carmen Carbajal, who works as a special education assistant at Bandini Elementary School in San Pedro, the extra money will be used to pay off more than $4,000 in credit card debt she’s built up to pay utility bills and put gas in her car. to refuel. She also hopes to repair the leaking roof in her garage.

I’ll be able to breathe a little bit, said Carbajal, who has worked in the district for more than 25 years and earns $22 an hour.

Details of the agreement

The overall increases include retroactive payments for employees employed at the time: 6% from July 1, 2021; 7% more than July 1, 2022; and 7% more from July 1, 2023. Employees active in 2020 will also receive a $1,000 bonus. And on July 1, 2024, all employees will receive $2 an hour more, which will best benefit those at the lower end of the scale.

Arias once said he wouldn’t come back to the table unless LA Unified was willing to offer 30%. The deal allows him to hit that number for many employees and way past that for some.

The deal also guarantees health benefits for all employees and their families if employees work at least four hours a day. And some employees get the extra hours they said they needed.

Carvalho had warned that demands from Local 99 and the teachers’ union could push the district to the brink of insolvency. But on Friday, he said the deal was structured to spread spending, making it affordable.

Those who watched from the outside expressed cautious optimism.

It’s a historic day in LA public education that would not have been possible without the sacrifice of students, families and workers, as well as the mayor’s leadership and collaboration from both sides, said Ana Teresa Dahan, general manager of

GPSN

a local education advocacy group.

There is no question that the workers deserved the raise, said Pedro Noguera, dean of the USC Rossier School of Education.

I hope this deal will not cause financial instability for the district. When that happens, everyone loses.

Among those less than impressed with the result was Lance Christensen, a union critic who recently unsuccessfully ran for state superintendent of public education.

What happened wasn’t a negotiation, it was a hostage situation, Christensen said. You don’t have to be cynical to realize that the union used LAUSD’s kids to get the deal they wanted while the district succumbed to a fiscally imprudent deal. UTLA will soon deploy the students to a similar deal.

Mayor joins the fray

The end of the strike, which had a fixed duration, did not end the contract dispute, and negotiations hung on the possibility of future job action.

A major breakthrough was the intervention of Bass, who stepped in to mediate on Wednesday.

The first word about Bass’s involvement came Wednesday, posted on social media by Los Angeles school officials.

This announcement and subsequent comments from those on both sides were deliberately parsimonious about details, so as to avoid exacerbating tensions.

For Bass, the strike was the most high-profile emergency in LA since she took office in December. The mayor told reporters on Friday that she was in contact with the opposing parties even before the workers left work.

She said she had conversations with both leaders [and] have meetings, but for me it wasn’t important to be public about that.

She invited both LAUSD and labor leaders to City Hall because it was a neutral space.

The parties met for long sessions, going back and forth in different rooms, she said.

The union had defined the strike as a three-day protest against unfair labor practices, typically alleging that an employer has legally interfered in protected, union-related activities.

LA Unified challenged this rationale in a filing with state regulators in a last-ditch effort to prevent the strike.

The district said the alleged labor violations were a pretext to launch a strike ahead of the completion of a legally mandated bargaining process.

The district’s legal maneuver hasn’t stopped the strike, but the case remains active and the school system can still argue that the two unions acted illegally by walking away.