11th-hour reprieve for 400,000 LA kids as school strike averted

Students with the Los Angeles Unified School District will slink back to school Tuesday as the district averted disaster, penning an agreement with Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union.

Union leaders had been prepared for students to have the day off had thousands of school employees took to the picket lines. It also means 390,000 students will go to school after going to bed thinking they could be off.

“Because of your unity and readiness to take action, we secured major wins for our members — including significant improvements to wages and hours, stronger protections against subcontracting, increased staffing, and we successfully stopped layoffs for IT workers,” Local 99 said in social media post. “This is what collective power looks like.”

“For tomorrow: All members should report to work as usual,” it added.

The sweetheart deal for Local 99 was the third and final milestone to avert a walkout among one of the largest school districts in the nation.

Local 99 represents thousands of teacher aides, campus aides, gardeners, custodians, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and tech support staff. 

As part of the deal, workers will nab a 24% pay raise over their new contract, more work hours, a nixing of the layoffs of tech support workers, more healthcare benefits and limitations on subcontracting work to outside vendors.

The district celebrated the agreement early this morning.

“We are pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement in principle with SEIU Local 99 that will allow schools to be open,” the announcement said.

“Los Angeles Unified and SEIU Local 99 teams will continue to work together to finalize the details of a tentative agreement. Thank you for your patience and partnership during this time.”

Two other unions,  the United Teachers Los Angeles and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, reached tentative deals with the district on Sunday.

Mayor Karen Bass said she stepped in to ensure schools would be open.

“I stepped into the negotiations to make sure every effort was made to find an agreement, because a strike would disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of kids and their parents, who need childcare and need to go to work,” she wrote on social media.

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