If a young child in Los Angeles had wished for all the grown ups to disappear, they got their wish, at least partially. Yesterday was the start of a planned three-day-long protest in which teachers walked out of classrooms to demand higher pay as well as other inducements to continue working.
Meanwhile, while these adults are out on the streets yelling and filming dances for TikTok, an estimated 400,000 students in the country’s second-largest school district were left abandoned, as if they already didn’t miss enough school and one-on-one time with their teachers during the 2020 pandemic.
The protest was the result of tensions between the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTA) and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) after a yearlong negotiation for pay raises to match the cost of living in Democrat-run California fell flat, apparently. (According to Salary.com, the average teacher salary in LA is a cool $47,599.)
“Some of our bus drivers are actually homeless, some of them can’t pay their bills,” said a bus driver for LAUSD in an interview with KTLA. “They can’t even pay their mortgage — it’s impossible.”
While they could have probably scheduled this protest for a weekend as to no obstruct the learning of students and responsibilities of the working parents, they chose to do this protest in the middle of a school week in order to inflict as much pain and inconvenience as possible.
LA teachers strike. pic.twitter.com/oJm6tz4sYP
— D. Scott @eclipsethis2003 (@eclipsethis2003) March 21, 2023
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Screw Those Kids
Boyd-Peterson, one of the teachers participating in the strike planned by the UTA, said that this protest, which is impacting the learning of students, is actually as much for their own good as it is for hers.
“We love our students, and we’re here for the students. But if we can’t properly take care of our kids, how can we properly come here and work as well?” She said.
In “real world” talk, she’s basically using the kids as a shield to get what she wants.
The UTA demands consist of the following requests:
- A overall pay increase of 30% to their base salaries over a four year period
- An extra $2-an-hour for the lowest paid employees
- Additional increases in compensation to assist those who commute a considerable distance to schools
“We are asking the parents to please stand up with us because if we can take care of our families properly, we can actually take care of their families as well,” Boyd-Peterson added.
Well, you could have sent an email, because if the goal was to get parents on your side, abandoning their kids for three days probably wasn’t the best idea.
WHAT A DAY IN LA
Local 99 members & @UTLAnow teachers represent a critical workforce committed to the education and long term success of all LAUSD students.
When will the @LAUSDSup and the #LAUSD school board treat us like it? #LAUSDStrike #United4LASchools pic.twitter.com/fPYpKI9aUE
— SEIU Local 99 (@SEIULocal99) March 21, 2023
We Don’t Want to Solve the Problem, We Want to be Angry
Executive director of Local 99 under the UTA, Max Arias, said in a statement to The New York Times that the participants in the protests “know a strike will be a sacrifice, but the school district has pushed workers to take this action.”
Here’s the catch though— the school district already offered the UTA a 23% raise over a five-year period, which also included some pretty hefty bonuses. How did the UTA respond? They ignored the offer and several other attempts at direct negotiations with the LAUSD.
When was the last time you got a 23% pay raise?
LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho stated on Monday before the protests began that he wished there would have been a “transparent, honest conversation” in order to prevent this protest, but the union didn’t want that, they wanted their all-or-nothing deal and they were willing to impact the families of 400,000 students in order to do that.
There is no bravery in using children as shields, but that doesn’t matter to the UTA. They want what they want.
“We understand the plight, the frustration, and the realities faced by our workforce members,” Carvalho stated. “We’re willing to work with them, but the way we find a solution is by having a partner at the table to actually negotiate possible results.”
In a statement from Carvalho to The Epoch Times, “We were never in the same room or even in the same building.”
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