More than half a million children are set to miss school next week due to a planned three-day strike Employees of the nation’s second-largest school system, who are demanding higher wages due to rising inflation and housing costs.
The development comes as the latest round of negotiations between Los Angeles Unified School District schools and a union representing its 30,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other school employees appeared to have collapsed on Friday.
In hopes of averting a strike that would shut down more than 1,000 schools, negotiations have stalled, even after Superintendent Alberto Carvalho insisted the district was willing to improve on an offer of three consecutive raises in as many years to avoid anything. closures.
The offer did not appear to be enough to sway members of the Service Employees International Union Local 99 (SEIU Local 99), which is demanding a 30 percent raise for school employees. United Teachers LA, which represents 30,000 more district employees, is set to join Local 99.
Parents are now desperate for a solution, pleading with officials to think about the more than 565,000 pupils who will miss classes due to the closure. Some of these children also resent the interruptionsmany of whom have already seen their education interrupted during the pandemic.
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More than half a million children are set to miss school next week because of a planned three-day strike by Los Angeles Unified School District employees who are demanding higher wages due to inflation and housing costs.
Students like fourth-grader Talia Ball said they are unhappy with the interruptions, seeing their education interrupted several times during the pandemic.
“I’m sad,” fourth-grader Talia Ball told FOX 11 Los Angeles about how she feels about the impending walkout and the strong possibility she’ll have to miss classes Tuesday.
When asked what she will miss most about being home next week, the Wadsworth Avenue Elementary student replied with a reassuring smile.
Her sister Tiana, a first-grader at Los Angeles Elementary School, responded similarly friends,” after being questioned about the seemingly inevitable closures.
The sisters spoke to the Fox affiliate on the steps of their school, where their classmates could be seen playing on a nearby playground.
He said come next weekthat playground and hundreds of others may be eerily empty because the streets nearby are still filled with hundreds of homeless people. camps that, for the most part, sprouted up during the epidemic.
The city’s current state, along with other Golden State strongholds like San Francisco and San Diego, have tested citizens’ patience for years, and impending closures when combined with years of rising crime are no help.
While citizens are fed up, public school workers in the embattled state, which is currently debating a proposal that would give some 1.8 million black Californians “reparations,” are just as fed up with local government, leading to a planned walkout. were announced last week.
The development comes as the latest round of negotiations between the district and the union that represents its 30,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other school employees collapsed Friday. Wednesday saw protests by district workers and other sympathizers
Talias’ younger sister, Tiana, a first-grader at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary, similarly responded, “my friends,” when asked about the now-imminent closings.
Seen here with father Hasan, the sisters serve as just two of an estimated 565,000 students missing classes Tuesday due to workers’ compensation claims.
“Workers are tired of living on poverty wages and having their jobs threatened to demand fair pay,” SEIU Local 99 Executive Director Max Arais said in a statement last week criticizing the district for not bowing to their demands for an immediate raise.
“Workers are fed up with the short staffing of LAMDS and are being harassed for speaking up.”
Arais would then set the date for the three-day march, which comes on the heels of other protests seen by his union and the aforementioned teachers organization in recent months.
That union, which represents the district’s teachers and other instructors, is asking for a slightly steeper 20 percent pay raise.
The district’s failed settlement package has reportedly been offered A 5 percent retroactive wage increase through July 2021, plus an additional 5 percent retroactive increase through July 2022 to address rising rent costs in the City of Angels, which is in the midst of an unprecedented housing crisis.
Carvalho also reportedly proposed another 5 percent raise that would take effect this July, along with a 4 percent bonus for the 2022-23 school year and a 5 percent bonus for 2023-24.
At a rally in Grand Park on Wednesday, the union announced that the strike would begin on Tuesday as workers are fed up with local government and District Manager Alberto Carvajlo, having to live “on poor wages and have their jobs threatened to demand fair pay”.
United Teachers LA is set to join Local 99, which represents another 30,000 district employees.
Source: |: This article originally belonged to Dailymail.co.uk