LOS ANGELES — Tens of thousands of Los Angeles school employees will begin a three-day strike starting on Tuesday, forcing hundreds of campuses to close and canceling classes for 422,000 students.
The union that represents 30,000 support workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District is seeking a 30 percent pay increase, saying that many employees make little more than the minimum wage and struggle to afford the cost of living in Southern California.
The Los Angeles teachers’ union has asked its 35,000 members to walk out in solidarity and to avoid crossing the support workers’ picket lines.
“We must formally announce that all schools across LAUSD will be closed to students tomorrow,” Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the district, said on Twitter on Monday night.
The announcement came shortly after the unions for support workers and teachers in the school district said they would walk out on Tuesday morning.
Earlier in the day, leaders of Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest school district in the nation, said they were working around the clock to avert a strike. Even so, in recent days they urged parents to begin making child-care arrangements because a walkout by both the support workers and the teachers would necessitate shutting down more than 1,000 schools.
The strike has forced families to scramble and has rekindled frustrations that many parents felt over the lengthy school closures prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Some parents are able to care for their children by working remotely, but many have jobs that require their presence at a workplace outside the home.
Labor Organizing and Union Drives
Here’s what we know about the walkout.
As many as 65,000 employees will walk off the job.
The dispute involves Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents people who work for Los Angeles Unified in a variety of nonteaching jobs, like bus drivers, cafeteria workers, special education assistants and gardeners. The union announced on Monday afternoon that its members would strike for three days, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents teachers and some other district employees, is not a party to the labor dispute, but said its members would not cross Local 99’s picket lines.
The work stoppage will be the first joint walkout by the district’s two largest unions, according to Mr. Carvalho, who became the superintendent just over one year ago.
The strike is limited to three days.
Local 99 said that it was calling for a limited strike this week specifically to protest unfair negotiating tactics by the school district, rather than calling a general walkout over pay and work conditions. Under the law, the union said, this type of strike comes with protections for workers who walk out, but must have a set time limit and cannot be open-ended.
Los Angeles Unified asked the state on Friday to block the planned strike, arguing that the union was actually protesting over pay, not negotiating tactics, and that it had not exhausted all of the bargaining steps required before striking over economic issues.
A state board said over the weekend that it would not impose an injunction against the strike.
So far, Karen Bass, the new mayor of Los Angeles, and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, both Democrats, have not played a heavy hand in the dispute. Unlike in some cities, the Los Angeles mayor does not control the school district, which is run by an independently elected board.
Mr. Newsom has discussed the strike with Ms. Bass and is receiving updates from the union and the district, said Anthony York, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom. But the governor has no immediate plans to become involved in the negotiations, Mr. York said.
The union and the district are far apart on pay.
Contract negotiations between Local 99 and Los Angeles Unified began in April 2022, and Local 99 declared in December that the talks were at an impasse, according to the union. Its members voted overwhelmingly in February to authorize a strike.
Its members “know a strike will be a sacrifice, but the school district has pushed workers to take this action,” Max Arias, the executive director of Local 99, said in a statement.
The union is seeking a 30 percent overall raise; an additional $2-an-hour increase for the lowest-paid workers; and other increases in compensation. Local 99 said its workers made an average salary of $25,000 a year. The district has said that the figure includes part-time as well as full-time employees.
A counterproposal from the district, announced by Mr. Carvalho, the superintendent, at a news conference late on Monday, included a 23 percent recurring increase and a 3 percent cash-in hand bonus.
The union, Mr. Arias said, is steadfast in its demand for a 30 percent pay increase and an additional $2 an hour for the lowest-paid workers.
“They’ve ignored us,” he said of the district, in an interview on Monday.
The teachers union is also in contract discussions with the district, but it has not called its own walkout, other than saying it will honor Local 99’s picket lines this week. The district’s latest proposal for teachers includes a 5 percent increase for this school year, a 6 percent raise next year and a 3 percent increase in the 2024-25 school year. In October 2022, the teachers’ union called for a 20 percent pay increase.
Education strikes are becoming more common.
In 2019, the teachers’ union in L.A. Unified went on strike for the first time in 30 years. School campuses stayed open, but student attendance was low.
Eric Garcetti, a Democrat who was mayor of Los Angeles at the time, stepped in to help broker a deal to end the walkout.
Later that year, teachers went on strike for a week in Oakland and for a day in Sacramento. Teachers and staff members walked out in Sacramento in 2022, reaching a deal with administrators on pay raises and benefits after eight days.
In the fall, 48,000 unionized University of California employees, most of them graduate students, walked off the job for nearly six weeks. They secured significant increases in starting salaries, higher pay scales for experienced workers and extra compensation for those who work in particularly expensive California cities.
Strikes, especially by teachers and education workers, have become increasingly common over the past six years, a reflection of widespread employee frustration with low wages, poor working conditions and growing income inequality, according to Kent Wong, director of the U.C.L.A. Labor Center. Public support for organized labor is at a 50-year high in the United States.
Moreover, the nation has recently been experiencing its highest inflation rates since the 1980s. And education workers have seen some private-sector employees successfully negotiate for more pay as employers struggle to hire and retain qualified staff.
“There’s tremendous discontent among working people that this isn’t working for them,” Mr. Wong said. “The rise in worker organizing and the rise in worker strikes is absolutely a sign of the times.”
The district and families of schoolchildren are preparing for a shutdown.
District officials announced last week that supervision of students would be provided at some schools from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the strike. Eighteen recreation centers in Los Angeles County will offer free games, open gyms and computer labs for children to use from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. during the school work stoppage.
Besides supervision for children, a major concern is ensuring that children are properly fed. The district offers free breakfast and lunch for all students, regardless of income, and many children rely on those meals during the school week. Most students enrolled in the Los Angeles district come from low-income households.