The Los Angeles Unified School District strike has been called off after LAUSD reached a tentative agreement early Tuesday morning with Local 99 of Service Employees International Union. Schools will be open as usual on Tuesday.
The tentative agreement was the third and final milestone needed to avert a walkout and school shutdown in the nation’s second-largest school district — and comes as a relief to parents of some 390,000 students who likely went to sleep Monday night not knowing if there would be school Tuesday morning.
Both United Teachers Los Angeles and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles had reached tentative pacts Sunday with the school district.
All three deals still need to be ratified by union members. The Board of Education also must ratify tentative agreements.
“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 stated in a social media post sent out at about 2:30 a.m. “This is what collective power looks like.”
The statement added, “For tomorrow: All members should report to work as usual.”
A 2 a.m. school district alert also bill-boarded the tentative agreement.
“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.”
Local 99 represents about 30,000 teacher aides, campus aides, gardeners, custodians, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and tech support staff. These union members are the lowest paid in the school system. Their average annual salary is about $35,000 — although the jobs typically include health benefits for union members and their immediate family.
The new agreements gives Local 99 members a huge financial boost — larger in terms of percentage than the other unions that just reached deals.
The union included a description of highlights in its release, including:
A 24% wage increase over the term of the contractIncreased work hours to ensure that thousands of workers and their families qualify for health care benefits Rescinding of layoffs of hundreds of technology support workersExpansion of health care benefits for teacher assistants, after-school workers, community representatives and othersLimitations on subcontracting of work to outside vendors when that work could be done by Local 99 members
The announcement capped lengthy face-to-face meetings that took place Thursday and Sunday as well as the final marathon session.
For its part, the Board of Education met in closed on Friday and also on Monday starting at 10 a.m. Such meetings are typically used to update the board and receive further instructions, if needed. The Monday meeting adjourned in just under three hours — with board members using less than the four hours set aside on their schedule.
Local 99 members have been working under terms of an expired contract since June 30, 2024.
The union was seeking stable work schedules because some members have had hours reduced due to budget cuts. In some cases, workers fell below the threshold of hours needed to qualify for health benefits.
Among district employees, Local 99 members are typically the least equipped to weather a strike — during which they would not be paid.
Details on the two other deals
The three unions, each with separate contracts, cover about 70,000 of the district’s 83,300 employees and nearly all campus workers. For the first time in L.A. Unified, all three had joined together and vowed to walk out if agreements could not be reached with each union.
UTLA represents about 37,000 teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists and librarians.
AALA represents about 3,000 employees in two units. One unit has members with teaching credentials, such as principals and assistant principals. A separate unit consists of middle managers who don’t have a teaching credential.
Other unions — including those that represent school clerical workers, plant and cafeteria managers, building trades workers and school police — settled their contracts previously.
The administrators’ deal includes a pay increase of 11.65% over two years and an opportunity to bargain for an additional raise in the third year of the three-year contract.
Also important to administrators was an agreement to place boundaries on the potentially unlimited, uncompensated work expectations that accompany the job of principal and assistant principal. According to the union, the district has agreed to the framework of a 40-hour week with flex time off for extra hours. It’s unclear whether all the details of this provision have been ironed out.
UTLA said the average pay increase for its members is 13.86% over a two-year pact.
In its proposal, UTLA has wanted steep increases to the automatic “step and column” raises teachers already receive based on years of experience and additional education credits. The union said Sunday that important goals in this area had been achieved.
The union also sought to push up the annual salary of a starting teacher. Under the agreement, this pay would immediately rise to $77,000 from $68,965, an 11.7% jump.
UTLA has said the raises are needed to offset the effect of inflation in an already high-cost region. If the raise results in better teacher retention, then the district and students also would benefit — provided that the increase is affordable.
Other UTLA provisions include adding more than 450 attendance counselors, psychiatric social workers, school psychologists and counselor positions and better controlling class sizes for students with disabilities — including extra pay for teachers whose classes exceed the maximum number.