CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

LA Teachers Strike: SEIU Rising

On the eve of the 2023 Service Employees International Union Local 99 strike, Los Angeles Times Columnist Robin Abcarian wrote “I don’t blame the union one bit” and condemned Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho for “just one more slap in the face” after Carvalho “responded to the (strike) vote by comparing the union’s action to a circus.” In reference to SEIU, Carvalho had tweeted:

“Circus = a predictable performance with a known outcome, desiring of nothing more than an applause, a coin, and a promise of a next show.”

For SEIU, LAUSD’s poverty-level wages should be OK

Carvalho was hardly alone in expressing contempt for SEIU’s members, LAUSD’s lowest-paid education workers.

Criticizing SEIU’s strike, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, hosts of the popular, long-running John and Ken Show then on Los Angeles’ KFI AM 640, explained, “These [SEIU] jobs aren’t meant for you to have a home and a family…you can’t have families if you make so little money—it’s not responsible, it’s not practical.”

John and Ken were openly stating what many American conservatives believe but usually are too prudent to say–having kids and having a home are privileges to be reserved only for the social classes who can “afford” them.

‘My pay hasn’t really raised much since I started’

At the time of the 2023 strike, my colleague Eric Hernandez, a school custodian, was featured in the Los Angeles Times piece Three-day LAUSD strike means three days without pay. How are low-paid workers coping?:

“At one point in his life, Eric Hernandez, who has worked as a school custodian for 17 years, said he was forced to choose between sleep or increased stability.

“He worked two jobs: handling buildings, grounds and custodial duties at James Monroe High School in North Hills, while taking evening shifts at his neighborhood Target.

“But the lack of sleep ‘burned him out,’ forcing him to quit Target and return to his single salary — and the anxiety it induced.”

“It’s unbelievable, but my pay hasn’t really raised much since I started. Guys who start tomorrow are only making a little less than me.”

When on March 21, 2023 SEIU–which had been working without a contract since 2020–finally struck, Carvalho seemed surprised that United Teachers Los Angeles honored their picket lines. Given his experience in the anti-union South managing Miami-Dade County Public Schools and contending with a much weaker teacher’s union–I know, I was once a member of it–Carvalho probably expected that teachers would cross the line and work.

With teachers and administrators in place and personnel brought in from Beaudry (LAUSD’s central offices) on an emergency basis, Carvalho figured LAUSD could roll right over SEIU, as school districts often do in similar situations.

Carvalho’s view wasn’t without foundation. At the time, the anti-teachers union LA School........

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