The general guess from many observers has been that a strike is a pretty sure bet though this article doesn't go there. The UTLA demands go deep and look like a perfect combo of issues related to bread and butter and beyond that cover day to day working conditions.

Why LAUSD's 30,000 Teachers Might Go On Strike

by Kyle Stokes in News on August 29, 2018 9:08 AM

Members of United Teachers Los Angeles — a union representing more than 30,000 L.A. Unified School District teachers, librarians, nurses and other school workers — cast strike authorization votes at Thomas Starr King Middle School in the Silver Lake neighborhood on Thurs., Aug. 23, 2018. (Photo by Kyle Stokes/KPCC)

Teachers in Los Angeles Unified schools have voted overwhelmingly to give leaders of their union permission to call a strike if contentious contract talks with district officials fall apart.
Leaders of the union, United Teachers Los Angeles, still cannot legally call for a strike until completing state mediation, a process that can take weeks. But if UTLA leaders do act on their threat, it would be the first teachers strike in LAUSD since 1989.
Roughly a year and a half of contract talks stalled in July. Almost every day since, the already-tattered relationship between UTLA leaders — who represent more than 30,000 teachers, librarians, nurses, social workers and counselors — and LAUSD leadership frays a little more.
http://www.laist.com/2018/08/29/why_lausds_30000_teachers_might_go_on_strike.php

Examining The Upcoming Teacher Strike in Los Angeles

UPDATE FROM JACK GERSON: Norm, Mike Antonucci predicts that UTLA will strike in early October. But they have just asked for impasse. Typically impasse is followed by mediation, which in itself can take well over two months After mediation comes PERB Factfinding. Another one to two months. My guess is a strike in about January. Jack Gerson

Caputo-Pearl and the rest of the UTLA leadership want to regenerate in Los Angeles what teachers did in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona last spring.... Mike Antonucci, EIA, LA School Report

Solidarity with a potential strike in LA in October will be a key priority for MORE in the fall... Peter Lamphere, MORE listserve

Bet the Ranch — UTLA Will Strike in October

Posted: 01 Aug 2018 06:38 AM PDT

The other school employee unions in the Los Angeles Unified School District are settling contracts and going home happy. But not United Teachers Los Angeles. UTLA has wanted an occasion for a strike for two years, and it isn’t going to let anything stand in the way. I think I even know exactly when it will be.
Get the details at LA School Report.

Bet the Farm, Part Two — UTLA Will Authorize a Strike by More Than 90%

Posted: 08 Aug 2018 07:02 AM PDT

Last week I predicted UTLA will go on strike. This week I predict the authorization will be more than 90%.
Read why at LA School Report.

There's a lot of excitement over the potential LA teacher strike, which would bring red state type action to biggest blue state and to the 2nd largest school system in the nation. UTLA leader Alex Caputo-Pearl, whom I first met 9 years ago, is organizing on many levels.

Mike A. comes at things from an anti-union perspective but does report accurately while also looking to punch as many holes as he can to burst the bubble.

In the interest of providing wide coverage I will be posting more from Antonucci whose analysis is always interesting.

Here are two views of the coming strike in Los Angeles. One from the UTLA and the always useful view from the right from Mike Antonucci, who has been writing extensively about the upcoming strike which he predicts will take place in October.

Teachers Issues in DC and Gaza

Rhee in DC Teacher Raise Proposal - Another Nail in the Coffin of Public Education

This morning, I stumbled across Tom Hoffman (Providence, RI) over at Tuttle SVC who raises some very important issues on the proposed DC teacher contract - This Raise Brought to You by the Broad Foundation.

Rhee wants to use donations from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and the Broad Foundation, in part, to pay for the raises and bonuses. Officials from the Gates and Broad foundations would not comment on proposed future funding.

I don't know if any more information than that has subsequently come out (I can't find it easily if it has), but if that's still the plan, it has some rather shocking implications. The DC government would be handing all the contributing foundations a virtual veto on their education policy for at least the next five years, the ongoing capacity to trigger a fiscal crisis in the District at their whim.

Five years, the proposed term of the contract, is a long time to our new power philanthropists. They have a short history, but they've already established a clear pattern of packing up and leaving when things don't go their way, including when the citizens of a city don't vote the way they like, or when democratically elected officials don't see things their way, or when the top down reforms they've imposed simply fail.

Tom has a lot of interesting things to say and I've added Tuttle SVC to the Outside NYC blogroll.



Teachers fired over strike - in Gaza
But did they lose their parking permits?

I'm not sure of the source, but Jeff K who keeps us informed of union activity around the world - a good contast to the lack of such in the UFT - posted this on ICE-mail. Remember the monhts long Israeli teacher strike last year? Imagine - a union of Palestinian and Israeli teachers. Nahhh! Why would we expect workers to put their common interests ahead of nationalism when we see American workers who vote against their own interests all the time?

In Gaza, the Fatah-controlled teachers’ union called a strike to protest teacher transfers. Hamas took the opportunity to replace an estimated 2,000 of the 9,000 teachers who walked out. “Anybody who left their job will not be allowed to return,” said the Hamas education minister. “They have become irrelevant and cannot be trusted anymore as educators.” This is bad news for the students, who don’t know whether to return to school or not, and bad news for the teachers, who are out of a job if they don’t return to work - and who are out of a job if they do return to work because the Palestinian Authority, headed by Fatah, “would fire teachers who accepted school promotions,” according to a teachers’ union leader.

“This is a disaster,” said Aly, a 47-year-old math teacher who declined to give his full name for fear of offending Hamas or Fatah. “The big losers are me and my students.” Wael, a 38-year-old physics teacher and Fatah loyalist, said he felt bullied into striking. “My salary and future are tied to the side that pays me,” he said. “At the same time, I am afraid there’ll be (Hamas) procedures taken against me.” He declined to give his family name because he did not support the Fatah-led walkout and feared his pay would be cut.

And Unity Caucus/UFT worries about losing dues checkoff if they should strike.

Israeli Teacher Strike

It's not easy to find much info on the almost 2 month long Israeli teachers strike of secondary school teachers. Last week, I posted some stuff from the Jerusalem Post on Norm's Notes, where, remarkably, a 100,000 people rallied to their support in Tel Aviv. The strike has fomented lots of discussion about education reform that echoes some of the stuff over here.

Photo from Jerusalem Post website

Some teachers say they will not go back even if ordered to by an injunction. They should look at the 2005 contract our UFT leaders arranged with the NYCDOE as a model NOT to follow.

I emailed a teacher who moved to Israel after being railroaded out of Far Rockaway HS. (One of the charges was his asking me to come to speak to a union meeting after school and he wrote a scathing indictment of the UFT hierarchy, focusing on then Queens district HS and now Queens borough rep Rona Freiser, but that's a story for another day.) Hopefully we can get some first hand info back from him.

George Schmidt is working on an article for Substance and sent the following request:

Looking for JPG photos from Israeli teachers' strike, Tel Aviv rally
We are trying to do a decent story on the high school teachers strike in Israel either for December (currently on deadline) or January (shamefully, but that's the best we might be able to do). The last time we had a major strike that had been virtually blacked out in the US media was Vancouver, which we covered in November 2005 (still available in back issues on our old website, www.substancenews.com). I assume there are thousands of teachers here in Chicago, in New York, and elsewhere, who have friends who've been on strike in Israel and who have access to photographs and other stories about that strike.

George Schmidt
Csubstance@aol.com