LA Teachers Strike: Education Workers Defend Their Livelihoods in Face of Inflation
In the 12 months following the surrender of Japan, over five million American workers were involved in labor strikes, including 750,000 steel workers, coal (340,000 workers), auto (320,000), railroad (250,000), electrical 174,000, oil, meatpacking, and many other industries. There were strict wage controls during the war, and the Office of Price Administration, created in January 1942 by the Emergency Price Control Act, kept inflation relatively low. It was terminated in 1946. Inflation rose to 8% in 1945, 14% in 1946, and 8% in 1947.
The wide gap between what companies were able to pay and what they were willing to pay was part of what set off the strikes. For example, General Electric and Westinghouse had reported record profits but offered workers a raise of only four cents a day. The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union struck, winning a raise 37 times that.
The big business backlash against strike victories led to the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act, which attempted to handcuff labor by limiting solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, and mass picketing, and allowing states to enact right-to-work laws banning closed shops. Correctly understanding that communists and socialists were behind the giant American labor victories of the 1930s, Taft-Hartley required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits.
Parallels between post-war strike wave & the 2023 & 2026 LA educator labor battles
There are many parallels between the Los Angeles education worker strikes/battles of 2023 and 2026 and the post-war strike wave:
+ Inflation ate away at wage gains made by United Teachers Los Angeles and Service Employees International Union Local 99, prompting labor action
+ The employers were seen as having the ability to afford the raises
+ UTLA and SEIU gained significant wage increases both in 2023 and 2026
+ There has been a backlash against the two unions’ demands, particularly over salary.
Fortunately, conservatives have figured out how to make inflation disappear
Nobody could claim that the Editorial Board and columnists of the Wall Street Journal–the conservative mouthpiece of American capital–are dismissive of the problems inflation causes. From January 1, 2022 until Trump’s inauguration, the following inflation-related commentary and many more appeared in their opinion pages:
The Inflation Thief Rises Again (WSJ Editorial Board)
How Inflation Ended Neoliberalism—and Re-Elected Trump (commentary)
Inflation Demands Bold Fed Action (commentary)
It’s Joe Biden’s Inflation (WSJ Editorial Board)
They Wouldn’t Know Inflation if It Bit Them in the Ballot (commentary)
Inflation Isn’t Conquered Yet (WSJ Editorial Board)
A Home Is Your Castle Against Rising Inflation (commentary)
Inflation Drives Wages Down, Not Up (commentary)
Government Policies, Not Low Rates, Are Driving Inflation (commentary)
Jerome Powell Is Wrong. Printing Money Causes Inflation. (commentary)
How Inflation Raises Your Taxes (commentary)
What Carter and Biden Have in Common (Inflation) (WSJ Editorial Board)
Yet the WSJ did figure out how to make inflation disappear–whenever a union asks for a raise, inflation no longer exists.
In July 2024, 1,000 Philadelphia sanitation workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33 went on strike for the first time in almost 40 years.
In A Trashy Fourth of July in Philadelphia in July of 2024, the WSJ Editorial Board wrote:
“Public unions are often at odds with the public interest, and Exhibit A is Philadelphia this week. Over the Fourth of July weekend, the home of Independence Hall is greeting holiday guests with garbage piles on streets and limited city services. That’s thanks to one of the city’s biggest worker strikes in decades.”
The WSJ Editorial Board–after years of decrying inflation, which had averaged almost 6% a year for the three previous years and almost 5% a year from 2019 to 2024–never references it. Instead, they actually write that, somehow, “(Philadelphia) Mayor Cherelle Parker’s offer of a 2.75% raise, followed by two years of 3% hikes…wasn’t enough for the union.”
When the sanitation workers “won” a 14% raise over 4 years–a princely 3.5% a year–the WSJ bitterly noted that “taxpayers will be paying for this city disservice, a reminder of how public unions can hold a city hostage.”
Conservatives make inflation disappear in Chicago Teachers Union contract battle
In the 2019-2025 Chicago Teachers Union-Chicago Public Schools contract, the average Chicago teachers’ salary rose 16%–well below the rate of inflation. Normally conservatives would agree with CTU President Stacy Davis Gates’ statement “We are experiencing an extraordinary amount of inflation…pay has not kept up with the prices…”
Yet while Chicago teachers are exactly the type of workers that Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers, speaking at the 2024 Republican National Convention, told us were getting “crushed by inflation”, the sympathy conservatives profess for American workers’ struggles with inflation was nowhere to be found in their treatment of the CTU.
For National Review, Chicago teachers are a “select and privileged group of public-sector union members” who through “corrupt self-dealing” are “increasingly captur[ing]” the beleaguered city’s “tax dollars.”
For the Wall Street Journal, the CTU’s attempt to gain back for its members some of what they lost in the inflation of the Biden-Harris era represents “huge raises.”
Chicago teachers ended up getting a 4% cost-of-living increase in Year 1 of the contract, and 4-5% in each of the remaining three years, depending on inflation–a far cry from “huge”.
The cost of living in Los Angeles: home prices
The high school where I teach is not an elite one–in fact, with our heavily-immigrant population, we have one of the lowest student socioeconomic levels in the state. Yet it’s not hard to see why so many of my colleagues–even those who are well into their 30s–are still living with their parents and often face long commutes. A Zillow search of three bedroom homes for sale in our zip code reveals that of the 32 houses currently available, 18 are over $1 million, and only one is below $800K. An $800K mortgage, with $160,000 down, is $4,204 a month, including property taxes and insurance. The median three-bedroom home prices in five mid-level LA regions that are part of LAUSD are:
+ East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights 90063: $670K
+ South Los Angeles, Carson 90745: $770K
+ Mid City Los Angeles, Baldwin Hills 90016: $909K
+ Northeast San Fernando Valley, Sun Valley: 91352: $867K
+ South East Los Angeles, South Gate 90280: $657K
+ The average median price among the five is $774,600.
The cost of living in Los Angeles: condo prices
A Zillow search of two bedroom condominiums in my school’s zip code reveals nine of 11 cost over $400K and all cost over $300K. The median two bedroom condominium prices in the five regions:
+ East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights 90063: $500K
+ South Los Angeles, Carson 90745: $465K
+ Mid City Los Angeles, Baldwin Hills 90016: $577K
+ Northeast San Fernando Valley, Sun Valley: 91352: $395K
+ South East Los Angeles, South Gate 90280: $550K
+ The average median price among the five is just under half a million dollars, $497,400.
The cost of living in Los Angeles: rent
The median rents for two bedroom apartments in the five regions:
+ East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights 90063: $2,700
+ South Los Angeles, Carson 90745: $3,100
+ Mid City Los Angeles, Baldwin Hills 90016: $3,000
+ Northeast San Fernando Valley, Sun Valley: 91352: $2,900
+ South East Los Angeles, South Gate 90280: $2,400
+ The average median rent for a two-bedroom apartment among the five is $2,820.
2023: LA education workers criticized for defending their livelihoods in the face of inflation
Despite Los Angeles’ high cost of living, Inflation was strangely absent from the discussion regarding SEIU’s and UTLA’s contract demands leading to the March 2023 strike. Witness these comments on SEIU’s demand for a 30% salary increase:
+ SEIU “walked off the job this week because they want a massive 30% pay hike.” (Southern California News Group Editorial Board)
+ [SEIU wants] “a whopping 30% across-the-board pay raise” (Aaron Withe, CEO of the Freedom Foundation)
+ “SEIU Local 99 is demanding a whopping 30% increase in wages for school employees (Lance Christensen, California Policy Center)
However, the 30% raise the SEIU sought covered four years–7.5% a year. This is hardly unreasonable: according to the US Social Security Administration, prices rose 5.9% in 2021 and 8.7% in 2022. In January and February 2023, inflation ran at 6.2%.
Moreover, inflation impacts lower wage workers like those in SEIU more heavily than people with higher wage jobs. It’s difficult for such workers to handle inflation by cutting back their spending when they’re already spending the overwhelming majority of their take-home pay on basic necessities.
For example, before the strike, one of our paraprofessionals had been a special education assistant for 23 years and at the top of her pay scale for 17 years. She made $25.76 an hour for a six hour workday. She tried to work during the summers, but positions are limited. She earned under $30,000 a year.
Many SEIU education workers earned even less. For example, cafeteria workers made $16.91 an hour, as did 21 other categories of LAUSD employees.
UTLA’s demand for a 10% a year raise was also panned.
On the John and Ken Show, one of the hosts explained, “UTLA wants 20% over two years–10% more a year? They’ve got to be kidding–they’re just greedbags…they don’t care.”
2026: LA education workers criticized for defending their livelihoods in the face of inflation
Because the inflation rate has since declined, the WSJ, the Washington Post, and other critics are now willing to mention it, but only as a club against UTLA and SEIU. What they sidestep, however, is how much of our previous raises have been eaten up by inflation.
The Wall Street Journal is unhappy that new teachers will earn $77,000 a year and makes time to complain about our health care and our pensions, though neither was directly involved in this contract battle and near-strike.
The Washington Post, the WSJ’s new ideological twin, is unhappy over UTLA’s raise but is particularly galled over SEIU’s 8% a year raise and other gains. Sounding like a feudal lord annoyed that the serfs seem to be living a little too well, the Post’s editorial board complains that education worker unions “shake down taxpayers” and “menace the public.”
Perhaps on some level these purported defenders of the taxpayer are unhappy that, with union actions, LAUSD is increasingly unable to do what so many enterprises in the US do–benefit from the cheap labor of immigrant families.
A sad reminder of how comfortable American bosses have become…
Re: the Philadelphia strike, in a sad reminder of how much American labor unions have declined and how comfortable American bosses have become, the WSJ was surprised and unhappy that the “union chose to strike as soon as its previous contract expired”.
”No Contract, No Work” used to be a key maxim for the labor movement…
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