CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

LA Teachers Strike: Responding to Our Critics

Three unions comprising 68,000 Los Angeles education workers stuck to their guns and, with a strike only 4 ½ hours away, the Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to terms–a decisive victory for labor. Whenever a teachers union strikes or threatens to strike, we face an avalanche of criticism from conservative and big business media as well as many billionaire-funded anti-union advocacy groups. These anti-union forces will say either:

The union(s) got way too much money, we’re bankrupting the school system and robbing the taxpayer. The union(s) caused all that disruption and trouble and didn’t even get their members much.

The union(s) got way too much money, we’re bankrupting the school system and robbing the taxpayer.

The union(s) caused all that disruption and trouble and didn’t even get their members much.

This time critics’ line is very much the former, which I suppose is good news.

Is UTLA ‘driving the district toward a financial cliff’?

Writing for the conservative Southern California Newspaper Group, Marc Joffe of the anti-union California Policy Center accuses UTLA of “step[ing] on the gas and driv[ing] the district toward a financial cliff”.

He emphasizes that UTLA is wrong for rejecting the state-appointed “neutral” factfinder’s conclusions and advice. Yet the factfinder himself acknowledged that he didn’t have a clue about LAUSD’s real finances, writing:

“…given the size and complexity of LAUSD’s budget, verifying the accuracy of these claims would require considerable time and effort, well beyond the scope of the chair’s expertise in forensic accounting…thoroughly examining…would be time-consuming and labor-intensive.”

LAUSD has a long history of crying wolf over its finances–for example, over the past seven years of outrageous union demands bankrupting the district, LAUSD’s reserve has skyrocketed, reaching $5.03 billion. No employer going into a contract negotiation ever acknowledges having money in its coffers, yet, incredibly, PERB comported itself as if a dispute over the employer’s ability to pay is a curve they somehow didn’t anticipate.

How could anyone expect UTLA to take the report seriously when........

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