What LA Teachers Have Already Won
The Los Angeles teachers strike is part of a growing movement of teachers that have made gains by striking. It's an example for the entire labor movement to follow.
People rally in the streets of downtown Los Angeles during the ongoing teachers strike on January 14. Barbara Davidson / Getty
The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), the city’s teachers union, has now reentered negotiations with a school board chastened by a strike that has shown the movement’s political power in massive demonstrations with community members and parents.
Los Angeles teachers have become a beacon for the rest of organized labor.
The energy of the “Red for Ed” teacher walkouts last spring in West Virginia, Arizona, Oklahoma, and elsewhere was channeled into electoral activity by both the AFT and NEA, with an unrelenting refrain that achieving the demands that had led angry teachers in those states to strike could only be made by electing friendly politicians. UTLA’s strike has shown, as did Red for Ed walkouts and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) 2012 strike, how mobilizations and direct action nurtured with an eye to building community and parent support are far more effective than an exclusive focus on electing “friends.”
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