Portside

UTLA’s transformation story surfaces critical lessons that respond to the most important question facing the labor movement today: How do we ensure that the recent years of labor upsurge across economic sectors becomes durable, transformative power?

"Mapping for the Common Good" is a tool for unions to map contracts and line up contract campaigns for more leverage. Bargaining for the Common Good combines union power with community demands in a way that can build class power.

"Mapping for the Common Good" is a tool for unions to map contracts and line up contract campaigns for more leverage. Bargaining for the Common Good combines union power with community demands in a way that can build class power.

As American families fret over a patchwork set of standards for reopening schools that vary widely by city and state, teachers unions across the country are denouncing the Trump administration’s approach.

The Los Angeles teachers’ strike, organized by the 33,000 strong Unified Teachers Los Angeles, went into its fifth day Jan. 18.

Teachers across the country face a systematic underfunding of public schools and a systematic devaluing of the teaching profession by leaders who say public education should be swept aside to make room for a system of private free-market education.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl warned that if LAUSD could not reach an agreement by January, they would strike early in the new year.

Teachers and education workers in Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the country (after New York), voted 98 percent to 2 percent to authorize their first strike in nearly 30 years.

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the second largest teachers union in the country, has reached a tentative agreement with LA Unified, according to an announcement issued by UTLA late last night. The new contract would includes a 10 percent raise over two years, likely bringing to an end the threat of a strike that has been in the air since the summer.

Teachers at the largest charter school organization in Los Angeles have launched a drive to unionize, a move that could alter the path of school reform in the city. Nearly 70 teachers and counselors at Alliance charter schools say they intend to partner with UTLA. More than 100,000 students, or 15% of LAUSD enrollment, attend charters, the most of any system in the U.S.