LOS ANGELES–Los Angeles Worker Center Network (LAWCN) stands with the 500,000 LAUSD students and working families, and the 60,000 educational workers in protest of Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) failure to address concerns in our schools and employee demands for fair compensation, despite LAUSD’s $4.9 billion in reserves.
LAWCN supports Service Employees International Union Local 99 (SEIU) and United Teachers Los Angeles’ (UTLA) righteous and historic fight for a contract that will bring educational workers out of poverty, reduce class sizes, and fully staff each school with the aides, nurses, custodians, librarians, counselors, social workers, psychologists, and bus drivers needed by our LAUSD students and families.
80% of LAUSD students come from families living in poverty while thousands of education workers are struggling with food and housing insecurity because LAUSD pays them poverty wages averaging $25,000 per year. Investing in our students and compensating educational workers—often LAUSD parents themselves—with livable wages is a prerequisite to addressing Los Angeles’ systemic inequities of student poverty and the homelessness crisis.
LAWCN stands in solidarity with SEIU, UTLA, and our LAUSD students and families in this historic fight for a just and equitable future for Los Angeles.
Photo credit: United Teachers Los Angeles / Instagram