Los Angeles area teachers stage “sickouts” over pay
Teachers in the Compton Unified School District (CUSD), south of Los Angeles, stayed out of their classrooms twice last week as part of organized “sickouts” designed to protest low wages and bad working conditions.
On Monday, more than 200 CUSD teachers called out sick, including 44 at Compton High School alone, or nearly 50 percent of faculty currently working at that school. On Friday, ten of the district’s 37 schools were forced to close Friday because of a shortage of teachers.
There is no indication that the Compton Education Association (CEA) called the protests, and there is nothing on the union’s web site about them. It is likely rank-and-file teachers organized the sickouts independently of the union just like educators in Detroit did earlier this year. The district’s 1,200 teachers and other school employees are frustrated over stalled contract talks and angered that the CEA has kept them on the job without a contract since the last one expired in June 2015.
In an effort to regain control of the situation union officials called a rally at district headquarters Tuesday where they tried to identify themselves with the teachers’ grievances. “You need to put money into the classroom, where the students are and that should be the priority,” teachers union President Patrick Sullivan said at the rally.
The central issues in the current negotiations are over salary and medical benefits. The Compton Unified School District is offering teachers an insulting 2 percent salary increase, well below the 3.1 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CEA has limited its wage demands to 5 percent.
Friday’s action was the fourth sickout organized by Compton teachers in the last three years alone. Last November, more than half of Compton high school teachers called in sick to protest recent school board elections and the passage of local Bond Measure S, meant to modernize schools at the Los Angeles area teachers stage “sickouts” over pay - World Socialist Web Site:
