|
|
About 4,000 teachers and supporting staff are on strike in Sacramento over their salaries and staffing issues in the district—joining the trend across the country of educators considering their work conditions after returning from COVID-19 lockdowns.
The Sacramento Bee reported that the salary for teachers in the city ranged from $48,000 to $102,000. But workers in the district say their salaries have not kept up with the cost of living and staffing shortages have put an added strain on their personal lives.
The average pay for teachers in Sacramento City Unified in 2020 was about $82,000, the paper reported.
Officials from the school district met with representatives from Sacramento City Teachers Association and SEIU 1021 on Saturday to discuss teacher demands but there were no breakthroughs.
Children in the district have been locked from the classrooms since Wednesday. There are about 4,600 total workers on strike, which impacts 76 schools and 43,000 students, ABC 10 reported.
Teachers told KCRA 3 that they want Sacramento to pay them retroactively for cost-of-living increases in line with the superintendent’s contract.
Superintendent Jorge Aguilar’s total compensation in 2020 rose from $380,692.47 to $414,818, an increase of $34,126 or 9.0 percent, according to The California Globe.
Olivia Minor, who has worked for the district’s transportation services for 10 years, told Jacobin magazine that about 25 percent of the district’s bus drivers have left their jobs over the past year and a half due to all of the “requirements and restrictions to be a driver—including [monitoring] the medication someone takes—it’s such a stressful job for not enough pay.”
The Trends Journal has reported on workers across the U.S. turning to unions and striking as the world emerges from COVID-19 lockdowns where the rich got richer and the middle class got poorer.
Earlier this month, we reported on teachers in Minneapolis who went on strike for many of the same reasons that led to the walkout in Sacramento. (See “UNIONIZATION ON-TREND KEEPS GROWING: MINNEAPOLIS TEACHERS ON-STRIKE.”)
On Friday, the Minneapolis teachers’ union said it reached a tentative deal with the city and students were likely to be back in the classrooms on Monday after a three-week shutdown that reportedly impacted 30,000 students.
“It is important to note that major gains were made on pay for education support professionals, protections for educators of color, class size caps and mental health supports,” the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Educational Support Professionals said in a statement obtained by The New York Times.
TREND FORECAST: Unionization will continue to be a Top Trend; the more limited the supply of workers made worse by “No Jab, No Job” mandates; (see “WANT TO KEEP YOUR JOB? GET THE JAB!” and “NO JAB, NO JOB. VACCINE MANDATES ‘WORKING’”), the more powerful the trend toward unionization will be.
The Guardian reported that teachers across the U.S. are dealing with staffing problems and “historically low pay,” which contributes to burnout.
The paper also reported that hundreds of teachers who work for Summit Charter Public Schools in California and Washington are also fighting for their first union contract.
Their push is notable because the school network is supported by philanthropic organizations from some of the world’s richest men, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Janine Peñafort, a Spanish teacher at one of the summit schools in Redwood, Calif., told the paper that teachers there are planning for a strike.
“Ever since Summit expanded their schools, teachers have had less of a say in the decisions being made in our school. I think that sense of powerlessness and our demanding workload causes a lot of teachers to leave our schools every year,” she told The Guardian.
NPR/Ipsos released a new poll last week that found 40 percent of Americans rate inflation and rising costs as their chief concern. About 94% said they noticed the cost of food, gas, and housing rising over the past year.
Bradley Marianno, a professor of education policy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told the AP that teacher strikes were on the rise before COVID-19 and he believes they will continue to increase.
“Tight labor markets create bargaining power,” Mariano said. “School districts are saying this: ‘It is difficult to staff classrooms right now.’ And real or not that perception creates bargaining power for teachers unions to negotiate higher teacher pay.”