The almost 30 thousand Californian teachers in the city of Los angeles have won an important victory for the union movement of North America. 

The District Education Authority responsible for public education in the city has accepted to positively respond to the demands presented by the teachers: increasing the resources for the teacher centres, increasing the number of assistant teachers and librarian, reducing the number of students per class and increasing of the teachers’ salaries. 

Very important was the decision of the Education Authority to limit the number of the so called charter-schools, a sort of covert privatisation of public schools through donations (linked to concessions) by well known billionaires. 

Although in the last months of 2018, the southern middle-west states of the US were shaken by a wave of strikes, the strike organised in Los Angeles (the second most important education circuit of the US) has affected over 600 thousand students and has marked a turning point in terms both of participation and success in its demands. It was 30 years that such a strike had happened. 

The trade union leader, Arlene Ironge, responsible of the teachers’ negotiation commission has summarised the results and their consequences like this: “This has been a historic agreement and has given us more than what we expected.”

The strike had been called by the UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles) union and enjoyed the support of students and parents as well as of other unions throughout the country. 

The unions in the US had been hardly hit during Ronald Reagan presidency as this repressed and disarticulated the big strike promoted by the air controller at the beginning of the ‘80s.