Today, March 24, UTLA filed four more Unfair Practice Charges against LAUSD for bargaining in bad faith and harassment/interference in the days leading up to SEIU Local 99’s UPC strike. The new charges filed with the Public Employment Relations Board involve:

  • Refusal to provide relevant information: The district continues to ignore or only partially fulfill requests for information that UTLA needs to formulate bargaining proposals and evaluate the district’s proposals.
     
  • Threats of retaliation/promises of benefits: Before and during UTLA’s solidarity strike, administrators at several district schools made unlawful threats of retaliation against employees for participation in the strike and made promises of benefits to employees who refrained from striking.
     
  • Interrogating employees: Before and during UTLA’s solidarity strike, administrators at several district schools interrogated employees by communicating publicly that employees were required to inform administrators whether they will participate and emphasized that administrators would track which employees decide to participate.
     
  • Predictably unacceptable proposals in bargaining: Since our last UPC charge of “surface bargaining,” the district has engaged in further bad faith bargaining by unilaterally deciding to change the academic calendar without providing an opportunity to bargain over the change; engaging in delaying tactics in bargaining; and telling UTLA that the district would make substantial concessions, only to present a predictably unacceptable wage proposal that differed little from its prior proposals. 

Together, the new UPCs increase the pressure on the district to fairly bargain with UTLA members and settle the contract