400,000 Los Angeles Students Missed School As Union Employees Launch 3-Day Strike Demanding Better Wages, Benefits

Nearly half a million students in Los Angeles missed school Tuesday after tens of thousands of workers employed with the second-largest district in the nation walked off the job, beginning a three-day strike demanding higher wages to afford Southern California living.

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) employees, which staff roughly 65,000 workers and serves 442,000 students, launched the strike early Tuesday morning after a year of negotiating pay increases and health benefits with district officials came to a standstill.

“Some of our bus drivers are actually homeless, some of them can’t pay their bills,” Lynneier Boyd-Peterson, a bus driver employed with the Los Angeles Unified School District, told KTLA. “They can’t even pay their mortgage — it’s impossible.”