Last fall, UTLA leaders visited 443 public schools in the district to tell thousands of teachers about their strategic vision, the “Schools LA Students Deserve.” The title was cribbed from a 2012 CTU report that set forth the union’s progressive vision for Chicago. During the visits, UTLA organizers handed out “commitment cards” for teachers to sign, pledging to escalate action during their contract campaign–including a strike.

The new leadership now has an opportunity to prove its mettle as community-allied fighters. Last Friday, UTLA, which represents over 35,000 teachers, secured a long-overdue contract (Los Angeles teachers were working under an expired 2011 deal) in line with its short-term organizing goals for better schools. The union began negotiations with LAUSD as soon as Union Power won control of the union in 2014. Negotiations continued on in 2015 but eventually broke down to the point of impasse, and the possibility of the district’s first strike in 26 years loomed in the air.

UTLA’s goals include reductions in class size–a central demand in the CTU strike, though Chicago teachers were legally barred from striking over it. (Not so in Los Angeles.) As of January 29, nearly 2,700 middle-and high-school classrooms across the district–18 percent of all classrooms–had more than 45 students. While UTLA teachers have gained their first pay increases in eight years with this new contract, the district only agreed to partial funding for class size reductions, with loose class size caps attached. The union says it will begin pushing the district for far more concessions around what they say are education justice issues like class sizes during the next rounds of negotiation for a contract in the lead-up to expiration in July 2017.

Future union-school district negotiations should see UTLA continuing the organizing program it started since Caputo-Pearl’s administration came to power. Ahead of several state-mandated mediation sessions (required before strikes are legally allowed), UTLA started building leverage against the district by boycotting faculty meetings in favor of parking-lot rallies with parents, which highlight the community-union partnership UTLA has built. The district threatened to dock pay for those in attendance.

Building a strike

The central lesson teachers union locals around the country have learned from the CTU is the power of a strike to push back against the corporate reform agenda. In recent years, strikes by teachers have been demonized, both inside and outside the labor movement, as actions that can only hurt teachers unions, and by extension the labor movement. After all, it is argued, in the public’s eyes, children miss out on learning and parents scramble for child care.

The CTU strike defied this logic. Because of the union’s longtime work in Chicago communities and its commitment to progressive reforms that benefit students, polls showed healthy majorities of parents–particularly parents of color–supporting the teachers after the first week of the strike. That public support proved essential to the union’s victory.

But the action came with an enormous risk: If Chicago teachers couldn’t carry out a strike that galvanized parents and won their support, the union would have lost the strike and likely opened the door for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s hand-picked board of education to ram through more corporate reforms. The CTU strike suggests that the UTLA could use a strike to roll back free-market education reforms, as well as win economic gains for teachers–but only if it can win over the public.