Teachers Union Helps All Students & Educators, Including the Jewish Teachers Suing Us

Beginning in 2019, United Teachers Los Angeles won two strikes in four years, both times decisively, emerging as America's most powerful teachers union. Anti-union forces, correctly viewing us as a key part of the revitalization of the American labor union movement, have deployed numerous tactics to try to weaken us. One of them is the anti-union Freedom Foundation's lawsuit over UTLA's alleged antisemitism.

The lawsuit, filed against UTLA and others in October, 2024, seeks to eliminate UTLA's exclusive representation for LAUSD educators because of UTLA's alleged hostility towards Jews. The suit would lead to dividing the LAUSD educator bargaining unit among multiple bargaining representatives and a dramatic weakening of all LAUSD teachers' bargaining position. This in turn would lead to a deterioration of our working conditions, pay, and benefits.

The suit alleges that UTLA “promotes animosity and violence towards people of Jewish descent”. Barry Blisten, a former UTLA member who is a litigant in the suit, recently claimed that UTLA has “made hatred of Jewish people and Israel a core part of what it does and who it is.” Yet neither the FF legal filing nor Blisten’s articles and TV interviews come close to substantiating any of this.

For example, Blisten condemns UTLA because it “endorsed a curriculum called ‘Teach Palestine’ that distorts Jewish history.” What the curriculum actually does is give some of the Palestinian side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict–a perspective very lacking in current Los Angeles Unified School District Social Studies textbooks and curricula.

To pick one example, the Nakba is the central event in modern Palestinian history. Yet of the three widely-used high school World History textbooks on the bookshelf of my LAUSD classroom, not one even mentions the word. Nor do either of the two textbooks my school uses to teach ethnic studies. Some don’t even reference the event at all.

Blisten correctly condemns UTLA for spending “$700,000 supporting a school board candidate who pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories”. He is referring to UTLA’s endorsement of Khallid Al-Alim for LAUSD Board Area 1 for the March 5, 2024 election. People who were involved in interviewing candidates and making this misguided endorsement described a charismatic candidate who was in touch with many of the problems LAUSD students face. The later discovery of Al-Alim’s antisemitic posts was an enormous and very unwelcome surprise.

When UTLA learned of the posts, it immediately suspended its campaign on his behalf, and, after an expedited House of Representatives vote, rescinded the endorsement. UTLA’s involvement with Al-Alim’s campaign was an embarrassing error that squandered union dues money, but does not reflect antisemitism.

There has also been controversy within UTLA about the war in Gaza and its aftermath. Over the past 30 months there have been a handful of resolutions introduced by rank-and-file UTLA members within committees in the UTLA HoR and at various Area Meetings. These resolutions have often been introduced by and/or supported by Jewish UTLA members, and are very much in line with international opinion, which has widely condemned Israel’s actions.

Israel’s defenders have been given every bit as much time in the HoR to speak as Israel’s critics have. Some Jewish HoR members have been unhappy that they were unable to convince their fellow members to oppose the resolutions, but that’s not antisemitism, that’s politics. It’s also union democracy.

Blisten says, “This union keeps escalating. Its leaders just announced an April 14 strike that would leave nearly 400,000 kids without school. There’s no end in sight, which is why we’re appealing to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.”

We stood on the edge of a strike in which UTLA members allied with members of the Service Employees International Union and the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. (Yes, LAUSD’s bargaining position had been so unreasonable they even managed to alienate AALA, their partners in management.)

In 2019 we fought for and won smaller class sizes, more nurses and librarians in schools, getting the secondary school student-counselor ratio down to 500-1, and more. This time we fought for improvements to our schools and a decent raise for ourselves after inflation ate up much of our salary gains of 2019 and 2023. This conflict had absolutely zero to do with Israel or alleged antisemitism.

Sunday at 3:15 AM, with the strike two days away--after 14 months of bargaining and working almost 10 months without contract--LAUSD and UTLA finally reached an agreement, with UTLA winning large gains. These include:

• Over 450 new Pupil Services and Attendance Counselors, Psychiatric Social Workers, School Psychologists, and Counselors, driving secondary student-counselor ratios down to 335-1 for high school and 400-1 for middle school.
• Reforms to address Special Education class size violations and problems with the transition to SpEd inclusion.
• Reforms to the salary table--which even LAUSD acknowledged had grown riddled with problems and irrationality--with an annual raise of 6.93% baked into it.
• Salary point reform, so teachers who don’t have 98 educational units–the equivalent of two masters degrees–are no longer stalled out on the salary table, receiving no anniversary raises after 10 years.
• Four weeks of district-paid parental leave. Up to now teachers--in a profession which is 70% female--have had to use pregnancy disability leave.
• Reforms limiting LAUSD’s subcontracting, including a ban on subcontractors causing teacher displacements

Jewish UTLA members played an important role in our 2019, 2023 and now 2026 victories, and UTLA’s wins have helped all LAUSD students and educators--including Blisten and his fellow plaintiffs. All of us--regardless of our religion or our feelings about Israel’s policies and actions--owe our union our support.