How LAUSD averted the strike

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, April 15, and you can expect perfectly fine weather (mid 70s). 

In today’s newsletter, how a family-run Studio City Thai restaurant makes it work, the race to fill Eric Swalwell’s House seat and an alleged beatdown at Chateau Marmont. But first, an inside look into the LAUSD negotiations.

It was nearing midnight at an office building in the heart of Koreatown. 

Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles parents had gone to bed that Monday night — if they were sleeping at all — unsure if they’d be able to drop their children at school on Tuesday morning. The sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District, which covers some 710 square miles and predominantly serves low-income families, teetered on the brink of a strike, with potentially crippling ramifications across the region. The school day was set to begin in roughly eight hours. 

Inside the Koreatown high-rise, dozens of members of SEIU Local 99 — the labor union that represents LAUSD’s lowest-paid workers, including bus drivers, gardeners, custodians and cafeteria staff — packed into a conference room in their 18th-floor offices. Down the hall, senior leaders of the nation’s second-largest school district were huddled behind closed doors.

LAUSD’s two other primary unions, representing teachers and administrators, had reached tentative deals with the district Sunday night. But SEIU Local 99 remained in a stalemate; the others had agreed to strike in solidarity if their colleagues didn’t reach a deal.

But L.A. Mayor Karen Bass helped avert a strike at the 11th hour, stepping in as “the closer,” as Los Angeles County Federation of Labor leader Yvonne Wheeler put it at a celebratory news conference Tuesday morning.

District and union leaders publicly credited the mayor with bringing parties together on a tentative agreement that will increase work hours to qualify thousands of workers for health benefits and result in a 24% wage increase over the term of the contract.

Bass — who had previously helped mediate between Local 99 and the district to end a strike in 2023 — had arrived about 4 p.m. Monday afternoon, after talks stalled out, according to a senior member of the mayor’s staff. 

The mayor spent the first hour or two with Local 99, hearing their stories and economic sticking points, before walking down the hall to meet with district leaders. (The district’s leader, Alberto Carvalho, had been sidelined less than two months earlier after an FBI raid; Acting Superintendent Andrés E. Chait, a longtime insider, was newly in charge.)

The mayor’s role was a mixture of shuttle diplomacy, jumping from room to room, and convening senior leaders together into the wee hours, according to her senior staffer. She acted as “a moral mediator,” Local 99 Executive Director Max Arias told L.A. Material. 

Sometime between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., the mayor walked a new offer from district leaders back into Local 99’s room. It was rejected. At that point, the situation was looking increasingly dire, according to the senior staffer. 

Bass walked back in to see the district leaders and make one final push. She and Chait retreated into a side room alone, and when they returned, it was clear there had been some movement.

The mayor took the revised offer to Local 99, then brought in LAUSD leaders to present it directly, according to her senior staffer. 

The deal was reached around 1:30 a.m, according to the mayoral staffer. Schools opened as usual Tuesday.

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The restaurant Talésai helped set a new standard for refined Thai dining in 1980s Los Angeles with its first location on the Sunset Strip. When a second location opened in Studio City in 1992, the L.A. Times called it “the Valley's new and possibly most beautiful restaurant.”

Today, the Talésai in Studio City is the only one left, and it’s now almost entirely staffed by the family who started it.

For today’s The Receipts, our column on the fine details of running a small business in L.A., L.A. Material contributor Vanessa Anderson heard from Jean Yenbamroong — whose parents own Talésai — about a restaurant that feels like a sibling to her, and how they’re still working to recover from the pandemic.

What you may have missed in the Eric Swalwell news cycle is that a Texas congressman also  resigned on Monday after allegedly having an affair with an aide who later killed herself.

The resignation of Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio), paired with Swalwell’s own exit, set off a new chapter in the long-running feud between Gov. Gavin Newsom and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, this time over who would trigger a special election to fill the vacant seats first, the New York Times reported. (Given the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House, an expedient special election could give either party a brief advantage, though the GOP would maintain its majority.)

On Tuesday afternoon, Newsom acted first, announcing a June 16 special primary election and an August 18 special general election to fill Swalwell’s seat. Abbott has yet to set a date. (Related: Another woman accused Swalwell of raping her in a West Hollywood hotel at a press conference yesterday.)

OLD GUARD: In case you missed it in yesterday’s newsletter, an 84-year-old L.A. judge is running for reelection — but hasn’t heard a case in years after being put on administrative leave over misconduct complaints, Matt Hamilton reported in L.A. Material’s latest exclusive. 

PEAK L.A.: Erewhon will open a storefront at LACMA on Sunday for members previewing the new David Geffen Galleries. The cafe will open to the public on May 4, meaning you can now feasibly spend more on a smoothie than a museum ticket without ever leaving the LACMA grounds.

ROBOHATER: The LA Times’ Mary McNamara wondered aloud in a new column: “Am I the only one who hates delivery robots?” Definitely not. But as NBC reported earlier this year, part of the reason why they don’t have more haters is probably because they’re so goddamn cute.

BAD DOC: Former UCLA gynecologist James Heaps pleaded guilty to sex abuse charges after an appeals court scrapped his original conviction earlier this year, the L.A. Times reported. Heaps was handed an 11-year prison term — the same as his original sentencing.

SUCKER PUNCH: Kanye West is being sued for allegedly knocking a man to the ground and beating him while he lay unconscious at Chateau Marmont last year. The California Post noted that the rapper previously claimed the unidentified plaintiff “grabbed my wife” before the attack.

CLOWN TOWN: The L.A. clown scene is apparently blowing up.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, @seqarts delivers an extremely L.A. #vanityplates contribution:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Spring” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

(P.S. Sorry to all the poetry aficionados for the bad link on yesterday’s poem. You can read it here.)

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