(The Center Square) – California high school students are now required to learn about their rights as workers with materials created by labor organizations, however, students in Los Angeles have reportedly participated in simulated collective bargaining situations for decades.
The passage of AB 800 last year requires juniors and seniors to be taught about their workplace rights, the achievements of organized labor and students’ right to join a union. However, the Los Angeles Unified School District has reportedly been teaching students how to participate in labor discussions for decades.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, labor unions have seen a decadeslong downward trend in membership. In 1983, union membership was over 20%. In 2023, it was 10%. Only 6% of private-sector workers were unionized in 2023, compared with almost a third of public-sector workers.
In 2023, only 4.4% of those employed between the ages of 16 and 24 were members of a labor union.
The Center Square recently acquired interoffice correspondence from LAUSD administrators sent earlier this year to high school principals. John Vladovic, executive director of secondary instruction, and Sandra Gephart Fontana, administrator of high school instruction, told principals what they would need to cover because of the law.
“During the week of April 29 through May 3, 2024, all public high schools, including charter schools, will be required to provide students in grades 11 and 12 with information on workers’ rights, including laws on child labor, wage and hour protections, worker safety, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, paid family leave, state disability insurance, the California Family Rights Act, and the prohibition against misclassification of employees as independent contractors,” the administrators wrote to principals.
“Schools will also be required to educate students on their right to organize a union in the workplace, prohibitions against retaliation, and the pivotal role of labor movements in securing labor protections for workers,” the email continues.
“This information should be conveyed to students where appropriate in their United States History, Principles of American Democracy, Economics classes, or other appropriate academic settings (e.g., Advisory, CTE, etc.),” the administrators wrote.
They also said that schools must provide students with apprentice programs approved by the state and give them a document explaining their rights as employees when they ask their school for a work permit.
The University of California Labor Center at UC Berkeley created the handout, which explains minimum wages, best practices to prevent wage theft, hours students are allowed to work, sick leave and jobs teens are not allowed to do. It also says that students can join and form unions.
“Unions are organizations where workers join forces to improve their working conditions. Through their union, workers negotiate as one with their employer on wages, benefits, health and safety, and other workplace rights,” the handout reads. “Employees are entitled to work together on common issues, even if they don’t have a union. It is illegal for employers to punish or fire you for joining or forming a union.”
In LAUSD, students have reportedly been holding their mock bargaining agreement negotiations for decades. The Collective Bargaining Education Project created a curriculum called “Workplace Issues and Collective Bargaining in the Classroom.” A description of the 2002 curriculum says it is a “joint project of the Los Angeles Unified School District and United Teachers Los Angeles.”
The project has since changed names and is now called the Young Workers Education Project. Its website says it offers simulations and roleplays of labor strikes and union election simulations.
• This story initially published at Chalkboard News, a K-12 news site that, like The Center Square, is also published by Franklin News Foundation.
