My sister is a teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She hasn't been paid in four months. Other teachers are in her same situation. The reason is that LAUSD negligently hired a notoriously incompetent firm to design their payroll software. This company is named BTS. I suspect bribery/corruption is to blame.

Anyways, the union is doing an action that could result in the participants getting arrested. In your view, is it justified to participate in this action, assuming it's basically nonviolent, i.e., occupying an office building or something like that?

2nd question: if you were me, would you go with her? Also, would you try to get other people to go with you? (assuming you have leftist friends like I have)

gogogogogogogogogogogogogogogogo

Why have they waited 4 months? I don't know CA unemployment law, but where I live, one of the definitions of being "unemployed" is not being paid. The first day they missed a paycheck, they all should've filed a claim.

Why is it "leftist" to demand to be paid for work performed? I'll bet you the damned schoolboard members and the company running the payroll have been getting their money.

Brann

Can't they just class action suit for their money? I'm not taking any unecessary risks as regards getting arrested not worth it IMO.

What's wrong with the ole main artillery of the Union, the strike?

Not getting paid sounds a pretty strong reason to me to just strike and picket.
Then let the school board deal with the hordes of angry parents asking why their children aren't getting educated?

dammit. this was a pure typo. Sorry guys. It's been TWO months since she's been paid. My mistake. Sorry again. I really hate it when anything is exaggerated in stories like this.

I dunno. Ask copernicus.

lawsuits are SLOW. My sister knows one teacher who lost her house, because this problem has been going on for a while, and she missed too many payments. Yeah, bureaucracy is srsly evil beyond belief. This is like Lumberg vs Milton times a thousand.

I've got to agree with this. I think it would be much more effective for the teachers to just quit showing up for work they are not getting paid for than to stage some kind of silly sit-in and get a few of the arrested and possibly fired.

What is it with state and local governments and computer systems anyway? There have been several computer systems purchased by the state of Colorado that have had serious problems. It seems that they fail in testing and they go ahead and accept them anyway.

It goes well beyond filing an unemployment claim. There are statutory periods for payment of wages in every state, and not complying with them carries huge fines. I doubt that school districts are exempt from them. Some law firm stands to make a fortune if the facts are as straightforward as presented.

Why is it even two months. Emergency checks have supposedly been issued for anyone who made the district aware of non-payment

Does not compute. Were other teachers not paid earlier or was this one teacher already 5 or 6 months behind?

the payroll glitch has been going on for much more than two months. The way it *seems* to work is that some people are overpaid, and others are underpaid. Some apparently get zero. I think one of my sister's checks was for $20

After they messed up one check, I would probably have been nice and given them another pay period to fix it (but only because I'm a nice guy like that). When they messed up the second check, I would have walked off the job on the spot, and I would tell them that I would not be back until I have been fully paid what I am owed. If every teacher who had this problem did this, they would have the problem fixed quickly.

Pay for teachers is determined by seniority. The skills they learn aren't very transferable. Add these two up and most of the teachers would take a big salary hit if they left.

Too bad they can't go work for the school's competitors...

Gotcha. I vote for a strike. Civil disobedience is unnecessary.

They can. DUCY?

Well, if you're only getting a check for $20, it looks like you're taking a pretty big hit if you stay.

Another sign of government incompetence. If I were Prez of the U.S., my Sec of Ed better have briefed me on this situation. I would have immediately identified the situation as a crisis and had the fed step in and paid the teachers and then gone after the state.

I also would not have worried about making sure the teachers were paid the correct amount. If they told me they were owed 3k, I'd pay em 3k. If it turned out they were lying, I'd go after them, because they would be signing a sworn affidavit as to how much they were owed.

Every teacher would have a check before I got paid again.

But that's just me.

Feds have no jurisdiction to "go after" a State that has no jurisdiction over a school district. From what Ive read every teacher that didn't get their regular check would get an emergency check hand cut. Something still isnt computing with the (revised) OP.

Corruption in a public school system? shshshshshocking! Someone's gonna have to peel me off the floor.