A week-long strike by more than 30,000 Los Angeles teachers that has disrupted classes for nearly half a million students neared an end on Tuesday as the teachers’ union and the second-largest US school district reached a tentative contract deal.

A union leader said the negotiations, including an all-night session that ended around dawn on Tuesday, addressed many of the teachers’ demands including a pay raise and provisions to hire additional support staff including librarians, nurses and counselors.

“I’m proud to announce, pending approval, that we have an agreement that will allow teachers to go back to work on their campuses tomorrow,” Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has mediated the talks, said at a news conference.

He was joined by Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of the United Teachers Los Angeles union, and Austin Beutner, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Precise terms of the deal will be disclosed later once they have been presented to union members ahead of a ratification vote, which union leaders said could be completed within hours.

Officials said the negotiations resulted in two back-to-back contracts. The first, which expires in June, will include the salary raise. Other provisions will be contained in a second, three-year contract, to follow.

Teachers and supporters hold signs in the rain during a rally on Monday, in Los Angeles [Ringo HW Chiu/AP Photo]

Teachers walked off the job on January 14 in their first strike in three decades against school district, demanding higher pay, smaller class sizes and the hiring of more support staff in the district’s roughly 1,200 schools .

Caputo-Pearl, the union president, said more details would be released later. Union members will vote on whether to approve the deal on Tuesday; if they ratify it they will return to work on Wednesday.

“So many schools have gone without for so long, and now they’ll have these crucial services,” Caputo-Pearl said at the news conference.

Reawaken the public

The union also sought restrictions on the steady expansion of independently managed charter schools, arguing they divert resources from traditional classroom instruction for the bulk of the district’s students. 

The leadership of the school district – an independent body that does not answer to the Los Angeles mayor – had said throughout the talks that they largely supported the union’s goals but that they did not have enough of a budget to cover the demands.

Union supporters, and even school district officials, have credited the striking teachers with helping reawaken the public, the media and politicians around the country to widespread difficulties facing schools in California and elsewhere.

Teachers staged walkouts over salaries and school funding in several US states last year, including West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona.

The Los Angeles stoppage differs in that educators face a predominantly Democratic political establishment more sympathetic to their cause.

Labor tensions are still simmering in other big-city school districts. The teachers’ union in Denver held a strike authorisation vote on Saturday after rejecting a contract offer. Results will be announced on Tuesday. 

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Russia’s trust in its President Vladimir Putin has fallen to its lowest level since 2006, falling more than 33 percent, according to a recent poll conducted by the Russian-state Public Opinion Research Center.

Confidence in Putin’s government fell 33.4 per cent last week amid sluggish economic growth, a decline in disposable income and a deeply unpopular rise in the retirement age.

The trust level was at 71 percent in July 2015 after Russia’s annexed Ukraine’s Crimea.

Another survey by the Moscow-based independent pollster the Levada Center in December 2018 showed that 53 per cent of respondents disapprove of the Russian government.

However, Putin has an overall approval rating of about 63 per cent percent, declining from 89 per cent in June 2015, according to Levada Centre.

“We know the Kremlin takes these figures incredibly seriously, so we should pay attention to them,” Dr Ben Noble, a Russian Politics Lecturer at University College London, told Al Jazeera.

When Putin came to power in the midst of economic turmoil in 1998, he promised Russians better living conditions and decent salaries, in exchange for freedom of expression – the social contract. 

Mathieu Boulegue, a Russia and Eurasia Research Fellow at think-tank Chatham House, said: “The Russian system can no longer deliver the social contract that was implicitly offered to the population when Putin came to power.” 

We know the Kremlin takes these figures incredibly seriously, so we should pay attention to them.

Ben Noble, Russia expert

“Putin promised to make Russia great again [following the crisis],” said Boulegue. “To make it rise from the ashes of the Soviet Union and become a great power again by voicing Russia’s concerns on the international arena, Russia style.”

But the country’s involvement in the ongoing war in Syria, and the smouldering conflict in Ukraine, has come at an enormous cost to the population’s living standards.

Since 2014, disposable income has decreased and is predicted to drop further this year, according to the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

After increasing by 1.7 percent last year, Russia’s GDP is predicted to grow by 1.4 percent in 2019, according to a Reuters poll. 

Russia’s foreign policy has come at an enormous political cost. Almost five years of US and European Union sanctions imposed after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea have placed large businesses under increasing strain. 

Hopes of the sanctions being lifted this year have dissipated since Russia seized three Ukrainian ships off the coast of Crimea last November.

The European Union has extended its sanctions targeting Russia’s defence, energy and banking sectors until mid-2019, and there is currently discussion in the US about imposing more sanctions. 

According to Noble, while many Russians people previously associated problems with the politicians around Putin, people are now starting to associate hardships more closely with Putin because he has been the face of this policy.

Boulegue added that the government will offer ‘small victories’ and amplify them federally to show the population that things are changing.

“There will be small achievements abroad, with continued war-mongering rhetoric against the West and China. It’s the only thing Russia can offer because it can’t offer comprehensive change or reforms, and it certainly can’t offer systemic change,” said Boulegue.

Afghanistan has been at war for much of the past 40 years.

In 2001, the United States sent its troops into the country in response to the 9/11 attacks.

The withdrawal of these troops has been one of the sticking points in talks between US and Taliban representatives that are getting under way in Qatar.

But hours before those talks began in the capital Doha, Taliban fighters launched one of their most daring attacks in recent months.

A gun and bomb raid on an Afghan intelligence and military base southwest of Kabul killed dozens of security personnel.

Many are now looking to see if the timing of the attack  – coming on the eve of those talks – could have an impact on negotiations.

Presenter: Richelle Carey

Guests:

Omar Zakhilwal –  Former president’s special representative and Afghan ambassador to Pakistan

Imtiaz Gul – Head of the Center for Research & Security Studies

David Sedney – Former deputy US assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Source: Al Jazeera