Villaraigosa’s school reform efforts cost him little labor backing

A mayor with deep roots in the labor movement now finds himself denounced in some quarters as a turncoat — a description he calls absurd.

“No one buys that turncoat stuff,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the other day at a union-sponsored event in Watts. “But I am challenging orthodoxies in a way that we have to.”

The mayor’s recent branding of United Teachers Los Angeles, the L.A. teachers union, as “one unwavering roadblock” to his effort to reform public schools has raised ire in organized labor circles, even though he began his political career as a union organizer.

But the criticism from unions that don’t represent teachers has been relatively muted: Labor leaders from outside the very specific universe of schools seem to have little difficulty separating the mayor’s comments on the incendiary education debate from his overwhelmingly pro-labor pedigree.

“I think Mayor Villaraigosa’s a good union guy and will continue to be a good union guy,” said Richard N. Slawson, head of the Building & Construction Trade Council for Los Angeles and Orange counties. Slawson was at City Hall last week while marking a new city-labor initiative on hiring. “I don’t agree with him on the teachers union comment.... But, generally, the mayor’s been with working people throughout his career.”

Although labor is a powerful force in Los Angeles politics, it is also a diverse and sometimes fractured bloc. The interests of the carpenters do not always coincide with those of teachers, while unions representing police officers, public works staffers and other municipal employees have specific agendas and distinct red lines.

“We look at it issue by issue,” said Maria Elena Durazo, head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor and a longtime friend of the mayor. She said she differed with Villaraigosa on his singling out of the teachers union, but “it’s not an across-the-board attacking or demonizing” of labor.

The mayor, who has long made school reform one of his signature issues, seems steeled for a protracted fight. For March’s school board elections, Villaraigosa is expected to back a slate of candidates to challenge union-backed contenders. The outcome could help define his mayoralty as he nears being termed out of office in 2013.

In an era of widespread fiscal austerity and alarm about bloated public payrolls and pensions, the mayor’s provocative proclamation about the teachers union has also won him considerable praise.

A rising chorus of critics nationwide has been calling on lawmakers — especially traditionally pro-labor Democrats — to stand up to powerful public sector unions, be they in schools, police departments, city halls or elsewhere. The mayor joins President Obama as Democratic lawmakers who have been accused of vilifying teachers in the name of reform.

“This puts Villaraigosa closer to Obama than to the teachers union,” said Raphael J. Sonenshein, a political scientist at Cal State Fullerton. “This is really a battle about control of the school district.”

Villaraigosa’s Dec. 7 assault on the teachers union during a speech to state leaders in Sacramento was calibrated for maximum effect. In a subsequent interview, the mayor said he hoped his comments would “be a catalyst for transformational change.”

So far, Villaraigosa seems pleased with the fallout — and with the fact that the flare-up has again shone the light on a chief executive whom some saw as lurching toward premature lame-duck status.

“You can be pro-union and also say to our union friends ‘We’ve got to work together to reward performance, to balance the interests of workers and the needs of our students,’ ” Villaraigosa said. “With the teachers, what I’ve said is ‘Look, we can’t keep on saying “no” to every effort to reform and transform our schools.... We’ve got to support our teachers, but we also have to hold teachers accountable.’”

Despite his pro-union lineage, the mayor has a sometimes rocky relationship with the public sector unions that are major players at City Hall. But, observers say, although the dispute with the teachers union is fundamentally about who runs the schools, the battles with municipal unions are more focused on how to respond to new fiscal realities.

“The situation with the city unions is more about the distribution of the pain of budget cuts,” noted Sonenshein at Cal State Fullerton. “It’s not a struggle over who controls the city.”

As chief executive, Villaraigosa negotiates a complicated balancing act between his labor fealties and public duties. He has clashed with city unions on thorny issues like layoffs, police hiring and utility rate hikes.

“I got elected to look at my friends in the eye and say, ‘Look, if this is broken, let’s fix it together,’ ” Villaraigosa said.

Last spring, Brian D’Arcy, who represents employees of the Department of Water and Power and is one of the city’s most influential union chiefs, even publicly accused the mayor of trying to “scapegoat union members” for problems at the DWP. More recently, mayoral surrogates questioned the police union’s commitment to public safety after its president, concerned about plummeting overtime payments, called on the city to suspend the hiring of new officers.

Some union advocates privately accuse the mayor of rank opportunism: He champions layoffs and other contentious policies, they say, in a transparent bid to separate himself from the movement and jump-start his next career, be it in public office or the private sector.

Not so, says Villaraigosa. As an elected official, he says, he is obliged to put the public’s interest above those of municipal employees and their representatives.

“I’ve said to my staff, again and again, we’re with labor when their interests align with those of the public,” Villaraigosa said. “When they don’t, then we have to challenge them.”

With the city facing a more than $300-million budget shortfall next year, new battles seem imminent on sundry fronts. On the table is a fresh round of potential spending reductions, possible layoffs and pension cutbacks for the city’s 22,000 civilian workers.

The mayor — who has made pension reform one of his administration’s central themes — has already crafted a modest package for police and firefighters; that proposal is slated to appear on the ballot in March. To broker the deal, the mayor’s office worked closely with police and firefighter unions; they signed off on the plan, although critics called it far too limited. In that case, the mayor opted not to go to the mat for a more sweeping overhaul of police and firefighter retirement benefits.

Villaraigosa said, however, that he is signaling a tougher stance now with other city employees.

Union representatives for civilian workers have vowed to fight the mayor’s plan to slice pension and retiree health benefits. It is a confrontation that the mayor — who calls the current pension system “unsustainable” — seems eager to engage in.

“You’re going to see me hit hard on that one too,” Villaraigosa vowed of the pension issue. “I said to the city unions, ‘I want to work with you. But we’re moving forward.’ ”

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.