CIF to Meet With Referees to Try to Prevent Boycott

City Section and Southern Section administrators will meet with football officials Tuesday to head off a boycott by officials of the upcoming season.

Officials in seven of the nine units that comprise the Southern California Football Officials Assn. voted May 22 to boycott if negotiations were not opened. They object to a recently adopted pay scale and to working back-to-back junior varsity and varsity games.

The 8:30 a.m. meeting at the Southern Section office in Cerritos will be followed at 10:30 a.m. by a meeting of administrators and basketball officials, who wish to discuss crowd control in addition to the same issues that concern football officials.

The Southern Section’s executive committee voted June 28 to initiate negotiations, the first such move in the 54-year history of the organization. The City Section has agreed to abide by decisions reached by the Southern Section committee.

A letter from Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas and City Commissioner Jim Cheffers to Joe Rubio, president of the football officials association, requested the meeting. The letter read in part: “We assure you . . . that the City and Southern Section care. We do not have a take it or leave it attitude. Our intent is to bring closure to important issues through mutual cooperation and respect.”