Teachers Union to Oppose Two on School Board

Angry about the lack of a favorable contract settlement despite months of negotiations, United Teachers-Los Angeles has decided to back the challengers of two incumbent school board members running for reelection on the April 14 ballot and will remain neutral in a third board race.

Union President Wayne Johnson said union delegates voted Wednesday night to endorse community activist Mark Ridley-Thomas over Rita Walters, the board president, who represents South-Central and Southwest Los Angeles, and UCLA administrator Warren Furutani over Harbor-area board member John Greenwood.

The union voted to remain neutral in the Hollywood-Downtown board district race in which incumbent Jackie Goldberg is being challenged by businessman Tony Trias, whom she defeated in 1983.

The teachers are expected to vote next week on the two board races in which no incumbent is running. Those seats are being vacated by Eastside board member Larry Gonzalez, who gave up his seat to make a run for City Council, and by West San Fernando Valley member Tom Bartman, who was appointed to the seat and pledged not to seek election.

Board members say that union support can be particularly helpful to challengers and that it tends to be especially significant in school board races because of the traditionally low voter turnouts. Union support can range from cash contributions to substantial donations of services, such as printing and telephoning. The union can also mobilize hundreds of volunteers on Election Day to help get out the vote.

Johnson said that in recent years the union has generally endorsed incumbents--including Walters and Greenwood when they ran four years ago. But he said the union now is refusing its support chiefly because of “anger tied to the contract talks.”

The union and the district began negotiating last June over the size of a raise for the current school year and working conditions. In the last formal offers made, the district proposed a 7% raise, while the union has asked for 14%. More than three-quarters of the district’s 24,000 teachers participated in a one-day walkout Feb. 5 to protest the district’s offer.

Johnson said no progress has been made since then, despite the efforts of a state-appointed mediator who began supervising contract talks Jan. 23. The next formal meeting with the mediator has been scheduled for Monday.

Greenwood, however, said that an informal negotiating session held Wednesday night brought both sides “very close to a settlement” but that the chance to resolve the conflict was lost when union negotiators insisted on a provision that would require non-union members to pay dues.

The agency fee issue has blocked previous contract negotiations, the last occasion being in 1983 when the district offered to grant the provision in exchange for the right to order mandatory transfers of teachers from one part of the district to another. The district wants to be able to use the transfers to place more seasoned teachers in inner-city schools, which are staffed primarily by new teachers, but the union has refused to give the district that authority.