Judge Tells Teachers in Compton to End Strike

A Los Angeles judge ordered 1,200 public school teachers Tuesday to halt the intermittent strike they have been staging for four months against the Compton Unified School District because it may amount to “an illegal economic weapon” that has damaged students who are already educationally deprived.

The decision by Superior Court Judge Richardo A. Torres marks the first time a California teacher strike has been blocked after union leaders had complied with a long mediation process required by state law. And it is based on a recent state labor board opinion that breaks new ground in declaring that the Compton strike amounted to an unfair labor practice. In essence, the board found that the intermittent nature of the strike unduly restricted the students’ constitutional right to obtain an education.

For those reasons, experts said, the Compton ruling may form a future basis for arguing that all teacher strikes are illegal.

After a brief hearing, Torres granted a temporary restraining order that requires the Compton Education Assn. to keep its members in the classroom or face contempt of court charges that could result in jail for anyone who mounts a work stoppage. The order was sought on behalf of the 27,000-student district by the Public Employment Relations Board, which oversees labor disputes involving teachers and state government workers.

Torres will conduct another hearing April 6 to decide whether his order should be made permanent. If it is, the union promised it would appeal.

“I think this is a vote for the children of California, not just Compton,” said a jubilant Ted D. Kimbrough, schools superintendent, who took the ruling as “a vindication that we have done the best that we could” to end the bitter strike and improve a teacher pay scale that ranks among the lowest in the county.

But Rosalind D. Wolf, a staff counsel for the California Teachers Assn., said the ruling--and the Public Employment Relations Board’s March 17 opinion in the Compton case--”flies in the face of three (state) Supreme Court decisions” that protect the right of teachers to strike without being fired or facing retribution from employers. In her argument to the judge, Wolf accused the Public Employment Relations Board of “attempting to make utterly brand new law.”

Since contract negotiations broke down last November, the Compton union has staged a series of strikes in which teachers have walked out of classrooms for a total of 16 days--most recently on Monday. By striking only a day or two at a time, the teachers have been able to retain most of their pay while hampering the district’s ability to hire enough short-term substitutes to maintain normal school operations. Officials estimate that the labor dispute has cost the district as much as $12 million.

Although teachers complain that they are forced to work without adequate supplies, often in classrooms that are decaying from a lack of maintenance, they are mostly concerned about their historically low pay. When they last left the bargaining table, the teachers sought raises of at least 7% over each of the next three years. But district negotiators said they could afford only a 5% increase this year, plus a 1% bonus to be followed by raises of 2% and 3% over the next years.

The Compton district first sought the Public Employment Relations Board’s help in stopping the strike last month. But the state labor board deadlocked 2 to 2. (A fifth member’s term had expired in January.) When board member Nancy Burt, a liberal appointed by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., unexpectedly resigned March 8, however, the three remaining members rendered a 2-1 decision in support of seeking to halt the strike.

In another labor development in a Southland school district Tuesday, about 300 of the Bonita Unified School District’s 380 teachers took to the streets in a one-day strike that came after contract negotiations with school officials collapsed Monday afternoon.

The 9,000-student district spans the cities of San Dimas and La Verne. Teachers, who said they would return to school today, called the strike after the district refused to accept the recommendations of a state-appointed fact finder, who was summoned in January to help resolve the conflict. The district and teachers have been separated all year by 15 key issues, including salaries.

Times staff writer Jesse Katz contributed to this article.