Culver City Teachers to Pick Between Rival Unions

Two rival teachers unions in Culver City will square off at the ballot box Tuesday in what has become a triannual showdown to determine who has bargaining authority in the Culver City Unified School District.

The Culver City Teachers Assn. has challenged the present bargaining agent, the Culver City Federation of Teachers, in a decertification election. If successful, the association would negotiate the teachers’ contract with the district for the first time since collective bargaining began 12 years ago.

Although it lost previous attempts to decertify its rival in 1982 and 1985, the association believes that this election will be different.

‘Time Is Right’

“The time is right,” association president Bess Doerr said. “We’ve never been as low on the salary scale and people have never been as interested in it.”

In the 1987-88 school year, the district’s maximum salary for teachers, $37,720, ranked 38th out of the county’s 43 unified school districts, according to the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Eleven years earlier, it had ranked 11th among 35 districts.

Officers of the association, which is affiliated with the California Teachers Assn. and the National Education Assn., said that the federation has done a poor job of negotiation and that the low salary rankings have hurt morale among the district’s 290 teachers.

Federation President Diane Kaiser said the lower rankings are the result of lower district revenues due to declining enrollment; Proposition 13, which eliminated the district’s right to raise revenues through local property taxes, and the state Supreme Court’s Serrano decision that cut state cost-of-living increases to wealthier school districts.

“People would love to think all their problems are from the union,” said Kaiser, whose union is affiliated with the California Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers. “They’d love to think that it would all change with the change of the union. If that were the case, I’d be the first one to switch.”

Lowering Morale

She said it is the constant sniping from the association that is lowering teacher morale in the district.

“This causes stress and the teachers are stressed-out enough,” she said. “People are tired of all the fighting.”

Larry Bordan, staff representative with the California Federation of Teachers, said that despite the tight budgets, the union has done an admirable job of bargaining for preparation periods each day for teachers, high fringe benefits (the third-highest in the county) and small class sizes.

“Our union is really proud of the fact that we have maintained a quality school system,” he said.

Lifetime health benefits, which became an issue in the election largely through a one-man campaign by high school English teacher Howard Bennett, are a priority with the union and have been for the past decade, Bordan said.

‘Just Couldn’t Get’

“It’s been one of those things we just couldn’t get” from the district, Bordan said.

He added that the union recently negotiated a plan that will pay teachers who retire this year monthly lifetime payments, in addition to regular pension benefits, that can be used for medical coverage.

He said he also expects Congress to pass a bill soon to make all teachers eligible for Medicare. When that happens, he said the union could easily negotiate for a supplement to Medicare as part of the teachers’ health benefits package.

While Bordan and Kaiser’s counterparts with the association acknowledge the district’s financial straits, they say the federation still has not done a good job in negotiations.

The district always says it has no money, said Jacques Bernier, a staff representative with the California Teachers Assn.

Not ‘Final Word’

“You expect the district to be conservative. You expect the school board to be conservative. The thing for a bargaining agent to do is not accept that as the final word,” he said.

The district has “lowered expenditures on employees and increased expenditures in non-personnel areas,” Bernier said. “It has de-prioritized teaching and people and prioritized things. And they’ve done that by each year convincing (the federation) that there is less money than there actually is.”

District statistics show that in 1981-82, 55% of the budget was spent on salaries for certificated employees, Bernier said. Last year, it was about 53.2% after factoring in teacher’s raises, according to district Chief Financial Officer James E. Lively.

Ralph R. Villani, assistant superintendent for personnel services, said that because of declining enrollment, statistics do not reflect the district’s commitment to teachers unless they show expenditures in terms of cost per student.

According to the county Office of Education, Culver City ranked fifth out 42 unified school districts in the amount of money it spent on teacher’s salaries versus its average daily attendance in 1986-87, he said. Its spending on employee benefits ranked fourth out of 42.

New System Needed

Villani said a large problem with collective bargaining is that teachers negotiate with the district whose purse strings are controlled by the state.

“What I think this state needs is a new system of collective bargaining. We need a new system so that teachers bargain directly with the source of funds,” he said.

In the meantime, the unions will keep negotiating with the school districts and the debate will continue in Culver City over which union is best for the job.

The federation has “done the best job it can and, unfortunately for Culver City teachers, it’s just not good enough,” past President Kay Kemp said. “The teachers who haven’t been here for the past 10 years don’t know what we have lost.”

The 160-member federation beat the 100-member association 140 to 118 in the 1985 election, but association officers said they think they will swing enough votes to win this time.

Federation Vice President David Mielke, however, was equally confident that his union would prevail on Tuesday.

“I feel a little bit like (former President Richard M.) Nixon, who’s not my favorite politician, that there’s a great silent majority out there that support us, but quietly,” he said.