Huntington Beach Teachers Say No to Contract Proposal

Teachers in the strike-threatened Huntington Beach City Elementary School District on Monday rejected a two-year contract proposed by a team of state-supervised labor fact-finders. According to a union official, the rejection resulted from teacher uncertainty about the cost of fringe benefits for the coming school year.

Teachers in the district staged a one-day strike last May, and Monday they vowed to renew the walkout if a settlement is not reached by the time classes reopen on Sept. 6.

“We wanted to accept the district’s offer for a 3.7% (retroactive) pay raise for 1987-88, but we just could not accept the offer for 1988-89,” said Carol Autrey, president of the teachers’ union, the Huntington Beach Elementary Teachers Assn.

Autrey noted that the school district’s offer was the same as that recommended by a three-person team of labor investigators, collectively called “fact-finders.” The fact-finders’ report, made public last week, called for giving the teachers a 3.7% retroactive pay raise for 1987-88 and a 4.1% “total compensation” package for 1988-89. For the coming school year, teachers would get a 4.1% pay raise, minus whatever increased costs the district must bear for health insurance and other fringe benefits.

“We just cannot approve the 1988-89 offer since we don’t know right now how much health insurance is going up,” said Autrey. “It could turn out that the district would later tell us, ‘You’re not getting any pay raise because the insurance costs were more than 4.1% this year.’ ”

Diana Peters, superintendent of the 5,300-student school system, said Monday that the school district insisted on a two-year contract proposal because the state-supervised fact-finders had recommended it.

“A one-year settlement would not be good for the children or for the employees,” said Peters. “The fact-finders’ report specifically called for a two-year contract. We believe the fact-finders’ report shows that the district has been negotiating in good faith.”

The school district and the union turned to the fact-finding process in May after a year of stalemated talks. Fact-finding, part of the state’s labor mediation process, calls for each side to name one investigator and for both sides to agree on a third fact-finder.

The report issued last week by that team essentially supported the claims by the school district that it could not afford more than it had offered the teachers. In 1987-88, the teachers asked for a total 4.97% pay raise, while the school district offered 3.5%.

Autrey said Monday that although the fact-finders’ report called for only a 3.7% retroactive pay raise, “it was at least higher than the district had been offering.”

The fact-finders’ report recommended that the school district offer the teachers in 1988-89 the same percentage increase the school district itself had been allocated in the state budget this year--4.1%--but it also suggested that the higher cost of health and welfare benefits be included in that increase.

Autrey said she has called a meeting of the 216 teachers in the district for Thursday afternoon “to see where we go from here.”

Huntington Beach City Elementary School District is the only one of Orange County’s 29 school districts with an unsettled labor contract from the last school year. Both Autrey and Peters said no new negotiating sessions have been scheduled.

The current average teacher’s salary in the district is $37,190 a year, according to district officials.