L.A. Teachers Reject Contract Offer, OK Strike Preparations

Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District voted overwhelmingly to reject an offer from the district to raise salaries at least 20% over three years and authorized their union to prepare for a strike, union officials announced Monday.

United Teachers-Los Angeles President Wayne Johnson said at a press conference at union headquarters that 89.4% of the 18,161 teachers who voted in their schools last Tuesday opposed the district offer, while 10.6% voted to accept.

About 22,000 of the district’s 33,000 teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians belong to the union.

Johnson said the union will continue negotiating with the district, but that unless progress is made, “the odds are very high . . . there will be a nasty, bitter strike” as soon as early June, in time to disrupt delivery of final grades to students.

He added that the size of the vote in favor of strike authorization “surprised us.”

“That’s a very clear message from the teachers of Los Angeles” that the district’s offer is unacceptable, he said.

District Supt. Leonard Britton said Monday that a strike before the end of the school year could prevent students from graduating or being promoted to the next grade and affect students applying to college.

“I consider that a very serious . . . problem,” he said.

Britton said the union’s rejection of the district’s last contract offer was disappointing. “We feel this is an excellent offer,” he said at a separate news conference Monday at district headquarters.

Said School Board President Roberta Weintraub: “We’re very, very sorry it wasn’t accepted.”

Weintraub said she welcomed a review of district finances, which she said would bear out the district’s position that it would have to make up to $80 million in cuts to satisfy teachers’ wage demands.

Beginning pay for teachers is now about $23,000 annually, and maximum pay is about $40,800. Under the district’s last offer, those figures would rise to $25,300 and $44,146 this year. The district has offered an increase of 8% this year, 4% next year and 8% in 1990-91.

The union has asked for an 11% increase this year and 10% next year. An 11% raise would bring beginning pay this year to $26,018 and maximum pay to $45,367.

The union and the district have been working with a state labor mediator for several months to try to resolve deep differences over wages, as well as over broader powers for teachers to help run schools, giving elementary teachers a preparation period and elimination of yard duty for elementary school teachers.

Before a strike could legally be declared, an additional legal step called fact-finding would have to be completed. In that process, a neutral panel including representatives of the union and the district would weigh union demands against a review of district finances and practices.

The only time Los Angeles district teachers have gone on strike was in 1970, when they stayed out for five weeks. During bitter contract negotiations two years ago, teachers voted 75% in favor of striking, but settled the dispute at the 11th hour, after action by the Legislature restored about $37 million in special aid to the district.