Glendale Teachers to Decide Between Contract, Strike

Glendale teachers will be asked next week to ratify a contract that provides for 22.7% in pay raises over three years or face a possible strike in the fall, union representatives said.

A union council Tuesday set a vote for Tuesday and Wednesday on the contract after action was delayed two weeks to give teachers more time to study the proposal.

Brent Noyes, one of three elementary school representatives on the union’s executive council, said he is urging members to accept the contract. “A no vote on the contract is a strike vote,” said Noyes, a former union president and member of the negotiating team. “I see more problems instead of solutions.”

Terms of the contract, which gives larger raises to teachers who are the best trained and have served the longest, have caused division in the union, members said.

The union in March declared an impasse in negotiations but agreed this month to put the district’s offer to a vote of its members. The union has taken no official stand on the contract, said Mark Desetti, president of the Glendale Teachers Assn.

Maria Leinenweber, a union teacher representative at Crescenta Valley High School, said the salary restructuring will leave two-thirds of the teachers in the district with lower increases in the second and third years of the contract.

Only teachers who have earned a master’s degree are eligible for the highest raises. “They are forcing many of us to go back to school to get a master’s degree,” Leinenweber said. “We are paying for this restructuring.”

Charles Duncan, district director of personnel and employee relations, said union representatives sought the restructuring option rather than across-the-board raises for all teachers.

Under terms of the proposed contract, all teachers would be granted an 8% raise this year, retroactive to Sept. 1. Raises next year would range from 6.5% to 11.2% and, in the following year, from 5.75% to 11.93%. Teachers now are not eligible for raises after 12 years with the district. The new contract would grant raises after 18 and 22 years, providing a top salary of $54,301 by September, 1990--a 34.7% jump over the present maximum of $40,312.

Starting salaries would increase from $22,536 to $27,411 during the same period. The average salary of $33,117 would climb to $41,000, placing Glendale salaries in the top third of the county’s 43 unified school districts, Duncan said.

Teachers would lose the raise this year if a contract is not approved by June 30, he said.