Binding School Arbitration Asked : Education: Teachers and districts would be forced to settle labor disputes under proposed legislation. Honig strongly supports plan but unions are sharply critical.

Teachers and school districts would be forced to submit to binding arbitration to settle labor disputes under legislation proposed Wednesday that would end the spate of teachers’ strikes that began in California last year.

The legislation was drafted by Assemblyman Jack O’Connell, a Democratic lawmaker whose district includes Santa Maria, which recently went through a four-week teacher strike. It is being strongly supported by Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig.

Two leaders of teachers’ unions immediately came out in opposition to the legislation, which could jeopardize the legislation in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Under the bill, teachers would be prohibited from striking. Unresolved collective bargaining issues would be turned over to a three-member arbitration panel. Giving teeth to the proposed law, teachers would be liable for fines of up to $500 a day for striking or even engaging in work slowdowns or “sick-ins.”

O’Connell said students lost 7.2 million hours of classroom time in 1989 as the result of strikes or labor disruptions. Over the last 14 months, there have been major strikes in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Sacramento, Stockton, Santa Maria and one-day walkouts in Anaheim and San Jose.

“The current process is just too confrontational, too lengthy and much too expensive,” O’Connell said.

Honig, appearing with O’Connell at a Capitol news conference, called the legislation “crucial for the state.” He said the collective bargaining environment in California is “an intolerable situation for many educators. We are not happy with the way it is working out and we think the structure has to be changed.”

But Wayne Johnson, president of the 26,000-member United Teachers-Los Angeles, the largest teacher collective bargaining unit in the state, contended the proposal “will kill collective bargaining.”

The union chief criticized Honig, saying the legislation sprang from “concern among administrators that teacher unions are getting more organized, getting stronger and playing a major role in changing the school system.”

Johnson, whose union was involved in a nine-day strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District that produced a 24% pay raise for teachers over three years, said school districts could make a take-it-or-leave-it offer and then let a third party decide.

Based on previous dealings with third party negotiators, Johnson said, “We have no faith in the fairness or objectivity of the process.”

A similar sentiment was expressed by Pat Walden, president of the Sacramento City Teachers’ Assn., which represents 3,000 teachers. “How can you guarantee with something like this that you are going to be treated fairly?” he asked.

Ed Foglia, head of the 200,000-member California Teachers Assn., said the CTA had not yet taken a position on the bill. But he downplayed the impact of strikes statewide, saying that even with the work stoppages in Los Angeles and other cities there was labor peace in most of the state’s 1,010 school districts.

Honig said the binding arbitration process is being used in seven other other states successfully.

The schools chief said a major point in favor of the arbitration system is that it allows cooler heads to prevail when the warring sides get emotional and dig in for a fight. He said personality conflicts were a major factor in the Stockton teachers’ strike. He said both parties were in basic agreement “but they were talking right past each other. They were making the same offer to each other, but they didn’t understand they were making the same offer.”