Teachers Union Rejects Proposed Pay Cut

The president-elect of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s biggest union on Tuesday turned down a request for its members to give up part of their paychecks, dampening black community leaders’ hopes of saving more than 1,000 school district jobs from the budget ax.

“We are not giving back any of the pay raise we fought for at great sacrifice,” said Helen Bernstein, who takes over as head of United Teachers-Los Angeles next week. She referred to last year’s nine-day strike and the various job actions leading to it.

Searching for ways to save the school services and jobs targeted for elimination as the Board of Education struggles to balance next year’s budget by Saturday, a coalition of black community leaders and educators launched a drive over the weekend to find alternatives. Arguing that the cuts would fall disproportionately hard on the district’s lowest-earning workers and minority families, the coalition asked for all 77,000 district employees to share the burden by donating 4% of next year’s pay to the district.

UTLA’s refusal lops off two-thirds of the $80 million that would have been saved if all employees agreed to the donation. And it makes it unlikely that other employee groups will agree to the donation proposal. In fact, John Tanner, staff director of Local 99 of Service Employees International Union, said it is “just not fair” to ask his members, among the lowest paid in the district, to give up any wages.

But several coalition leaders said they are not giving up and will continue to meet and offer other possibilities by the time the board is scheduled to resume its budget work on Thursday.

Mark Ridley-Thomas, a co-chairman of the Black Leadership Coalition on Education, said he recognizes that UTLA’s “issues and claims are important and valid.” The coalition is meeting with the teachers’ union leaders to seek solutions that are “economically and racially equitable.”

While board members agreed Monday to a three-day delay of further cuts, several expressed skepticism that the pay-donation plan would fly. And board member Mark Slavkin, while agreeing to the delay, said he thinks “asking our employees to give back the raises they fought for is the wrong way to go about balancing our budget.”

UTLA’s Bernstein said she is concerned about those who are likely to lose their jobs, but added she dislikes attempts to hold the teachers responsible for solving the district’s financial problems. “Teachers are not the bad guys,” Bernstein said.

Further, many teachers already dig into their own pockets to buy important student materials that the district does not provide, she said.

UTLA has long held that the district spends too much on administration at the expense of direct services to schools and students, a sentiment echoed at a news conference Tuesday.

Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who worked with the coalition and board member Rita Walters to find alternatives to cutting jobs and school services, said she is “not at all upset with” UTLA for refusing to go along with the donation proposal.

But she added, “It is important that the unions and the school board put their best foot forward to search for new ideas and ways by which they can avoid laying off 1,000 people. . . . They have to think beyond traditional responses and think creatively.”