L.A. District to Propose 14% Pay Cut for Teachers : Budget: Contract talks include reductions for other employees ranging from 6% to 16.5%, sources say.

Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District will be asked to take a 14% pay cut this year to help the district close a $247-million budget gap, sources close to contract talks between the district and its unions said Friday.

Pay cuts for other employees would range from 6% for the more than 5,000 part-time teacher aides and assistants--who make no more than $9.75 an hour--to 16.5% for the district’s 50 highest-paid administrators, who earn more than $90,000 a year.

As many as 8,000 classified employees--including bus drivers, custodians and clerical workers--would face cuts of 11.5% under the offer approved this week by the school board.

The proposed reductions would be accomplished through cutbacks in base annual pay--ranging from no reduction for the lowest-paid workers to 10.5% for the highest--and unpaid furloughs that would reduce each employee’s pay by another 6%.

For teachers, the furloughs would mean that they would no longer be compensated for up to 13 “paid non-work days” that fall during winter and spring breaks.

Other employees would be furloughed for up to 19 days over the school year.

To allow the district to meet its obligation to submit a final budget to the county by mid-September, district and union officials have pledged to settle on a contract by that time. Because an impasse appears certain, state mediators will probably be brought in next month to help move negotiations forward.

“We have some very major objections to the compensation package that the district is offering,” said Jim Weber, secretary of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the district’s largest union, representing 34,000 teachers, librarians, counselors, psychologists and nurses.

“Our membership is going to be furious and they have every right to be,” Weber said. “Once again, they’re asking us to carry more than our share of the load.”

The proposed reductions come on the heels of last year’s 3% pay cut and furloughs that trimmed salaries by an additional 1.5% to balance the district’s 1991-92 budget.

Because of an agreement last December between the district and the UTLA that restored that 3% for three months this summer, teachers and other school employees will see their paychecks shrink by 17% in October if the district pay cut proposal is approved.

In addition to the cuts, the package includes changes in employee medical coverage that would save the district about $24 million, but which Weber contends would cost his members another 1.2% of their salaries.

“When you add up the cuts (the district is) proposing . . . by some magical equation it comes very close” to the 24% increase over three years that teachers won when they went on strike in 1989, Weber said. “They’re trying to take back everything they’ve given.”

The proposals are being sent to leaders of the eight unions that represent the school system’s 58,000 employees.

At least one bargaining unit--representing the district’s 1,700 principals and other administrators--has agreed to accept unpaid furloughs of 14 to 17 days. But sources close to the negotiations with all the district’s employee unions say they expect talks to deadlock quickly over the pay cut issue.

“The reaction from the unions, I expect, will be overwhelmingly negative,” school board President Leticia Quezada said. “There’s a lot of frustration because our employees already feel they’re working hard enough for two or three jobs and instead of getting more money, we’re offering less.

“But I hope that frustration is directed to the place it needs to be directed--to the state,” she said. “I hope people are frustrated enough to organize, to lobby and pressure Sacramento to stop making these kinds of budget cuts to our schools. I hope employees are able to focus their anger in that direction.”

Because of state cuts in education funding, the 640,000-student district faces the loss of at least $400 million from its $3.7-billion budget this fiscal year, which started July 1.

In June, the school board slashed services such as maintenance, cut such programs as a heralded dropout prevention effort and eliminated hundreds of positions to balance the district’s 1992-93 budget. But more than half the spending reductions hinged on cuts in employee compensation.

Quezada said the board favors a graduated pay cut plan because “we knew the percentage going to be cut was going to be significantly higher than the 3% we did last year. So it was important to us to cushion the negative impact on our lowest-paid employees.”

There have been repeated calls for top administrators and officials to shoulder a larger share of the cuts wrought by the fiscal crisis. The UTLA has recommended that the district temporarily do away with costly support services, such as its police force, and cut salaries for administrators by more than half so that top district officials make no more than the highest-paid teachers.

Quezada said that although some of the union’s suggestions may have merit, it is too late to implement them this year to avoid making substantial employee pay cuts.

The cuts are needed, she said, “because we are in a school system that has 87% of its budget committed to salaries and benefits. When we’re receiving, for the third year in a row, a $400-million cut from the state . . . the only place we’re going to be able to save enough to come up with that much is by cutting employee salaries.”

Although informal talks have been going on with the unions for the past month, the district’s chief negotiator, Dick Fisher, said this is the first official wage offer to emerge from contract discussions.

“This will be the district’s position going into (formal) negotiations,” he said, “and it’s quite consistent with our prior discussions. There will be no surprises to the bargaining units.”

Times staff writer Charisse Jones contributed to this story.

NEXT STEP

If the unions do not accept the district’s pay cut plan, either side can declare that negotiations have reached an impasse. The state Public Employment Relations Board would send a mediator to hear testimony from both sides. Fact-finding panels--which include the mediator and representatives of the district and unions--would issue recommendations. The school district does not have to accept the recommendations and could impose its terms. The unions could either accept the terms, engage the district in further talks or mount a job action, such as a strike. The unions and district have pledged to complete this process by mid-September.

(Southland Edition) Breakdown of Proposed Cuts

The Los Angeles Board of Education has agreed to present to its 58,000 employees a graduated pay-cut plan that asks the highest-paid employees to take the largest pay reduction. All employees also will be asked to take some kind of furlough, either by working fewer days or giving up paid vacation time.

TOTAL % CUT EMPLOYEE CATEGORY % SALARY CUT INCLUDING FURLOUGH Educational aides, teacher assistants, others earning less than $9.76 an hour 0 6.0 Bus drivers, clerical workers, custodians, others earning less than $13.68 an hour 5.5 11.5 Teachers, principals, assistant principals, counselors, librarians, nurses, others earning $28,000-$90,000 annually 8.0 14.0 Central and regional administrators earning more than $90,000 annually 10.5 16.5