Union Attacks Proposal to Cut Teachers’ Pay

Angry teachers union officials on Tuesday lashed out at the Los Angeles Unified School District’s proposals to close a $247-million budget gap with sharp cuts in employees’ pay and predicted that their members might strike as early as mid-September if the district does not find other ways to make up at least some of the shortfall.

The district’s latest proposal--to shorten the second semester by eight days this school year--was spurned by United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein as soon as she saw it Tuesday morning. “When you add it up, it still amounts to a 17% pay cut. . . . That is outrageous and totally unacceptable,” Bernstein said.

Offered as a way to soften somewhat the deep cuts it has proposed in teachers’ base salaries, which affect retirement benefits, the shortened-year proposal would save $80 million in salaries, transportation and utility costs, officials estimate. Instructional time would be made up by tacking 30 to 40 minutes onto the school day that semester.

The proposal is similar to one rejected by the teachers union about two months ago, when district officials wanted to shave 17 days off the entire school year. The teachers’ opposition makes the proposal’s adoption highly unlikely, even though the district can still ask the state Department of Education for approval.

Earlier this summer, to balance the district’s $3.8-billion 1992-93 budget, the school board sliced off $400 million, more than half of which was to come from salaries and benefits. Pay cuts ranging from 6% to 16.5% were proposed for all but the lowest-paid district employees, along with another 6% reduction for everyone through unpaid days off. Teachers, whose salaries average about $45,000 a year, are to receive 8% base salary cuts, in addition to the 3% reduction all employees took last year. That 3% was to have been a one-year cut but district officials later said they need to continue it this year.

The salary-slashing proposals came just as the district was beginning contract negotiations with most of its eight unions, including the mammoth UTLA, which represents about 35,000 teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians.

Board President Leticia Quezada described the shortened-semester proposal as “a last-ditch effort to say, particularly to UTLA, that this is the way to ameliorate the impact of a salary cut” because teachers would at least get some additional time off in exchange.

However, at a news conference at union headquarters, Bernstein blasted district officials for not looking more carefully at alternatives, including a plan to streamline administration that was part of a package of budget-balancing proposals submitted by the union two months ago. She also criticized Supt. Bill Anton for attending an international education conference in Israel during the budget crisis.

District spokeswoman Diana Munatones said that Anton, who left July 24, is expected back today, and that his deputies and negotiating team were reviewing the UTLA’s proposals and proceeding with contract talks.

Bernstein said she was especially incensed to realize that, while all California public school districts are reeling from state-imposed budget cuts, none have proposed the kind of pay cuts being asked of Los Angeles employees.

“Other districts have found other ways to make the cuts,” Bernstein said, including cutting out academic contests, finding professional sports organizations to pay for school athletic programs and eliminating cheerleading squads and marching bands.

Ned Hopkins, a spokesman for the California Teachers Assn., said he knows of no other district contemplating such large employee pay cuts.

“We have lots of districts who are giving no pay raises for the second or even third year, but nothing comes to close to (what is being proposed in) Los Angeles,” Hopkins said.

“I am tired of this administration acting like it’s business as usual,” said Bernstein, who said she will recommend that UTLA members engage in a strike or other job action after the state-required mediation process ends about the middle of September.

While three of the teachers who appeared with Bernstein at the news conference said they were ready to strike, a fourth said he wanted to first focus on finding other ways to balance the budget.

“Let’s stop trying to put teachers in a box by asking about a strike,” Marshall High School teacher David Tokofsky urged reporters, “and let’s start trying to find creative solutions.”

Roberta Weintraub, the board’s senior member, said a strike would be “an absolutely horrendous thing to happen for the district. It would just absolutely tear us asunder--permanently, this time.”

Bernstein acknowledged that a strike this fall almost certainly would not result in the benefits won by the UTLA’s 1989 job action, which brought teachers a 24% raise over three years and ushered in some reforms in the ways schools are run.

“There is no way we want to be disruptive, to hurt our own members, to hurt our students,” Bernstein said, “but if this offer remains on the table, it’s desperation time . . . 17% of our pay is unconscionable.”