Brown’s Proposal Will Be ‘Tough Sell’ for Teachers, District : Education: Assembly Speaker will present his plan today. Union leaders will vote on postponing walkout after hearing details.

Los Angeles teachers union leaders will vote today on whether to postpone a strike next Tuesday after listening to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown reveal his proposal to resolve their bitter contract dispute with the school district.

Brown, who has been mediating the labor negotiations, emerged from a two-hour meeting with top union and district officials Friday evening, saying that it had become clear that deep distrust between the two sides was preventing them from reaching any agreement on their own.

He declined to disclose any details of his proposed accord, which was being drafted by his Sacramento staff late Friday night. But he said it will be a “tough sell” for both sides “because it doesn’t say either of them won.”

“It says that the kids will not suffer the disruption of a strike and the district will not cease to function,” Brown said of the proposal.

United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein said late Friday that she does not know the details of the proposal. “I’m actually a little apprehensive. I’m not exactly sure what he is going to propose.”

Brown will take his recommendations to the seven-member Board of Education at 10 a.m. He said he is confident that the board will give him the go-ahead to present the offer to teachers in the afternoon.

In the event the board refuses to endorse the plan, he said, “they better have a good reason to say no because I’ll go wild.”

Supt. Sid Thompson and board President Leticia Quezada left Friday’s session declining to comment on Brown’s plan.

The union’s 350-member House of Representatives will convene at 3 p.m. to hear Brown outline the proposal. Under union bylaws, the house has the authority to decide if the offer is good enough to postpone the strike so that the plan can be presented to the 27,000 rank-and-file members for a vote, Bernstein said.

The representatives can also vote on what, if any, recommendation to make to the members on the proposal, Bernstein said. It typically takes the union about a week to execute a membership vote, with ballots cast at each of the 650 schools throughout the district.

Brown said he will tell the teachers that his proposal is “the best they are going to get whether there is a strike or not.”

Bernstein said the teachers will strike Tuesday if the House of Representatives turns down the offer. She said she is satisfied that she has fully presented the union’s positions in six sessions with Brown and “without a shadow of a doubt . . . the Speaker gave us our day in court, fairly.”

She said Brown’s intervention provided to union negotiators what had been missing from their solo talks with the district: “respect and understanding for how important it is to be a teacher in this city.”

The union voted to strike after the district imposed a cumulative 12% pay cut to help bridge a $400-million budget deficit. All employees suffered pay reductions, but only the teachers union has fought them. The union has been seeking a reduction in the pay cut, a guarantee that salaries not be cut again next year, and a package of incentives that would allow them to have more decision-making at the schools.

After four joint sessions with the two sides, Brown--who wields power in the state second only to the governor--said that he “had come to the end of the line” and needed to wrest control of negotiations away from warring union and district officials.

“My tolerance level was gone completely,” he said. “I realized that for reasons beyond their control, Helen could not say to Leticia: ‘We have a deal, let’s shake’ because they would both be recalled.”

Brown said that the plan will leave both sides with “something to embrace,” indicating that there will be tough compromises to be made.

“If you are Catholic, light a candle. If you are Jewish, go to temple. If you are Baptist, pray with me,” he said as he departed Friday’s mediation session.