Teachers Union Postpones Strike : L.A. schools: Tuesday’s job action is halted. Members will vote this week to either walk out March 1 or accept Speaker Brown’s plan to reduce pay cut 2%.

The leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union voted overwhelmingly Saturday to postpone the strike slated for Tuesday until teachers can vote on a plan drawn up by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown to settle their contract dispute with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The teachers will strike March 1 if a majority of union members reject Brown’s settlement package in a vote scheduled this week. Ballots will be counted and results announced Friday.

“I can tell you it’s not going to be a slam-dunk. It’s going to be close,” United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein said after the hourlong meeting of the union’s 350-member House of Representatives.

Brown’s plan calls for a 2% reduction in the pay cut that teachers and other employees who earn $28,000 to $90,000 receive this year and next year. That would affect a majority of district employees and cost the district about $68 million over the two years of the contract.

Last year, the district’s 58,000 full-time employees had their pay cut by 3% to help cover the district’s budget shortfall. This year, to help cover a $400-million shortfall, additional cuts ranging from 6.5% to 11.5% were enacted for all but the lowest-paid employees, bringing the cumulative cut for teachers and most other employees to 12%. Teachers threatened to strike over their cuts.

Brown has proposed that the cash-strapped school district pay for reducing the pay cut by depleting its $31-million reserve fund. He believes that the district can designate unused money in other accounts to its state-mandated emergency reserve fund and argued that the board should view the possibility of a strike as an emergency “like an earthquake.”

School board President Leticia Quezada said the teachers should understand that the $34 million needed to pay for the package “did not fall down from the sky,” but comes from restricted funds.

Brown’s plan stops short of granting teachers the guarantee against pay cuts next year that union leaders had sought. It does promise that salaries will stay the same if state funding does not drop--a caveat that the district had made in its final contract offer in December.

Now, however, Brown has put his clout on the line, assuring teachers that state funding for education will not be cut. The offer also gives the teachers union authority to review a district management audit.

In addition, Brown promised to be the final arbiter in any disputes over the guarantee or other issues for the duration of the two-year contract.

His settlement offer “avoids the strike, it reduces the burden on teachers, and it gives them justice and dignity,” Brown said after announcing the proposal to teachers. He said the package, although it still contains a salary reduction, gives teachers much of what they had sought in negotiations, such as increasing their decision-making authority on campus.

“I don’t believe teachers are greed-motivated,” he said in expressing optimism that they will approve the package.

Bernstein said the union’s board of directors voted to put the package to a vote of the membership without recommending its approval because union leaders “would never recommend a pay cut.” She also said it is a decision teachers should make on their own without union leadership influence.

In addition to the financial concessions won by teachers, Brown’s proposal gives the union, whose membership includes school counselors and nurses, victories on several non-monetary items. Teachers, not principals, would decide who gets coveted paid program coordinator positions. Teachers would have more say over what grade level they teach. And principals would no longer have special campus parking spaces.

Despite the pay cuts, the concessions “will enable our teachers to do a more effective job in the classroom,” Bernstein said.

In addition, Brown proposes allowing the union to design and administer its own health plan, with the district continuing to pay for medical benefits.

Brown’s proposal also restricts the district’s ability in the future to grant the controversial “me-too” protection clauses to unions that sign contracts before the teachers union settles.

The protection provisions were criticized by UTLA and Brown for limiting flexibility during the mediation process. Brown would require the district to give UTLA members a 10% bonus if the district signs “me-too” deals with the other unions after the expiration of the contracts in 1994.

In presenting his plan to the Board of Education and UTLA at separate meetings Saturday, Brown made clear that his proposals are not open to negotiation.

“I’m saying my proposal settles your strike. My proposal allows you to keep on being a union and allows the (school) board to keep on being the board.”

The plan was unveiled before the school board at a two-hour meeting Saturday morning. While board members expressed concern about the cost of the concessions, a majority of the board is willing to approve the settlement, if only as a way to avoid a strike that would have long-term disastrous effects on a district that is fighting for its life.

“The board has told Willie Brown we support the deal and are prepared to sign,” said board member Mark Slavkin. “There’s a financial risk involved and that was a major issue for the board, but we’re between a rock and hard place when it comes to a strike that would destroy the district . . . and Brown was persuasive that this is a prudent way out.”

Brown said board members expressed concerns that his settlement proposal would subject them to the same kind of criticism they endured after settling with the teachers in 1989, when the 24% three-year raise teachers won after a nine-day strike nearly emptied the district’s coffers.

“The board put themselves on the line (then) to avoid a strike . . . They could not afford that and they now recognize that,” Brown told The Times after his meeting with the board.

“So any proposed settlement short of what they have previously assessed as being appropriate, they are nervous about. So I’m trying my best to take those fears away,” Brown said. “They are concerned about this whole business of criticism that has been visited upon the district by everybody . . . the accusations of incompetence and the other kinds of things that go with them.

“(They) clearly want to err on the side of caution and essentially I have to reassure them, (to say) it is my proposal, trust my judgment and my experience at being able to make this proposal work.”

Brown said it is critical that all seven board members support the settlement package, “and I do believe that under the right circumstances . . . I can sell my package to seven of the board members.”

Brown drafted his proposal last week after deciding that further negotiations between the two sides would be futile.

He has been meeting with district and union leaders since January--including four meetings with both sides present--but concluded that the rift between the two sides was so deep that they would be unable to reach agreement on their own.

After an all-day meeting Thursday, a frustrated Brown declared that he would submit his contract proposal by Monday. Then, after a brief session Friday, he put a halt to negotiations and ordered both sides to meet with him separately Saturday to hear his proposal.

Today his plan will be presented to teachers union representatives from each of the district’s 650 campuses.

In December, the teachers voted to reject a cumulative 12% pay cut included in the district’s final offer and scheduled a strike for Tuesday--timing it to coincide with most students’ return to class after the district’s eight-week winter break.

The district’s offer had included incentives that would have cushioned the pay cuts by paying bonuses if attendance and other goals were met--similar to provisions Brown has included in his settlement offer. But it did not include a key provision union leaders insisted on: a guarantee that teacher pay would not be cut for the third straight year in 1993-94.

After the 1989 strike, teachers won a three-year contract that delivered not only 8% annual raises, but an agreement that gave teachers more control in running their schools.

But that power-sharing plan failed to improve teachers’ working conditions and the raise is blamed by some for contributing to the district’s financial crisis, which has led to layoffs, salary cuts and deep reductions in campus spending.

The seven unions representing non-teaching employees accepted pay cuts last fall and signed contracts that provided protection against layoffs. But members of the teachers union have voted twice since October to reject the contract offer and authorize a strike.

Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.