Lots of Talk, No Negotiating Means No Deal for Teachers

Even in the acrimonious universe of contract negotiations, the Orange Unified School District’s 18-month labor dispute with its teachers is a battle royal.

Both sides hurl charges and accusations at each other almost daily, even though there have been no negotiating sessions since May.

In one corner are a conservative Board of Education and a new superintendent, determined to revoke the lifetime benefits promised years ago to longtime teachers in order to fund pay raises that all sides agree are long overdue.

In the other is a shoot-from-the-hip teachers union president, unafraid to lash out at those who question his strategy.

And in the middle are teachers like Canyon High School math teacher and football coach Lance Eddy. He has worked in the district for 23 years at a job he loves, making about $10,000 less annually than his wife, who teaches at an Anaheim elementary school.

Like many veteran teachers in Orange Unified, Eddy--who has a master’s degree and has reached the highest rung on the district’s pay scale--said he stayed in large part because of the promised lifetime health insurance. But those are benefits the district says it can no longer afford to pay.

Under a tentative agreement reached last spring after more than a year of bargaining, longtime teachers would have received raises of up to 13%--and faced a mandatory buyout of their benefits for $5,000. About 600 of the district’s 1,450 teachers would be affected if the benefits were revoked, according to Board of Education member Linda Davis.

Teachers rejected the agreement in May by only 24 votes, and negotiations have been stalled ever since.

But not the mudslinging. After waging a fierce campaign against incumbent union President Suzanne Vaugine, John Rossmann was elected president of the Orange Unified Education Assn. by a 2-1 margin. He took office in June and immediately locked horns with the Board of Education--and, his critics say, anyone within the union who disagreed with him.

In faxes and newsletters, Rossmann has compared the Board of Education to Nazis and threatened its members with various forms of criminal prosecution.

The district has fought back by filing two complaints with the state’s Public Employees Relations Board, charging the union with unfair labor practices because leaders failed to support the negotiated settlement and accusing Rossmann of making false and frivolous charges and threats against district officials.

PERB has agreed to allow both complaints to go forward before an administrative law judge. The first hearing is scheduled for mid-October.

In response to the complaints, Rossmann accused the district of character assassination in a recent written statement. The board has revealed “its unbounded capacity for deceit, its complete moral corruptness, and its utter lack of trustworthiness,” he said in the statement.

Jim Bowles, the district’s labor lawyer, said he is hopeful that a settlement can be reached in the PERB cases.

If not, the district has asked the judge to determine that the union did not act in good faith and to return the negotiated tentative agreement to the table for another vote.

The board would be willing to make minor modifications to the agreement as part of a settlement, Bowles said.

But Rossmann said: “What has really cluttered things up, I believe, are these PERB rulings.” He said in an interview that the union would return to the negotiating table if the district were willing to drop the charges.

“We’ve got a proposal that would be ready to go, and we’re waiting for them to say they’re ready to bury these hatchets,” he said. “If they said let’s negotiate, I’m sure our team would be out the door in a minute with their laptops.”

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As both sides continue to slug it out along old battle lines, there is a new face in the ring: Supt. Barbara Van Otterloo, hired in June in large part because of her experience with contract negotiations as a superintendent in Michigan.

“Living in the shadows of Ford and General Motors and Chrysler, we had some pretty tough unions there,” she said. “Nothing’s hopeless.”

Van Otterloo declined to discuss the specifics of the current dispute, except to say, “We have been waiting for a written proposal to come from [the union]. The ball’s in their court.”

As to the tone of the debate, Van Otterloo said the union leadership “definitely has a unique tenor to it at this point.”

Even as Rossmann’s strategy wins support from many of his constituents--particularly among more veteran teachers--his confrontational style has alienated others.

“It’s very troublesome to me, because he has this dictatorial style,” says a veteran teacher who has been actively involved in the union for many years and who asked not to be identified.

“The whole teaching force in Orange is going to take a muck bath with him until he is discredited.”

Meanwhile, Eddy says he supports Rossmann, even if his style “has, unfortunately, alienated some.”

Eddy said he hates the idea that there is infighting among teachers while so much is at stake.

Part of the split, he said, exists because the district has successfully created a rift between older teachers who stand to lose their benefits and younger teachers who never had them in the first place.

And that, Rossmann said, is precisely what troubles teachers the most about the agreement they rejected: It allowed people who were not vested in the retirement plan to vote on whether to rescind those benefits.

The current proposal came about because, as much of the teaching force in Orange matured, the district realized it was facing an enormous financial burden in paying out the promised lifetime benefits as teachers retired.

The package was discontinued in 1992, and a few years ago the district offered a buyout package in which active teachers could voluntarily relinquish their benefits in exchange for $30,000 over five years.

Eddy rejected the offer. He figured the $10,000 to $12,000 pay gap he had tolerated for so many years added up to a lot more than $30,000. “I have too much invested in this. I’ve lost too much money by staying,” he said.

Now he is worried that there will be nothing left to show for his years of service.

It all became too much for Mary Hummell, a kindergarten teacher who had been with the district for some 35 years.

Hummell retired abruptly last spring after the district announced what she considered an ultimatum: Leave now, and you can keep your benefits.

“I wasn’t ready to retire,” said the 65-year-old former teacher of the year. “But it wasn’t worth the fight anymore.

“Each year for I don’t know how many years, they would say we’re not giving you a raise but you do have lifetime benefits. Well, when they took away lifetime benefits, you took away all those years when we could have had higher salaries.”

“They really prefer having younger teachers because that way they can pay them less,” she said of the district. “I just decided to go where I can be positive.”

After 40 years of teaching, Hummell has joined her husband in the real estate business.