Labor Talks to Pit 2 Outspoken Leaders

On one side of the bargaining table will be Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer, the former Democratic governor of Colorado, who has led a campaign for four years to reform the nation’s second-largest school district and jump-start a massive school building program.

On the other will be John Perez, the Los Angeles teachers union president who narrowly won his position less than a year ago and recently gained a reputation for political muscle with the successful effort to defeat two school board incumbents.

The educational conditions for 747,000 students depend, to a large extent, on how well those two bespectacled, gray-haired men get along. The two contend they have emerged from the recent elections as reluctant, but amicable, bedfellows. However, their relationship is about to be tested by a projected district shortfall of $421 million and demanding constituencies.

For Perez, that means pleasing the 47,000 members of United Teachers-Los Angeles, who are feeling emboldened enough by the March 4 election to ask for a third consecutive year of raises despite the district’s budget woes.

Romer, meanwhile, is answerable to a reconfigured school board that is about to lose some of his strongest allies, a huge administrative staff worried about their jobs, plus students and their parents eager to protect classrooms from spending cuts.

“They’re going to need each other,” said Adam Urbansky, vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. “Roy Romer is a very credible man. You have in John Perez and in UTLA a strong union.... What you need is everybody on the same page. That’s the fundamental issue in Los Angeles.”

The two men, who will lead negotiations to replace the teachers contract that expires this summer, have a few things in common.

Neither Romer nor Perez was elected by the public; both were appointed through fractious selection processes. Both lead unwieldy institutions buffeted by infighting. And both Romer, 74, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Perez, 53, a former history teacher, are blunt, tough talkers who are more willing to compromise than they first seem.

Right before last year’s budget cuts, Romer offered teachers a raise despite opposition from several board members and district budget officials. The superintendent said the raises forced the district to pack classes with more students.

“I sat across the table from John and told them, ‘If we’re going to pay the 3% increase, we can’t do it without increasing class sizes’ ” in grades 4 through 12, Romer said. “They said, ‘That’s not something we agree to,’ but they took the money anyway.”

Perez disagreed with Romer’s account, saying the district could have afforded raises and smaller classes, had it managed its money more wisely.

Now, the choices are expected to be even more difficult.

Romer’s goals include increasing students’ test scores, building as many as 120 schools and cutting expenses. The district has sent layoff warning letters to more than 2,600 administrators and issued a preliminary budget suggesting that some teachers may be dismissed and that there is no money for raises next year. Every 1% increase in teacher salaries would cost the district as much as $35 million and reducing class sizes to 20 children in all grades would cost $90 million, Romer said.

Perez said he shares Romer’s desire to see schools built and to improve student achievement, but he insisted that well-compensated teachers are vital to reforms. But Perez seems to be lowering expectations, telling union members to be “realistic” about the district’s finances and suggesting that raises might be hard to come by.

Perez’s status was bolstered by the union’s election victories against school board President Caprice Young and Genethia Hudley-Hayes, incumbents financed by a group formed by former Mayor Richard Riordan and businessman Eli Broad. Young and Hudley-Hayes, close allies of Romer, were defeated by Jon Lauritzen and Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, both backed by the union.

If board member David Tokofsky wins a May runoff and fellow incumbent Julie Korenstein loses a City Council runoff bid, the union will gain a friendly majority for the first time in four years.

Mike Lansing, who won reelection last month with help from the Riordan-Broad coalition, said he fears that Perez will persuade a new majority to take steps that could hurt the district’s overall health.

“John does a great job advocating for his union,” Lansing said. “But now that the elections are over, where’s John going to take it from here? Is he going to work collaboratively and rationally as we go forward together? Or, to win a couple of early battles, is he going to sink the ship? ... I think he puts the teachers union before the kids.”

Perez denied that he is focused only on wages and said the district in the past has blocked union efforts to improve classroom experiences for children.

A Brooklyn native, Perez taught history at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights and then at James Monroe High School in the San Fernando Valley. He started moving up the union hierarchy in 1973 and was one of four vice presidents when he campaigned for the top job on a tough stance against the school board. His main opponent last year was the more moderate Becky Robinson, who garnered more votes than Perez but failed to win a majority. In a runoff, Perez won by only 98 votes out of 10,000.

Another candidate was Warren Fletcher, who said: “John is a man of considerable political skills. I don’t just mean getting people elected. He has a good political mind and ... he can be high-spirited. But when push comes to shove, he has the ability to judge what’s right.”

Facing similar financial troubles 10 years ago, teachers took a demoralizing 10% pay cut, a move that still outrages some members and may explain Perez’s vigilance on wage issues.

Perez insists he is not pushing for Romer’s removal, despite the superintendent’s advocacy of a new downtown headquarters, which the union mocks, and his arguments for reviving the ill-fated Belmont Learning Complex, which probably will be scaled back dramatically because of environmental and seismic obstacles.

“Well, Romer did put forward a 12% increase during contract negotiations” in 2001, Perez said. The deal was settled with 11.5% raises and an additional 3% the following year.

He called Romer a “sincere, can-do kind of guy.”

“Maybe it’s because he’s not an educator and didn’t come out of the bureaucracy,” Perez said, “but something about Roy Romer makes me believe him when he says he wants to increase student achievement.”

Perez only wishes Romer would stop listening to “that stupid bureaucracy” -- his division heads and deputy superintendents.

Romer, who was hired in 2000 and whose contract was extended last year to at least 2005, said he wants to stay in his job even though the outcome of the recent election was not what he hoped for.

“As you know, I don’t think it’s healthy to have the union on both sides of the bargaining table, but that’s the condition we work in here,” Romer said. “I think the union understands that we have enough in common that they want me around -- I’m effective, and they know that.”

At a time when he could have retired from public service, managed his Colorado tractor company and lived off several generous pensions, Romer took what he regularly calls the most challenging job in his career. And unlike some of the superintendents who came before him, Romer has a reputation as an activist. With his Democratic Party roots, he has a friendly history with unions.

He promises more cooperation with the union and hopes to receive the same from Perez, whom he calls “a good man and a good leader.”

But, Romer added, the union has “got to make this district work or their membership is going to be in trouble.”

Joe Rao, a former chief of staff for Romer and a current member of his negotiating team, said the two men had different styles but “mutual respect for each other.”

Perez and Romer are flexible enough to work out their differences, he said, and realistic enough to know that it won’t be easy.

“I think both of them realize the financial situation in the state, and I think both have to change how they approach things for the next couple of years,” Rao said.