Teachers OK Pact Restoring 8% of Pay Cut

An overwhelming majority of Los Angeles Unified School District teachers voted to accept a contract offer that restores 8% of a 10% salary cut, averting a potentially crippling strike but leaving few rank-and-file teachers content, union leaders said Thursday.

Results of two days of balloting, announced Thursday evening by United Teachers-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein, showed that 19,513 of 22,004 voting teachers, counselors and nurses approved the one-year contract that had been endorsed by union’s board of directors three weeks ago.

“There is nobody who said, ‘Oh boy am I happy to vote for this,’ because they still have a 2% pay cut,” Bernstein said after the vote was tallied. “I personally hope fervently that this is the last contract that I have to negotiate with a negative in it. It’s been too many years living with a pay cut.”

Confronted with unprecedented deficits, the Los Angeles Board of Education has cut teachers’ pay 10% for two years. This came on top of a 3% cut in the 1990-91 school year, which is being slowly repaid. Other district employees also took salary reductions and suffered layoffs in the last three years.

However, the approval of the 1994-95 contract, Bernstein said, does little to quell teachers’ frustration over the issue of pay cuts.

“I really feel there is still an incredible amount of hostility and anger . . . because the district has taken so long to get us out of this mess,” she said.

School board President Mark Slavkin, who was unavailable to comment during the Yom Kipper holiday, said in a prepared statement that he was delighted the teachers accepted the contract, and called it a proud day for the school district because negotiations were not prolonged.

“I know that some of the anger generated by the 10% pay cut still lingers,” Slavkin said. “There is no doubt teachers deserve to have all their lost pay restored. This will happen as soon as additional funding becomes available.”

The threat of a strike intensified in mid-August, when union leaders rejected the board’s first offer to restore salaries by 7% in a contract that contained several other contingency provisions that the union disliked.

But after three days of mediation, both sides agreed to present an offer to the union’s 32,000-members that called for an 8% restoration--4% permanent and 4% guaranteed just for this year.

The district also agreed to eliminate the contingency clauses the union objects to and promised that if any new money comes in, half of it will automatically go toward further salary restoration.

The question of how the district is going to pay for a 1% portion of the restoration, about $21 million, is still unresolved. Budget Director Henry Jones said he is still trying to figure out where the money will come from.

Bernstein said the union already has its sights set on next year’s contract and has retained an accounting team to monitor the district’s budget with an eye toward finding money for complete restoration plus a raise for next year.

“We feel quite foolish accepting the offer, because we know that the district should have provided a full restoration,” said Garfield High School English teacher Roberto Gallegos. “But we would feel even more foolish rejecting it. . . . It is attractive to teachers who have had to deal with a 10% pay cut these past two years.”