Teachers brace for strike
Union taps leader of 1989 walkout to aid fight for wage hike, reform
BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer,
DailyNews.com
Under mounting pressure for major
reforms at Los Angeles schools, the teachers union has brought in its tough
former leader to help mobilize members for a strike if its demands
are not met.
United Teachers Los Angeles is hiring a former UTLA
president, Wayne Johnson, who organized a successful nine-day strike in 1989
and wrangled a 24 percent pay raise over three years. Johnson later served
as the hard-nosed president of the California Teachers Association and is
now a consultant.
The move bolsters the UTLA's bid to organize the ranks
behind a demand for a 9 percent pay raise, smaller classes and greater local
control of schools.
But the agenda could be at odds with two forces: Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa, a former UTLA organizer who is poised to assume
substantial control over the district, and David Brewer III, newly selected
superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Both have vowed
to restructure the nation's second-largest school district.
UTLA President A.J. Duffy says he has mapped out a
timeline of activities that include a strike vote in February and boycotts
of student testing and faculty meetings in the spring.
"I asked Wayne to become a consultant to me and to
UTLA because he, more than anyone else,
understands what it takes to mobilize people, to coalesce people, and to
carry out a successful strike and successful actions to portray (bureaucrats
of) this district in the way they need to be portrayed - a wasteful,
overblown bureaucracy that is completely out of control," Duffy said.
"I'm telling teachers: Save your money. Pay off your
credit cards. Don't overextend yourself. I think we're in for a monumental
struggle because these people in the bureaucracy don't get it."
Johnson, who led the UTLA from 1984 to 1991, will begin
his job Wednesday as a special adviser focusing on contract negotiations.
In a written statement announcing his goal, Johnson said
he intends to help Duffy make each classroom and campus a top funding
priority for LAUSD.
"Forty-eight thousand teachers and health and human
services professionals united to fight for kids and the classroom can't be
stopped. Together with the UTLA leadership, I know we can do it," he wrote.
But some district officials say hiring Johnson is a signal
that UTLA's leadership is weak, and leaders don't know what they are doing.
"They've realized they're operating on past memories of
the good old days, when Johnson was president and negotiated and had a union
behind him then - a very organized union - and he could rally the forces and
go out and have a meeting where 10,000 teachers showed up," said a district
official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Johnson valued his members. He valued his teachers. He
made them feel valued."
Johnson was able to secure 8 percent raises for three
years in a row, but teachers took a 10 percent pay cut after the district
hit financial dire straits in 1992.
Some say trust between the UTLA membership and leaders was
recently shattered when Duffy secretly negotiated a deal with Villaraigosa
over Assembly Bill 1381, which gives the mayor more control over
the district and shifts power from the school board to the superintendent.
Rank-and-file teachers did not rally behind Duffy. When
members finally took an advisory vote on the legislation, some 53 percent
opposed it.
Duffy denies he is out of step with his membership and
said he hired Johnson merely to strengthen the union's position.
"A good leader would be a fool to not fill his arsenal
with every weapon possible before going into battle," he said.
And there's no question that Johnson is a weapon.
"He was a toughie. He was very, very, very tough,"
recalled former school board President Roberta Weintraub, who negotiated
with Johnson in 1989.
"There was no question we were outflanked. He didn't back
down on anything. He's a tough negotiator. He was a firebrand at that point.
What I remember is he was a very strong negotiator, someone determined to
get what he wanted to get - at any cost."
With Johnson part of the UTLA negotiating team, and the
district with a new superintendent at the helm, Weintraub predicts
negotiations will not be easy.
"I just pray there are no more strikes because it's so
debilitating, so difficult to overcome," she said. "They're never
necessarily a benefit to anybody."
And tensions could flare. Villaraigosa, a former labor
leader, has vowed to hold firm on city workers' salaries, and one city
employee union already has held a two-day work stoppage over his refusal to
agree to pay demands.
On Saturday, Villaraigosa said he hopes negotiations go
well with the teachers union.
"Parties always start out staking out a position, but over
time and with good faith, they can get to common ground," Villaraigosa said.
Duffy has made it clear that his goal during negotiations
will be to bring teacher salaries near the top quartile of all salaries in
Los Angeles County.
With the average salary of $56,652 annually, teachers say
they are currently in the bottom quartile.
"My teachers are underpaid and work under the most adverse
conditions,and still they raise the test scores," Duffy said. "They proved
their worth. They've done the job. It's about time to recognize them with a
fair and decent pay raise."
Duffy noted that seven weeks have passed since he made his
9 percent pay-raise demand, and district officials still have not responded
with a counteroffer.
"How dare they pay the superintendent $300,000 a year and
perks when we have teachers who leave the profession in droves because they
can't afford (to stay in) it?"
Kevin Reed, LAUSD's chief counsel, said there has been
progress at the bargaining table, particularly on health benefits.
Management negotiators agreed for the district to fully
fund health benefits, costing an additional $60 million, he said.
"It's unfortunate to hear Duffy adopt a warlike posture,"
Reed said. "Duffy knows full well that there isn't money available for a 9
percent pay raise."
Collective bargaining also will become more complicated if
AB 1381 - passed and signed but the target of a lawsuit - takes effect, Reed
said. While the school board will technically be in charge of collective
bargaining, the superintendent will have more authority over the budget.
"I don't consider UTLA a threat," Reed said. "There are
going to be a lot of issues that have to be worked out between the board and
superintendent with respect to how to make the budgetary aspect of the
settlement fit."
School board member David Tokofsky said he welcomes
Johnson's return to UTLA but believes everyone needs to be realistic about
district finances.
"If he brings an emphasis on reality, it's all the more
welcome," Tokofsky said. "If anybody thinks there's 20 percent to pay for
salary benefits, class-size reduction and local control, to use Wayne
Johnson's 1989 words: `They lie, they lie, they lie."'
Duffy said there is money to meet teachers' demands if the
district cuts its bureaucracy. His goal is for LAUSD and UTLA negotiators to
come up with a plan to dismantle the bureaucracy.
"In order for us to drag this district into the 21st
century, the bureaucrats need to understand that breaking the bureaucracy is
a critical element," Duffy said.
He is scheduled to have dinner this week with Brewer - a
retired Navy admiral - and plans to express his views and concerns.
Duffy said he also plans to question Brewer about
statements last week that one of Brewer's first priorities will be to get
ineffective teachers out of the classroom.
"The ball's going to be in his court. He's going to
understand lingo that has to do with war. You can have war. You can have
peace. It's entirely up to you," Duffy said.
"But he and the other people in the district need to
understand that teachers are ... angry, and they want to be regarded as
professionals, and they're not going to accept anything different."
Memories Mayor hopeful No response Complications
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(818) 713-3722
Stupid in America
Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians
John Stossel
For "Stupid in America," a special report ABC
will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New
Jersey and in Belgium. The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks.
The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid."
We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and
dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an
above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores
that are above average for America.
The American boy who got the highest score told
me: "I'm shocked, 'cause it just shows how advanced they are compared to
us."
The Belgians did better because their schools
are better. At age ten, American students take an international test and
score well above the international average. But by age fifteen, when
students from forty countries are tested, the Americans place twenty-fifth.
The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international
competition. They do worse than kids from countries that spend much less
money on education.
This should come as no surprise once you
remember that public education in the USA is a government monopoly. Don't
like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes
fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad. That's why
government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated
monopolies are even worse.
In New York City, it's "just about impossible"
to fire a bad teacher, says schools chancellor Joel Klein. The new union
contract offers slight relief, but it's still about 200 pages of
bureaucracy. "We tolerate mediocrity," said Klein, because "people get paid
the same, whether they're outstanding, average, or way below average." One
teacher sent sexually oriented emails to "Cutie 101," his sixteen year old
student. Klein couldn't fire him for years, "He hasn't taught, but we have
had to pay him, because that's what's required under the contract."
They've paid him more than $300,000, and only
after 6 years of litigation were they able to fire him. Klein employs dozens
of teachers who he's afraid to let near the kids, so he has them sit in what
they call "rubber rooms." This year he will spend twenty million dollars to
warehouse teachers in five rubber rooms. It's an alternative to firing them.
In the last four years, only two teachers out of 80,000 were fired for
incompetence.
When I confronted Union president Randi
Weingarten about that, she said, "they [the NYC school board] just don't
want to do the work that's entailed." But the "work that's entailed" is so
onerous that most principals just give up, or get bad teachers to transfer
to another school. They even have a name for it: "the dance of the lemons."
The inability to fire the bad and reward the
good is the biggest reason schools fail the kids. Lack of money is often
cited the reason schools fail, but America doubled per pupil spending,
adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years. Test scores and graduation
rates stayed flat. New York City now spends an extraordinary $11,000 per
student. That's $220,000 for a classroom of twenty kids. Couldn't you hire
two or three excellent teachers and do a better job with $220,000?
Only a monopoly can spend that much money and
still fail the kids.
The U.S. Postal Service couldn't get it there
overnight. But once others were allowed to compete, Federal Express, United
Parcel, and others suddenly could get it there overnight. Now even the post
office does it (sometimes). Competition inspires people to do what we didn't
think we could do.
If people got to choose their kids' school,
education options would be endless. There could soon be technology schools,
cheap Wal-Mart-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your
computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools
with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows?
If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom.
This already happens overseas. In Belgium, for
example, the government funds education—at any school—but if the school
can't attract students, it goes out of business. Belgian school principal
Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents. "If we don't
offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school."
She constantly improves the teaching, "You can't afford ten teachers out of
160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come
to you again."
"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard
economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent
would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped
in the U.S."
Last week, Florida's Supreme Court shut down
"opportunity scholarships," Florida's small attempt at competition. Public
money can't be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state
constitution commands the funding only of "uniform, . . . high-quality"
schools. But government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and
without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will
get the monopoly to serve its customers well.
A Gallup Poll survey shows 76 percent of
Americans are either completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids'
public school, but that's only because they don't know what their kids are
missing. Without competition, unlike Belgian parents, they don't know what
their kids might have had.
John Stossel is an ABC News correspondent
and co-anchor of 20/20. His special Stupid in America airs Friday, January
13, at 10 pm. |
