Teacher Walkout on Hold During Negotiations

A massive walkout by Los Angeles Unified School District teachers that union officials threatened for this week has been put on hold while negotiations over a salary increase continue.

Representatives of the Los Angeles school district and United Teachers of Los Angeles are scheduled to meet daily through Thursday to try to resolve their differences. A state-appointed mediator is monitoring the negotiations.

Union President Wayne Johnson said last Wednesday that teachers would stage a one-day boycott of classes sometime this week if a satisfactory agreement with the district was not reached.

On Monday, however, union spokeswoman Catherine M. Carey said that union officials decided not to sanction any form of job action while the talks are continuing.

“There is no sense in disrupting the system ahead of the game,” she said.

The district’s 32,000 teachers are working under a three-year contract that expires in 1988 but which allows renegotiation each year of certain items such as salary increases.

The central issue in the current dispute is pay: The union wants a 14% raise, while the district has offered 7%. Whatever amount is eventually settled on will be paid retroactively to the beginning of the school year. Union officials say they also are seeking smaller classes and changes in the district’s bilingual education program.

Both sides began negotiating in June, 1986, but an impasse was declared in December, opening the way for the state mediator. District and union negotiators began meeting with the mediator Friday, two days after several thousand teachers participated in a protest rally at the district’s downtown headquarters.