Simi Teachers Threaten Strike Amid Impasse in Negotiations : Education: Union plans to file labor charges against the district, allowing a vote on a walkout. Superintendent still hopes for settlement.

SIMI VALLEY — After working without a contract for more than a year, teachers here are raising the stakes in stalled negotiations and threatening to strike.

Union representatives say they plan to file half a dozen unfair labor charges against the Simi Valley Unified School District this week, clearing the way for teachers to walk off their jobs.

And a strike coordinator from the California Teachers Assn. will be meeting with the union local today, preparing teachers and representatives for the next step in the process.

“If it’s going to take a strike to get a settlement, we’re not going to shy away from it,” union Executive Director Hal Vick said. Negotiations broke down in the spring, and a state mediator has been working with both sides to resolve the impasse.

Meanwhile, many teachers have stopped volunteering for extra activities outside their normal working hours, and some have taken to the streets with picket signs before and after school.

School board President Diane Collins called the negotiations “dead in the water,” but said she hopes it won’t come to a strike. “The people that really are harmed by a strike are not the district,” Collins said. “They are the children.”

Union members must follow a certain process under labor laws before declaring a strike. First, the state mediator must recommend that a fact-finding panel take over negotiations, which has not yet happened.

Then the panel must come back with recommendations, a process that could take several weeks. Both sides would have 10 days to discuss the recommendations before the teachers may hold what is called an economic strike.

But Simi union representatives say they plan to circumvent the process by filing unfair labor charges with the state Public Employee Relations Board.

Once those charges are filed, the union can withdraw from the mediation process, and teachers may go ahead with an unfair-labor-practice strike.

Although legally different, such a strike has the same effect for students as an economic strike: teachers walking off the job.

“We feel the district hasn’t been fair in their dealings with us,” said Vick, who hopes next week’s actions will facilitate a settlement.

But Collins said such accusations are untrue.

“I’m not sure why they would go out and say things like that,” Collins said. “We haven’t done anything unfair, and we’re following the process.”

Supt. Mary Beth Wolford said she is hopeful a settlement will be reached.

“A strike would be very harmful to students,” Wolford said. “I hope we could get this resolved and avert a strike. A strike would put everyone in a very difficult position--not just us, but all of the district’s employees, including the teachers.”

Wolford said the district’s latest proposal would cost the district almost $7 million in raises alone.

The proposed three-year contract includes a 2% raise retroactive to July, a 2% raise in 1996-97, a chance to renegotiate the following year and an early-retirement plan. The average salary of a teacher in the district is about $42,000.

The latest plan costs more than a previous district proposal that provided raises starting this January, but teachers say they are holding out for a 2.7% raise this year, the same amount as the cost-of-living increase the district received from the state this year.

Union representatives also are pushing for a clause that would require all teachers, not just those in the union, to pay dues.

Wolford said the district does not have the money to provide such increases.

The cost-of-living money already is included in the budget to pay for other expenses, Wolford said. And she said many of the reserves, which teachers said could be used for salaries, have restrictions on how they can be spent.

Board member Debbie Sandland said she supports the district’s proposal but has mixed feelings about the district’s financial plan.

Simi Valley teachers say they have not received a cost-of-living raise for four years.

The rocky negotiations and plans for a strike in the district come as the Conejo Valley Unified School District is considering 4.2% raises for teachers this year. The Conejo teachers union is set to vote today and Tuesday on the plan. The school board will vote on the contract after holding public hearings.