By LESTER CHANG
With contract talks stalled, Fremont Union High School teachers Gary Post, Laurie Turner and Christine Bakken face the biggest threat to their careers: a strike.
Gearing up for that possibility, they and some of the 400 teachers in the Fremont Education Association are cutting back on expenses.
Some buy less, don't eat out as much and fret about not being able to meet mortgage payments.
"Going on a strike is on the minds of everyone," said Turner, a member of the association's six-person negotiating team. Teachers may strike because the district has not submitted any counterproposals to 11 the FEA has submitted since January, when negotiations started.
The current contract expires in August.
Bakken, a social-studies teacher at Homestead High School for two years, said a strike could damage her career.
Bakken, 26, is one year from tenure. If she goes on strike, the district might let her go and not rehire her. If she doesn't walk the picket line, she could end up making enemies of other teachers who would go on strike.
She said, however, that she favors a pay hike and improved medical and health benefits.
She said she and other teachers work as hard as "any other professionals" and deserve a raise. Her salary of a little more than $30,000 a year doesn't allow Bakken to keep in step with the cost of living, she said.
"I am already cutting back," she said. "I don't buy new clothes. I don't go on vacations. I don't eat out as often as I would like to." Her $830-a-month rent for an apartment in San Jose adds to her expenses, she said.
Bakken earned a political science degree at UCLA in the 1980s. She took classes at San Francisco State University for her teaching credential.
She hopes to make teaching her life's work and wants to settle in one district, although a strike may change all of that.
"I feel I am good at what I do. I give it all to my students," she said. "But if we go on strike, it tells me the district has little respect for teachers. If I don't feel valuable, I would go elsewhere."
Post, 52, who heads a visual-arts program at Monta Vista High School, said a strike would deal a financial blow from which he and his wife would have difficulty recovering.
"I have a four-digit mortgage and live paycheck to paycheck," said Post, a fine-arts teacher for 25 years. "In the case of a strike, I have no savings to fall back on."
A strike would have a double whammy on him, Post said. His wife, Linda Kahn, a dance teacher at the school, would be walking the picket line in the event of a strike. Together, they make about $90,000 a year.
A strike also could throw a wrench into Post's program, which has won awards including one in 1995 from the Otis College of Design in Los Angeles, one of the top art schools in the country.
"I have invested my life in this program," he said. "A strike would only undermine what I have accomplished here. I don't want a situation that threatens that."
Furthermore, a strike could drive a wedge between teachers who go on strike and those who don't, creating hard feelings that could linger and which may disrupt the smooth running of a school, he said.
"Even the best of friends could become enemies in a strike," he said. "Nothing is sacred. That is why a strike is so nasty. . . so destructive."
A strike would leave many teachers in a financial lurch, he said. They would have to rely on their own resources because there is not a strike fund to help them, he said.
Turner, a biology teacher at Fremont High School, said a strike would put her and her husband, Gene Sobo, a retired teacher and a onetime contract negotiator for the district, in a financial bind.
They would have difficulty paying a monthly mortgage of $1,600, Turner said. "I could absorb it for a day or two, but anything beyond that would be uncomfortable," she said.
She said she and many teachers are ready to go on strike, if necessary. "If it happens, it would be devastating to everyone," she said.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, May 1, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.