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CPS Says Contract Offer Staves Off Layoffs, But Teachers Say It Cuts Pay

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Take it, or take teacher layoffs. That's seems to be the message CPS is sending to teachers with its latest proposal.

It's a four year contract that would avoid massive midyear teacher layoffs, but teachers say it also means less money in their pockets. CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker takes a closer look at the new plan.

Just hours after union leaders announced that 88 percent of teachers voted in favor of a strike, they say CPS proposed a new four-year contract.

A webinar Tuesday with principals CEO Forest Claypool and education officer Janice Jackson revealed some details, including a phase-out of the pension pick-up.

Pension pick-up? Translation: the seven percent that the board contributes to teachers' pension would stop.

"This is pay cut," said Chicago Teachers Union vice president Jesse Sharkey. "If you're freezing people pay and you're reducing a contribution to pension… everyone's paycheck goes down seven percent."

But here's the upside, as outlined by Claypool.

"As part of that deal, a gradual series of pay increases," he said.

Claypool won't reveal when the pay increases would take place, but Sharkey says it would be later rather than sooner.

"If I cut your pay by seven percent this year and three years later I give you back some of that, you actually wind up four years later behind where you are now."

Still, Claypool stresses the bottom line: if the union accepts the proposal it avoids thousands of teacher layoffs in February.

"Claypool is coming to teachers and saying either take layoffs or take deep cuts," Sharkey said. "We prefer to be hit with neither."

Even if teachers accept the proposal and accept the contract, Claypool admits if lawmakers don't address the funding problem, teachers could still face more cuts in the future.

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