PHILADELPHIA – Philadelphia’s teacher union contract doesn’t expire until this summer, but school district officials and union leaders are beginning talks on a new labor pact.

And judging from the district’s opening offer, these negotiations will be extremely bitter.

District officials are asking Philadelphia Federation of Teachers members “to take pay cuts as high as 13 percent, work a day that is an hour longer, and then get no raises until 2017,” reports The Notebook, based on documents circulated by the teachers union.

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School leaders also want employees “to start contributing to their benefit costs” and to do without the “union-run Health & Welfare Fund that provides dental, prescription and optical coverage,” The Notebook reports.

There’s more.

The district wants to “stop paying ‘step’ raises – which are automatic based on length of service – and (to) also eliminate the practice of paying for more advanced degrees, starting with a master’s,” the website reports.

Officials also want to “eliminate seniority in teacher assignments” and “voluntary transfers, in which teachers can bid for vacancies elsewhere.”  Instead, principals would be allowed to make hiring decisions without union interference.

The district also wants to empower the superintendent to set the parameters for teacher layoffs, instead of allowing the union to control the process, according to the union-provided documents.

If school officials really are taking a strong hand with the union – as the union claims – it’s because the district’s financial realities have left them with no choice.

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“The district is operating with a five-year financial plan that calls for cutting its salary costs by 16 percent in the coming year in order to make ends meet,” reports The Notebook. “This year, it had to borrow $300 million just to stay afloat.”

The district’s projected budget deficit could exceed a billion dollars by 2017.

District leaders aren’t commenting on contract negotiations, but they are acknowledging the need for a serious course correction. The only alternative is financial ruin.

“It’s a really, really difficult challenge to weather this crisis and at the same time create the kind of conditions (we) want for teaching and teachers within Philadelphia,” Paul Kihn, deputy superintendent, tells The Notebook.

The givebacks being requested of the union might seem extreme, but they are long overdue. Last year, EAGnews exposed the extraordinary waste that’s contained within the PFT’s current labor contract.

Of the many revelations in our report, this may be the most striking: During the 2010-11 school year, “the Philadelphia district paid out $165 million in health insurance premiums for employees covered by the teachers union contract. Employees contributed a combined total of $270,550, less than one percent of the cost.”

Obviously, that’s not sustainable. And as one economist has famously noted, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

It appears the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has sucked the district’s coffers dry.

As The Notebook observed, the district’s demands are “clearly an opening salvo in what promises to be bitter negotiations.”