PROVIDENCE — The East Providence teachers union yesterday asked a Superior Court judge to bar the School Committee from unilaterally cutting salaries and imposing payroll deductions to recoup 20 percent of the cost of health-insurance premiums.

Unlike teachers in many other communities, those in East Providence do not contribute to the cost of health insurance.

The union, the East Providence Education Association, argued that the rollback would violate state labor law.

But the School Committee contended that the most important state law in this case is the one that prohibits the School Department from producing a deficit.

The board’s lawyer, Daniel Kinder, told Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer that it has done everything in its power “to prevent the bleeding of over $100,000 a week that they don’t have.”

When the teachers contract expired, on Oct. 31, the School Department was more than $4 million in debt. Since then, that hole has only grown larger, school officials say.

The contested rollback is expected to save nearly $3 million before the city’s fiscal year ends next Oct. 31.

Pfeiffer told the opposing lawyers that he wanted to hear more before he weighs in, particularly because the union had filed its complaint seeking a temporary injunction only moments before a hearing scheduled for 11 a.m.

At the outset, the judge expressed his irritation with news reports that suggested the complaint had been filed Monday and that the court had not been able to accommodate the parties promptly with a hearing.

Pfeiffer continued the hearing to 2 p.m. today, in part to give himself time to read the union’s complaint. Pfeiffer said he would rule before the rollback would hit teachers’ pocketbooks, on the next payday, Jan. 16.

The judge peppered both sides with questions.

Union lawyer John DeCubellis said the state Labor Relations Board has ruled that the terms and conditions of expired teacher contracts must remain in effect until new ones are in place.

Kinder said he knows of only one, 15-year-old Labor Relations Board decision — one that he maintained does not apply in this case.

It is against the law to extend a labor contract more than three years, Kinder said.

Then Pfeiffer asked Kinder about the “usual practice” when teacher contracts expire.

Kinder said the “usual practice is to try to work within that collective bargaining agreement when you can,” but that is no longer practical, he said.

The School Committee “has bargained in good faith, has gone to mediation, and has done everything to prevent the bleeding of over $100,000 a week that they don’t have,” Kinder said.

The committee last week rejected a nonbinding arbitration award that would have given teachers no salary increase during the current fiscal year and raises of 2 percent and 3 percent in the second and third years of a three-year agreement. Union members have accepted the arbitrator’s award.

DeCubellis said the union sought the court’s intervention as a stop-gap measure.

He said the state Labor Relations Board has primary jurisdiction over the question of the School Committee’s authority to reduce wages but that the labor board does not have any mechanism for short-term relief. A hearing on the matter would not occur until March, he said, and teachers would suffer “irreparable harm” in the meantime.

Kinder disagreed that the main question belongs before the labor board.

“This is all about money. There is no irreparable harm here,” Kinder said.

Pfeiffer asked Kinder about a lawsuit against the city that the School Committee filed last year under provisions of the so-called Caruolo Act, which allows local schools to turn to the courts when they don’t believe they’ve been given enough money to meet their legal and contractual obligations.

The complaint addressed the deficit as it was in the last fiscal year, but the suit has not gone forward.

The School Committee could file another suit, to deal with the running debt in the current budget cycle, but Kinder suggested that was unlikely.

In a brief interview after the hearing, he said that regardless of the outcome of a Caruolo action, the taxpayers would end up having to pay more.

Since the November election, city and school officials have come together to take a harder line against the teachers, while putting the lawsuit on the back burner.

gmacris@projo.com