My End of the Bargain

Abstract

A large literature on teacher collective bargaining describes the potential influence of the provisions in collectively bargained teacher union contracts on teachers and student achievement, but little is known about what influences the provisions that end up in these contracts. Using a unique data set made up of every active teacher collective bargaining agreement in Washington State, the authors estimate spatial lag models to explore the relationship between the restrictiveness of a bargained contract in one district and the restrictiveness of contracts in nearby districts. Employing various measures of geographic and institutional proximity, they find that spatial relationships play a major role in determining bargaining outcomes. These spatial relationships, however, are actually driven by two “institutional bargaining structures”: education service districts (ESDs), which support school districts, and UniServ councils, which determine who is bargaining on behalf of local teachers’ unions. This finding suggests that the influence of geographic distance found in previous studies of teacher wages may simply reflect the influence of these bargaining structures.