Teachers and trade unions: between corporate tradition, professional associations and collective representation

Abstract

This article asks to what extent trade union culture among teaching staff reveals common elements both among teachers and within national contexts. Many elements – the development of school systems, cultural, religious and political distinctions, the differences between teachers’ professional backgrounds, and their views of themselves as professionals or as officials – make it awkward to adopt a common reading of their trade union identities and activities. For this reason, national trajectories remain solidly in place. Following the Second World War, however, mass school attendance, the rise in educational levels and the social opening-up of school systems did profoundly alter the organization and culture of teaching activity. Elements of convergence then became apparent amidst the differences between the specific corporate traditions bringing the previously association-based system closer to general trade unionism: the federal structure and potential membership of a confederation; reliance on collective bargaining and negotiations; strikes; concertation and the use of bilateral instruments to manage and reform school establishments.