Teachers’ Unions on the Defensive?: How Recent Collective Bargaining Laws Reformed the Rights of Teachers

Abstract

Between 2011 and 2013 lawmakers in every state proposed, and often enacted, laws intended to impact codified state provisions related to teachers and teachers’ unions (author calculation). These new laws either worked against union interests (e.g., by prohibiting collective bargaining) or they aligned with union positions (e.g. by providing enhanced compensation benefits to teachers). In recent years scholars have paid more attention to the impact of teachers’ unions and collective bargaining. Few researchers have made an effort to understand state-level attempts to legislatively modify traditional union-protected rights. This paper is the first to explore these changes in detail. Using a self-collected dataset, I track the proposal and enactment of legislation related to teachers’ unions and their collective bargaining agreements in state legislatures between 2011 and 2013. I find that while large-scale attacks on public sector bargaining rights dwindled after 2011, smaller, more focused legislative proposals concerning the rights of teachers continued. Lawmakers succeeded in removing several job protections for teachers in ways that left both teachers and unions more vulnerable to the actions of school and district administrators. However, contrary to the popular media narrative, teachers actually made legislative gains, particularly in the area of compensation and benefits following 2011.