The Changing Idea of a Teachers' Union

Abstract

It is conventional wisdom among those who study collective bargaining and unionism that labor practices are diverse. From the early studies of private sector unionism to recent studies in education, researchers have found that the character of labor-management interactions, the content of contracts, and the effects of unionism vary widely. To be sure, there are discernible patterns that emerge across sites, but particular practices are so influenced by personalities, history, local values, customs, and financial exigencies, that the outcomes are as different as they are similar. I have argued that this is good news to those who work in and worry about schools, because it suggests that the presence of unionism does not predetermine a particular set of outcomes. Actors still are capable of acting in deliberate and meaningful ways. In their new, provocative book, The Changing Idea of a Teachers' Union, Kerchner and Mitchell reject the diversity theory of unionism and contend that educational labor practices do, in fact, follow predictable patterns. Based on questionnaire data gathered in 73 California and Illinois school districts and subsequent ethnographic studies in four districts from each of the two states, the authors advance a generational theory of unionism. Their analysis of local experiences leads them to conclude that teacher unionism can be expected to move through the same series of stages, no matter what the district. First, during the meet-and-confer generation, teachers advance their collective interests, but defer to administrators and school board members when the parties disagree about the district's purposes and priorities. Second, during the good faith bargaining generation, management comes to accept the teachers' right to represent their own interests and to bargain about economic and procedural matters. Attention centers on conflict management as the parties increasingly routinize their practices. Third, during the negotiated policy generation, the parties stop trying to manage around collective bargaining and, instead, begin to shape school district policy through the contract and the union. Based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis of survey and interview data, the authors conclude that intense, ideological conflicts about the appropriate role of the union erupt toward the end of each generation and these ideological conflicts propel labor relations into subsequent generations. The first conflict results when unions are perceived to be relatively unsuccessful in representing their members' interests, and school boards are viewed to be closed to external influence and insufficiently attentive to important labor relations issues. The second conflict emerges when teacher organizations are seen to be successful in tending to the interests of their members but irresponsible in meeting the needs