Collective Bargaining Negotiations Research Articles

The Effects and Local Implementation of School Finance Reforms on Teacher Salary, Hiring, and Turnover

Knowing how policy-induced salary schedule changes affect teacher recruitment and retention will significantly advance our understanding of how resources matter for K–12 student learning. This study sheds light on this issue by estimating how legislative funding changes in Washington state in 2018–2019—induced by the McCleary court-ordered reform—affected teacher salaries and labor market outcomes. By embedding a simulated instrumental variables approach in a mixed-methods design, we observed that local collective bargaining negotiations directed new state funding allocations to substantially increase certificated base salaries, particularly for senior teachers with 16 years or more of teaching experience. Variability in political power, priorities, and interests of both districts and unions led to greater heterogeneity in teacher salary schedules. Suggestive evidence shows that state average teacher turnover rate was significantly reduced in the first year of reform. The McCleary-induced salary increase particularly reduces mid-career teachers’ (8–15 years of teaching experience) mobility rate and late-career teachers’ (23+ years of teaching experience) leaving rate. The McCleary-induced base salary increase has mostly null effects on teacher hiring in the first 2 years of implementation.

Pandemic memoranda: how school district and teachers' union administrators modified collective bargaining agreements during the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic prompted changes to the terms and conditions of teachers' employment (e.g. working conditions), leading school districts to renegotiate collective bargaining agreements with teachers' unions. However, limited research has examined how these negotiations occur in times of crisis. This study aims to analyze how school district and teachers' union administrators adapted workplace policies to meet staff and student needs during the COVID-19 pandemic by using a panel dataset of Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) negotiated in 187 large US school districts.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used the partial independence item response method to estimate MOU restrictiveness measures that captured the extent to which MOUs limited school administrator autonomy in setting the terms and conditions of teachers' employment. Descriptive analyses and ordinary least squares regression models showed how the scope of collective bargaining negotiations expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how restrictiveness varied across school districts based on district and union characteristics.FindingsResults showed that school district and teachers' union administrators increased restrictions on school administrator autonomy in the spring of 2020, but these restrictions decreased by fall 2021. The level of restrictions agreed upon varied based on the strength of teachers' unions and political partisanship of school districts. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an expansion of collective bargaining negotiations to include previously unconsidered topics such as employee and student health and remote instruction.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to examine the modifications made to collective bargaining agreements during times of crisis by school district and teachers' union administrators. The findings suggest that there were considerable changes to the terms and conditions of teachers' employment during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the strength of teachers' unions and political partisanship were associated with negotiation outcomes.

Sample Letter to Employees About Their Benefits

Written communications to employees can be a powerful tool during a union organizing campaign. The topics can vary greatly. An employer with a track record of excellent benefits and efforts to improve them periodically can have a compelling story to tell, particularly when combined with the realities of union contract negotiations and the results unions may have obtained in contracts elsewhere. Quick research on the success (or failure) of a petitioning union at other companies can result in information that draws a striking contrast to the benefits employees receive on a union‐free basis, and which they risk in the course of collective bargaining negotiations. The following is a sample letter that demonstrates an approach that can be taken in conveying such information to employees. Of course, the facts cited in such a letter should also be accurate, relevant and verifiable.

Rent-Seeking through collective bargaining: Teachers unions and education production☆

We explore how teachers unions affect education production by comparing outcomes between districts allocating new tax revenue amidst collective bargaining negotiations and districts allocating tax revenue well before. Districts facing union pressure increase teacher salaries and benefits, spend down reserves, and experience no student achievement gains. Conversely, districts facing less pressure hire more teachers (instead of increasing compensation) and realize significant student achievement gains. We interpret these results as causal evidence of the negative impact of teacher rent seeking on education production, as the timing of district tax elections relative to collective bargaining appears to be as good as random.

A Negotiated Disadvantage? California Collective Bargaining Agreements and Achievement Gaps

Using panel data from three successive collective bargaining (CBA) negotiation cycles from 277 California school districts in a difference-in-differences framework, I investigate the relationship between changes in CBA restrictiveness and racial and economic achievement gaps over time. I find that achievement gaps in California are smaller where contracts increase in restrictiveness in class size and larger where contracts increase in restrictiveness in teacher evaluation and leave policies over time, though this is not the case for all student subgroups. These effects are primarily concentrated in math, are small in magnitude, and are sometimes delayed in their timing. Altogether, this study provides some evidence that contract changes are associated with the educational opportunities of school districts’ diverse and economically disadvantaged students.

Faculty Salary Inversion, Compression, and Market Salary Gap in California State University Business Schools

Extant literature has examined salary compression and inversion in US academic institutions including arguments that compression constitutes a form of age discrimination. We assess these phenomena via estimated full rank salaries (across nine campuses in the teaching-oriented California State University (CSU) system) based on the notion that in the absence of compression and inversion, forecasted full rank salaries should be comparable across faculty ranks. Our results show that salary compression is present across all sampled Colleges of Business (COB), but not in other academic CSU colleges. In addition, the patterns of compression support the notion that salaries in CSU COBs are becoming more inverted as the gap between market and current salaries increases. Recommendations for policy and collective bargaining negotiations are also offered.

Doctor and healthcare workers strike: are they ethical or morally justifiable: another view.

This review analyzed legal and ethical issues surrounding recent doctor and healthcare worker (HCW) strikes and considered whether HCW strikes are legally and morally justifiable, underlying causes, and impact of such strikes on healthcare service delivery. Recent reports show that doctor and HCW strikes are an ongoing phenomenon globally, occurring in both developed and developing countries. The main reasons for HCW strikes are failed employer-employee negotiations regarding fair wages and working conditions, policy issues, infrastructural deficiencies in poorer countries, and concerns by HCWs regarding personal security in the workplace. The main impact of HCW strikes is disruption of healthcare service delivery, such as canceled outpatients' appointments, hospital admissions, and elective surgeries. There was no clear evidence of increased patients' mortality during strikes, except in isolated cases, where emergency services were also withdrawn during strikes. Doctors and HCWs strikes are lawful deadlock-breaking mechanisms when collective bargaining negotiations have reached an impasse. Doctors' strikes appear to create an ethical conflict with the Hippocratic tradition and obligation to place patients' best interests as the primary moral consideration in medical practice. However, the rise of consumerism in healthcare, and loss of power by doctors, many of whom now work as employees, subject to regulations imposed by different stakeholders, including governments, health-maintenance organizations, and healthcare insurers, has impacted on modern medical practice. Therefore, doctors, like other employees may occasionally resort to strikes to extract concessions from employers. Mortality is rarely increased during HCW strikes, especially where emergency healthcare services are provided.

Strikes in the Canadian Higher Education Sector: The Feasibility of Compulsory Binding Arbitration

The prevalence of labour disruptions in the Canadian education sector requires a comprehensive analysis of the adverse implications of strikes for stakeholders and Canadian society in general. Education is a kind of public good that generates positive externalities and strikes in Canadian universities and colleges engender negative externalities as manifested in the infliction of psychological and financial harms on students who become hostages to the hostility between unions and academic administrators. The overriding interests of students, families, faculty, educational institutions, and the broader community necessitate that impasses in collective bargaining negotiations be resolved without resorting to strike. Therefore, there are compelling, justifiable grounds to consider integrating compulsory binding arbitration in collective bargaining agreements as a mechanism to tackle and resolve impasses in collective bargaining negotiations in the higher education sector.

Peterson, Brady, and Elliot: Analyzing “the Trilogy” in Light of the NFL Commissioner’s Discipline Authority

This research paper analyzes how the cases of NFL players Adrian Peterson, Tom Brady, and Ezekiel Elliot have affected the role of the commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) and the commissioner’s disciplinary authority in the NFL. Although the commissioner is considered a powerful figure, and historically courts have deferred to the commissioner concerning matters of league discipline, this deference is not limitless. The Peterson, Brady, and Elliot cases each helped shape how the role of the commissioner and the commissioner’s disciplinary authority in the NFL is being amplified in light of the language used in the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated by the the NFL and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) in 2011, legal precedent that limits a court’s ability to review an arbitrator’s decision, the law of the shop, and the CBA’s missing due process protections traditionally found in the court room. The findings and implications learned from "the Trilogy" show that players were unable to secure by lawsuit what they failed to achieve through collective bargaining. Although "the Trilogy" illustrates the commissioner’s vast authority, the next round of collective bargaining negotiations are an opportunity for the both the League and the NFLPA to cooperatively revise the player discipline process to curb a consistent stream of high-profile and public challenges of commissioner discipline, possibly encouraging the sides to move away from an adversarial relationship toward a more of a partnership.

Organized labor, audit quality, and internal control

This study investigates whether labor union strength is associated with the quality of audits and internal control. Labor unions have reason to demand high quality audits and strong systems of internal control because they rely on financial information in collective bargaining negotiations. However, organized labor creates incentives for managers to procure lower quality audits and provide weaker internal control in order to hold greater influence over the content of the financial information that unions receive. I provide evidence that union strength is associated with higher audit quality and better internal control. Specifically, I find that union strength is associated with higher audit fees, fewer audit failures, and fewer material weaknesses.

Focus: Wildcat strikes in auto sector of Turkey

6 | International Union Rights | 23/3 FOCUS | TURKEY Wildcat strikes in auto sector of Turkey In last 10 years Turkey’s auto industry grow exponentially just in 2015 Turkey exported 843, 000 cars just to EU which makes to Turkey the biggest car exporter to EU, this number is even more than sum of Japan and South Korea’s car exports to EU. Country hosts production plants for almost all the multinational auto producers including Ford, FIAT, Toyota, Renault, Hyundai, Mercedes, MAN, Honda etc. Between 2009-2014, employment in auto assembly in Turkey grew 350 percent. Europe remains the largest market, despite declining demand due to the crisis. FIAT, which has been closing units in Italy, has just announced that they will export 175,000 FIAT Doblo cars from Turkey to the US between now and 2021. The Turkish Government has a policy to attract foreign investment by keeping labour cheap by imposing major restrictions on right to organise. For some time now, Erdoğan, Turkey’s President (and former Prime Minister), has been promoting the dream of turning Turkey into the ‘China of Europe’. In April 2015, when Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan met with foreign investors in London he declared with pride that ‘labour costs in Turkey are even lower than in China’. The minimum wage in Turkey is around 400 Euros per month; many workers earn only the minimum, even the skilled ones, and Turkey has the highest death rate from workplace accidents in Europe, and ranks third in the world. 1700 workers died in workplace accidents in 2015 alone. The vast majority of the Turkish workforce is unorganised; only around 5 percent of workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. This is the lowest unionisation rate among the OECD countries. And the majority of the unionised workers are members of unions hat were not chosen by the workers but got ‘assigned’ to them. The current system creates discontent among the workers. From time to time, this discontent turns into spontaneous uprisings which are mostly supressed by police violence and dismissals. The protests at Renault During the collective bargaining negotiations of 2012 1500 Renault workers on one shift stopped production and did not leave the factory. In order to prevent these workers from meeting up with other workers on the next shift, Renault management cancelled that shift. The next day, they dismissed 35 workers in order to put a stop to these workplace actions. After the signature of collective bargaining agreement which covers the three year term (20142017 ) which covers majority of the workers in auto industry in Turkey, there was a general discontent among the workers. The main opposition to the agreement was because of its duration, until that time, all the collective bargaining agreements signed in the metal industry were covering two years. Turkey has high inflation rates and a rather unstable macroeconomic situation. For a majority of the workers, three years is too long a time to predict economic developments. In every previous collective bargaining agreement, it was possible to get some adjustment beside the rate of inflation. A three-year agreement would mean that for every two agreements, workers would lose one agreement, meaning a loss of some extra adjustment in their salaries. The second biggest discontent was among the low-waged, younger workers who represent around 60-70 percent of the workforce in these companies. In some cases, a worker who started after 2005 might be paid around half the wage of a worker who started before the 2000s. This situation creates huge tension among the younger workers. Their wages are so low they cannot see a future for themselves. Since they cannot live on these wages it does not matter too much if they lose their jobs. They have nothing to fear and nothing to lose. This makes them the most militant section of the class. For this new generation of workers an agreement without any plans to narrow this wage gap, is unacceptable. At the end of April 2015, workers of Renault factory in Bursa started to demonstrate at the beginning and end of each shift. Soon after, these demonstrations spread to other automobile factories and their suppliers in...

The librarianship portfolio

Purpose – This paper aims to describe the development of a Librarianship Portfolio for the purposes of permanent status evaluation and rank promotion at a small private university with a unionized faculty. Design/methodology/approach – The Librarianship Portfolio was conceived and based on teaching portfolios and evaluative documents at other colleges and universities and is also a direct result of collective bargaining negotiations. Findings – Interest in outcomes assessment and evaluation is increasing in the educational institutions where academic librarians work. One assessment strategy that has been developed for teaching faculty is the professional teaching portfolio. Librarians have not widely adopted this type of documentation for the purposes of tenure evaluation or work performance assessment. Practical implications – Portfolios such as this one can serve as a basis for collecting documentation and highlighting excellence in job performance at other academic libraries, whether or not librarians are faculty or belong to a union. Originality/value – The Librarianship Portfolio as described here is a unique creation in job performance evaluation.

Spartengewerkschaften, Statuskonflikte und Gemeinwohl: Gesetzlicher Ordnungsrahmen statt Laissez-faire

Abstract In December 2014, the German Federal Government adopted a draft law on the exclusive applicability of collective agreements - the so-called Tarifeinheitsgesetz. Critics see this as an unacceptable interference to the freedom of association. They point out, that despite multi-unionism you can neither observe a substantial increase in new trade unions being set up nor an increase in labor disputes. Proponents of the legal regulation argue that the industrial peace obligation would be jeopardized by competing unions. Craft unions negotiated twice as intense as industrial unions. In industries with union competition, risk of conflicts would accumulate. In addition, the public interest would be harmed if unions battled out their rivalries during collective bargaining negotiations. The proposed law tackled these problems by providing stronger incentives for cooperation between competing unions.

Do the Interests of Labor Union and Public Pension Fund Activists Align with Other Shareholders? Evidence from the Market for Directors

The motivation behind labor union and public pension fund activism is widely debated. We posit that activism motivated by private benefits primarily arises when there is a firm-specific conflict of interest, such as when a union activist also represents workers in collective bargaining negotiations. We provide evidence that the labor market for directorships mitigates the negative effect of “special interest” activism on other shareholders. Specifically, directors who cater to self-serving requests are punished with a loss in directorships and damage to their reputation as corporate monitors. Moreover, we provide insight into when boards are most vulnerable to “special interest” pressure.

Hold That Line

In February 1979, the New Orleans Police Department was engaged in two work stoppages that were orchestrated by the Police Association of New Orleans (PANO). During this period, PANO was affiliated with the International Teamsters Union, which allegedly had ties to organized crime. This study addresses the causes of the police strikes, the right of public safety personnel to strike, and how the “gangster” image of the Teamsters adversely affected the labor negotiations. The authors conducted personal, semistructured interviews of individuals who participated in the labor talks, as well as an extensive review of the literature. According to respondents, the primary causes of the strike were low wages and the refusal of city officials to recognize the police union and enter into meaningful collective bargaining negotiations.

‘PLAYER SHARES OF REVENUE’, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AND THE AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE: A COMMENT ON DABSCHECK

Braham Dabscheck's recent article ‘Player Shares of Revenue in Australia and Overseas Professional Team Sports’ argues the financial position of Australian Football League (AFL) players has gradually weakened relative to growth in AFL revenue and wages growth in the Australian economy at large. This comment expands consideration of these issues and the ‘player revenue share’ in the context of AFL collective bargaining. The centrality of ‘competitive balance’ and fairness' to legal and economic dimensions of collective bargaining negotiations is explained. Analysis of long-term data suggests AFL player payment growth across the span of the last three collective bargaining agreements between the AFL and the AFL Players’ Association has been stronger than Dabscheck may suggest.

Bargaining When the Future of an Industry Is at Stake: Lessons from UAW-Ford Collective Bargaining Negotiations

The 2007 American automobile industry labor negotiations involved fundamental challenges for labor and management, including a historic shift of responsibility in the management of retiree health care, a need for new approaches to core employment security issues, identification of ways to create new unionized jobs in the industry, and a joint commitment to the competitive viability of U.S. operations. Less visible, but no less important in the United Auto Workers–Ford case, has been unprecedented levels of information sharing and unique innovations in the bargaining process designed to enable problem solving even when tough issues were on the table. More than 300 people were directly involved in the negotiations, serving at the main table and on twenty-four subcommittees. This case study covers the context for the negotiations, key events leading up to the bargaining, a unique process of “bargaining over how to bargain,” the actual negotiation process, and the results achieved. Implications are generalizable to the broader concept of pattern bargaining and many other types of negotiations when transformation is on the table.

Labor Contract Duration, Indexation, and Wage Adjustment: Interdependence and Inflation Propagation Mechanisms

We study simultaneously the three main outcomes of collective bargaining negotiations, namely indexation, non-indexed wage adjustment, and contract duration. The wage adjustment equation accommodates varying degrees of wage indexation in the current and previous contracts. The elasticity of indexation, a latent variable, deals with both the incidence and intensity of wage indexation and links consistently with the wage equation. Duration, which may change between contracts, is shown to depend on indexed and non-indexed wage adjustment, obviating the need for expected inflation in the empirical duration equations of earlier work. Complex intra- and inter-contract inflation propagation mechanisms involve expected inflation and inflation uncertainty in an essential way. The model accounts for the secular doubling of contract duration and dramatic decrease in indexation and non-contingent wage adjustment.

Employment Law, Negotiation, and the Business Environment: A Cooperative Collective Bargaining Negotiation of the National Hockey League Lockout of 2004

Teaching courses revolving around business law and ethics is a daunting challenge. Students need real-world examples to make the difficult topics and concepts come to life. This article explores legal negotiation and negotiation ethics in the context of the National Hockey League Lockout of 2004-2005. The article describes the basics of collective bargaining and negotiation strategy and then offers a group exercise to hammer out a CBA. Student teams represent the NHL Owners and NHL Player's Union respectively and enter into a series of three timed negotiations followed by a large group debrief. The exercise described in this article won the Charles M. Hewitt Master Teacher Competition at the 2006 Academy of Legal Studies in Business International Conference.

Federal Collective Bargaining after Electrolux

This paper discusses the impact of the High Court of Australia's Electrolux decision, which ruled that protected strike action could not be taken where parties to collective bargaining negotiations were seeking to include matters that did not pertain to the employment relationship (in this case, non-union bargaining fees). The paper argues against the Court's narrow, literal interpretation of the Workplace Relations Act, on the basis that the decision will have an adverse effect on employees and the power ratios involved in the collective bargaining process. The paper contains an overview of the role of strike action in collective bargaining, and comments on the more recent Workchoices reforms.