Teachers’ unions and compensation: The impact of collective bargaining on salary schedules and performance pay schemes

This study examines the impact that collective bargaining has on multiple dimensions of teacher compensation, including average and starting salaries, early and late returns to experience, returns to graduate degrees, and the incidence of different pay for performance schemes. Using data from the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) and a more recent data set, the Teacher Rules, Roles and Rights (TR3), we find that collective bargaining has a significant impact on all aspects of current, qualification-specific salary schedules. Further, we find some evidence that bargaining impacts the design of performance pay plans. Specifically, unions tend to encourage teacher bonuses that are based on additional qualifications or duties, but discourage bonuses that directly reward improved student test scores.     

Faculty collective bargaining in Canada: Background,development and impact

Conclusion The Kemerer-Baldridge study acknowledges that in the U.S. faculty unions have negotiated procedural protection in tenure and promotions, less arbitrariness in administrative decisions, more job security, and greater economic security in general. The authors also point out that these negotiated advantages accrue to non-unit faculty as well. In my view those conclusions apply with equal force in Canada.As noted in the introduction to this section, we still lack sufficient data to do more than generalize from impressionistic accounts. Nevertheless I feel safe in saying that, in a very short period of time, collective bargaining has enhanced true professionalism and real collegiality on Canadian campuses by moving Canadian academics from their knees (suitable no doubt for supplication) to their feet; by giving them legally enforceable job security without which the notion of academic freedom had too hollow a ring; by giving them a real and not a mythical voice in university governance; and by doing all of this and more without creating excessive bureaucracies, industrial models, unconscionable power blocks, or strangulation by legalistic formality. In the course of doing so, Canadian faculty engaged in collective bargaining have developed innovative approaches in a number of key areas, approaches which may yet have significant impact in both public and private sector bargaining. Certainly, faculty collective bargaining has gone a long way in developing a model for professional unionism in Canada.     

Universities and collective bargaining

The author disagrees with Cameron's suggestion that democratization and decentralization were a mistake. As chief lobbyist of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, he argues for collective bargaining. He counters Cameron's support of the continuation of mandatory retirement with reference to the U.S. experience and points to the Supreme Court's defence of tenure.     

The role of professionalization in a collective bargaining election

This study examined a university's faculty voting in a collective bargaining election. Not only were the votes for and against bargaining collected, but also relevant demographic data were includedon each ballot. These data permit analysis of which specific faculty members at a comprehensive university tend to favor or oppose faculty bargaining. The variable of professionalization is identified as being important to the faculty members' decision. The findings have ramifications for faculties, governing boards, and governmental labor-relations agencies in considering how bargaining units should be composed and imposed.     

Why collective bargaining in higher education

Fordham University faculty members rejected collective bargaining in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) supervised election in the spring of 1975. The present study was conducted prior to the election. Relationships between faculty members' attitudes toward collective action and their perceptions of the quality of the organizational characteristics of the University were examined.The study was based on modern organization theory which contends that the needs of organizational participants must be satisfied and integrated with organizational goals to maximize output and to minimize the potential for dysfunctional behavior of the participants.The findings supported theory. Faculty members were less supportive of collective action when they perceived administrator-faculty and intrafaculty relationships, motivation processes, and communication processes to be at levels conducive to meeting their needs.     

A logical analysis of faculty collective bargaining

This paper proposes a model for the verbal theory of collective bargaining. Four variables are used: trust, salary, inclination for collective bargaining, and general professional market. Postulates from the model and strategies for estimating its parameters are also discussed.     

Conditions influencing faculty voting in collective bargaining elections

This research examines the factors that influenced voting behavior in two faculty union defeats at New York University. Faculty members' and librarians' demographic and professional characteristics referred to in previous research on collective bargaining were not good predictors of how they voted in these elections. However, their satisfaction with conditions at NYU, especially satisfaction with participation in governance, was a strong predictor of how they voted. Furthermore, faculty characteristics were found to influence their satisfaction with conditions. This paper also discusses the importance of the swing votes cast in a run-off election by the members of a previously defeated third party and the influence on the election outcomes of an independent group of faculty members opposed to unionization.     

The organizational impact of university labor unions

The current review presents both postulated and empirically tested consequences of university unionization and labor strikes on the North American institution’s administration, faculty, and students. The review explores the impact of collective bargaining on employee working conditions including job security, academic freedom, university governance, and due process. More importantly, this review examines the much neglected issue of organizational work relationships in a unionized academic environment. The relationships discussed include those between faculty members, between the faculty and administration, between the faculty and the university as an institution, and between the faculty and their union. The threat of unionization and labor strikes to the professor–student or mentor–mentee relationship has been a central concern of those opposed to graduate student unions, and this issue is also addressed here. The text concludes with the identification of potential areas for future research.     

How and why the CAUT became involved in collective bargaining

Despite a persistent belief to the contrary, most Canadian universities prior to the 1960s did not operate collegially. They were run autocratically. Collective bargaining arose as a means of ensuring true collegiality through negotiations between equals, legally entrenching due process and academic freedom, and providing a clearer and stronger mechanism for dealing with salaries and benefits. This was a revolution from below in the governance of universities. Although the sixties are widely regarded as the age of student revolt, in Canada it was the faculty, not the students, who secured a dramatic change in the power structure of the university through collective bargaining.     

幼儿园教师集体备课问题及对策

随着"学前教育三年行动计划"的实施,公众对如何享有"有质量的学前教育"的需求日趋强烈,而幼儿园普遍采用的教师集体备课制度在改进教育质量上备受质疑。基于C市W区幼儿园教师集体备课现状的调研,研究者发现该区幼师集体备课存在目标模糊、忽视差异、缺乏引领、观念陈旧、交流意识不强和管理制度不健全等突出问题。针对此现状,借鉴相关理论知识,对集体备课活动进行诊断,提出应改善备课队伍结构、凸显教师主体地位、加强教师备课园际合作、发挥文化推动作用和健全集体备课管理制度等相应改进对策。     

Academic penetration in faculty collective bargaining contracts in higher education

The purpose of this research was to analyze faculty collective bargaining contracts at 124 institutions of higher education that had a 10-year history of collective bargaining from 1975 to 1985 to determine if contracts negotiated in 1975 significantly differed from those negotiated in 1985 with regard to 18 selected academic items. Each academic item in both the 1975 and 1985 contracts was coded according to a scaling code with rankings showing the direction of faculty control. The findings revealed that the 1985 contracts contained both an increased number of academic items and an increased level of faculty control over most of those academic items compared with the 1975 contracts.     

Provision for community college faculty development in collective bargaining agreements

While the need for community college faculty development has evolved into a top priority issue over the last decade, collective bargaining has become a significant influence on the programs and policies of two-year campuses in many states. The following study examines the trends of collective negotiations as they affect inservice education, through an examination of collective bargaining agreements. The findings indicate that few colleges declare the purpose of faculty development to be increased teaching effectiveness or link participation in professional growth activities with reward for that participation. Few colleges include faculty on inservice planning bodies. However, facilitating policies for staff development exist in significant numbers of agreements, providing for inservice days, leaves of absence, sabbaticals, tuition reimbursement for formal study, and released time for innovative program development. In all, the trend is presently one of negotiation of provisions in a piecemeal fashion rather than one with the goal of establishing comprehensive professional improvement programs.     

The competency test's impact on teachers' abilities

Employed as screening devices for teacher candidates, basic competency tests are controversial. Test data correlate with the candidates' ethnic group memberships and screen out more minority candidates than others. This is particularly troubling in urban schools, where the proportion of ethnic minority students and ethnic minority teachers may be moving in opposite directions. However, the tests appear to have the intended impact on candidates' abilities. Besides the higher reading, writing, and math scores required to pass the California Basic Educational Skills Test, successful subjects also had significantly higher Scholastic Aptitude Test scores than those who failed. Whether the ability gains outweigh the impact that the tests have on minority representation among teachers is very much at issue, particularly in urban school districts.     

A collective bargaining election: Issues and faculty voting behavior

Following the election of a faculty collective bargaining agent at the 14 Pennsylvania state colleges, the authors administered a survey questionnaire to a 50% sample of the bargaining unit. The objectives of the research were to identify relationships between faculty choice of a bargaining agent and several collective bargaining issues: attitudes about the contending associations, the extent to which internal versus external governance matters influenced voting behavior, attitudes about the scope of negotiations, attitudes about the defined bargaining unit, attitudes about faculty strikes, and demographic faculty characteristics. The authors provide primarily a narrative of the research findings and end with a succinct general summary of their findings. A brief discussion is also presented on the potential impact on elections of voters who fail to vote their conscience.     

Knowledge relations and epistemic infrastructures as mediators of teachers' collective autonomy

This paper examines how teachers' knowledge relations and the profession's epistemic infrastructure shape collective autonomy. Professionals' autonomy derives partially from their responsibility for a specific knowledge base. This responsibility is currently challenged by educational policies and complex knowledge landscapes. Existing research has shown how epistemic policy instruments impact teachers' autonomy. However, less attention has been paid to how professional autonomy is informed by teachers' knowledge relations, and to collective, rather than individual, aspects of teachers' autonomy. Implications include how teachers can define the role of knowledge resources in professional work, and how the profession can navigate epistemic and political landscapes.     

The impact of bargaining and bargaining statutes on the earnings of public school teachers: A comparison in California and Missouri

Among labor economists there is a long-standing interest in the effects of collective bargaining in the public sector. Among industrial relations experts interest exists in the impact that differences in the legal status of public bargaining have on the outcomes of the bargaining process. It is the purpose of this article to shed some light on both questions by estimating the impact of collective bargaining on the earnings of public school teachers in the state of Missouri and then comparing the results with those obtained in the previous study for the state of California. The results reveal the same basic patterns and magnitudes of bargaining effects in the two states despite the differences in the legal status of bargaining.