Bargaining Laws as a Cause and Consequence of the Growth of Teacher Unionism

Abstract

This study analyzes state-level data for 1959-78 to (letermifle whether the rapid growth of teacher unionism during those years was primarily a result or a cause of the public sector bargaining laws adopted during the same period. The author finds, contrary to the view of some scholars, that the enactment of laws requiring public sector employers to bargain with majority representatives of their employees was the single most important cause of the growth in the proportion of teachers covered by union contracts. Although the growth in teacher unionism in turn encouraged the adoption of some new or stronger bargaining laws, this effect was relatively weak. More important predictors of new bargaining laws included the extent of political patronage in a state and the bargaining laws adopted by neighboring states. IN THE past 30 years, millions of publicemployees have either joined unions or forced the transformation of existing public employee associations into unions, and many states have enacted legislation extending the union rights of public employees. Neither of these important developments, however, was anticipated by most industrial relations scholars, and neither has been fully explained, even retrospectively. To assist the search for such an explanation, this study examines the growth of collective bargaining by public school teachers and the enactment of teacher bargaining laws.' Its central focus is what Burton called "the most tantalizing question about the growth of public sector bargaining," namely, how important were changes in bargaining laws as a cause of the growth of bargaining?2 Two conflicting answers have been offered to that question. On the one hand, many teacher union leaders and school board representatives have claimed that bargaining laws were very important. Most of the seventy practitioners interviewed for 'Restricting the focus to a homogeneous group such as teachers effectively holds many variables constant.i'John F. Burton, Jr., "The Extent of Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector," in Benjamin Aaron, Joseph Grodin, and James L. Sterh, eds., Public-Sector Bargaining

Bargaining Laws and Unionization in the Local Public Sector

“…The process of formulating and adopting bargaining legislation requires large expenditures of political resources by all parties (see Saltzman 1988 for case studies to this effect). Enactment of a bargaining law also implies a commitment of future expenditures for monitoring and enforcing compliance with the law.…”

“…States experience significant growth in collective bargaining immediately following the passage of a DTB law (Saltzman 1988). This growth may reflect latent demand for unionization, which could also have been responsible for the adoption of a DTB law (Burton and Thomason 1988: 17-27).…”

“…These studies merely document higher unionization in states with strong laws (for example, Moore 1977;Dalton 1982). Recent longitudinal studies (Saltzman 1985(Saltzman , 1988Ichniowski 1988) reveal that dramatic growth in collective bargaining among teachers and police undeniably follows the enactment of strong bargaining laws. Nevertheless, the causality of the link between the laws and bargaining growth remains controversial.'…”

“…Saltzman (1985 and and Ichniowski (1988) examined periods in which bargaining laws changed. In contrast, this paper examines the 1977-82 period when bar-2 Under this interpretation, strong laws are necessary to release this demand, but they are not responsible for creating it.…”

Today's Associations, Tomorrow's Unions

“…First, employees are more likely to form bargaining unions in states with laws that establish public employee bargaining rights (Saltzman 1985(Saltzman , 1988Ichniowski 1988;Zax and Ichniowski, forthcoming). This study measures the bargaining law for each local government service in each state with six mutually exclusive dummy variables: duty-to-bargain with strikes permitted; duty-to-bargain with compulsory interest arbitration; duty-to-bargain with neither arbitration nor strikes; bargaining permitted; no law; and bargaining prohibited (Valletta and Freeman 1988).…”