Collective bargaining and the determinants of teachers’ salaries

Teacher Salaries and Teacher Unions: A Spatial Econometric Approach

“…Similarly, Delaney (1985) finds that collective bargaining increases the salary differential between experienced teachers and inexperienced teachers. Zwerling and Thomason (1995) and Lentz (1998) also find that while unions have a positive and significant effect on the salaries of teachers earning the highest salary in a district, unions have a small (though still positive) and statistically insignificant effect on the lowest salary in a district. Babcock and Engberg (1999) and Ballou and Podgursky (2002) also suggest that the average levels of teaching experience and education in a district affect the returns to experience and education as well.…”

“…Districts that have dismissed relatively large numbers of teachers recently are expected to have a lower need for teachers and pay less competitive salaries. Districts that have experienced increased enrollments over the previous five years are expected to have a high demand for teachers and be willing to pay higher relative salaries (Zwerling and Thomason 1995). Similarly, larger districts are expected to pay higher salaries, and the log of district enrollment is expected to have a positive coefficient (Walden and Newmark 1995).…”

“…This shifting in the salary structure may even result in less experienced teachers having lower salaries than would be the case in the absence of union negotiations. Chambers (1977), Delaney (1985) and Zwerling and Thomason (1995) suggest that teachers salaries in a district are positively affected by union activity in nearby districts. In fact, all three studies suggest that the union spillover effect on wages is larger than the direct effect on wages of union activity in the district.…”

“…Still, at least a few studies find union effects as large as 20 percent of wages (e.g. Baugh and Stone 1982;Zwerling and Thomason 1995).…”

“…Following Zwerling and Thomason (1995) I also explore measuring union activity by the percentage of teachers in a state who are members of a teacher union. Tables 6 and 7 present the results of re-estimating the equations in Tables 2 and 3 The spatial lag and spatial error results in Tables 6 and 7 measuring union activity by the state membership share are very similar to the corresponding estimates in Tables 4 and 5.…”