Teachers’ Unions, Compensation, and Tenure

Abstract

In this paper I show that school districts in which teachers negotiate via collective bargaining have greater returns to experience and grant tenure earlier than districts without collective bargaining. Districts that are unionized, either with or without legal collective bargaining protections, have higher returns to degrees and higher starting salaries than districts without a union. Unionization is not strongly correlated with the existence of output‐based pay for performance but is correlated with the use of output‐based measures in tenure decisions. Unionization is positively correlated with the number of junior teachers dismissed for poor performance but not strongly correlated with the number of senior teachers dismissed for poor performance.

The Myth of Unions’ Overprotection of Bad Teachers: Evidence from the District–Teacher Matched Data on Teacher Turnover

“…Only one study of which I am aware directly examined the relationships between teachers’ unions and teacher dismissal due to poor performance using nationally representative data. West (2015) reported positive correlation between unionization and junior teachers’ dismissal, using pooled cross‐sectional data covering the 2003–2004 and 2007–2008 school years. However, the author did not investigate the link between unions and teacher dismissal in depth, as it was not the main goal of the study.…”

The Effects of Teachers’ Unions on the Gender Pay Gap among U.S. Public School Teachers

“…Attrition is a predominant problem among entry‐level teachers (Bobbitt et al, 1994; Boe et al 1997; Grissmer and Kirby 1987). West (2015), based on the 2003–2004 and 2007–2008 SASS datasets, found that unionized districts have higher starting salaries and higher returns to education than non‐union districts. The attrition rates of novice teachers, therefore, are likely to be lower in districts with strong unions, which is confirmed in Han (2020).…”

“…Freeman et al (2016) showed that the decline of unionization contributed to growing income inequality and a shrinking middle class in the United States. West (2015) found that districts covered by collective bargaining, compared to nonunion districts, are less likely to have a pay‐for‐performance system, potentially resulting in compressional effects on the wage distribution among teachers in highly unionized districts.…”

The Long-Run Effects of Teacher Collective Bargaining

“…The majority of research on teachers' unions focuses on resource allocation effects. Collective bargaining can influence several dimensions of school resource allocation decisions: teachers typically negotiate over wage schedules, hiring and firing policies, health care and retirement benefits, work rules detailing the hours they are required to be at work and to teach, class assignments, class sizes, and non-teaching duties (West 2015, Moe 2009, Strunk 2012. Research examining the effect of teacher collective bargaining on district resources has found mixed results, although data constrains have only allowed an examination of a small subset of education inputs.…”