99 01092

PACE

POLICY ANALYSIS FOR CALIFORNIA EDUCATION

 

Organizing the Other
Half of Teaching

Julia E. Koppich
Management, Analysis & Planning
Berkeley, CA
(former PACE Director)

Charles Taylor Kerchner
The Claremont Graduate School

September 1996

 

This paper was prepared for the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. It is
adapted from United Mind Workers: Representing Teaching in a Knowledge Society, by
Charles Taylor Kerchner, Julia E. Koppich, and Joseph W. Weeres, to be published by Iossey-
Bass Publishers, 1996.

 

Policy Analysis for California Education

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) is a university-
based research center focusing on issues of state education policy
and practice. PACE is located in the Schools of Education at the
University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University and
has an office in Sacramento. PACE is supported by funding from
the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Additional copies of this publication, PP 96-9—1, are available prepaid ($5).
(All sales are final.)
Please make check payable to UC Regents and send to:

PACE
School of Education
3653 Tolman Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1670
(510) 642-7223
FAX (510) 642-9148

Copyright
Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE)
Berkeley, California

September, 1996

\,~v

Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

PREFACE

In 1975 California Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. signed the Rodda Act into
law. Formally known as the Education Employment Relations Act (later
changed to the Public Employment Relations Act), this statute gave the state’s
public school teachers the right to bargain collectively and negotiate with
their employer legally binding contracts governing the terms and conditions

of their employment.

Though the Rodda Act is on California’s books, the law’s provisions are not
unique to this state. Laws in the 37 states that authorize collective bargaining
for teachers are patterned on the federal National Labor Relations Act, and

outgrown of the New Deal and the rise of industrial America.

This paper, which originally was prepared for the National Commission on
Teacher and America’s Future, argues for the transformation of education
labor relations. Specifically, it proposes a set of ideas which can position
teachers, and their unions, as leaders in creating a let Century institution of
education by focusing their efforts on new roles and responsibilities and a

new definition of professionalism.

The authors hope that this paper will inform continuing discussions
throughout California about ways in which to improve the quality of

education for the state’s 5.2 million public school students.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page i

 

 

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

TAB LE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface ............................................................................................................................. i
Organizing the Other Half of Teaching ................................................................... 1
Building a New Institution ....................................................................................... 4
The New Labor Relations Design ............................................................................. 6
Creating a Labor Market for Teachers ...................................................................... 8
Emphasizing Career Security Rather than Job Security .......................... 8
Creating the Modern Hiring Hall ................................................................. 9
Developing a Career Ladder with Teaching at the Top ........................... 12
Implementing Peer Review .......................................................................... 14
Providing Portable Pensions and Benefits ................................................. 17
Additionally Expanding the Portfolio ......................................................... 18
The Logic of the Labor Market ...................................................................... 21
Shifting the Focus of Bargaining .............................................................................. 21
Industrial-Style Bargaining: A Short Course ............................................ 25
The Issue of Scope ............................................................................................ 26
Attempts at Change ......................................................................................... 28
From Centralized Contracts to School-Based Compacts ..................................... 31
The New Central Agreement ........................................................................ 33
Focusing on the School Site: The Educational Compact ........................ 44
New Agreement for a New System ............................................................. 50

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The Need for a New Labor Law ................................... . ..................... 51
Bringing the New System into Being ................. . ....... ................. 57
Sources ........................................................................................................................... 60

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

ORGANIZING THE OTHER HALF OF TEACHING1

There is a story told in union circles—perhaps it is apocryphal—that as
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was preparing to sign the National Labor
Relations Act into law in 1935, he was visited by a delegation of American
captains of industry. The businessmen urged the President not to sign the
NLRA. Providing employees with the right to organize and to bargain
collectively with their employers, asserted the executives, would seriously
jeopardize management‘s ability to conduct business as they saw fit and, in so
doing, would threaten the foundation of industrial America and the

economic stability of the nation.

The President listened to the pleadings of the businessmen and then
informed them that he would sign the bill into law. But he urged the
business leaders not to be concerned. American unions, said the President,

will never be able to organize American workers.

But organize they did. During the 19305 and into the 19405 and 19505,
employees made use of their right to join unions, to bargain collectively with
their employers, and to influence the conditions under which they worked.
Far from sending the American economy into spiraling decline, unionized
workers helped to bring about the most productive and the most secure

economy the world has ever known.

Beginning in earnest in the 1960s, the impulse to organize spread to

American public school teachers. Collective bargaining bills began to appear

 

1This paper was prepared for the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. It
is adapted from United Mind Workers: Representing Teaching in a Knowledge Society, by
Charles Taylor Kerchner, Julia E. Koppich, and Joseph W. Weeres, to be published by Jossey-
Bass Publishers, 1996.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 1

   

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

on legislative agendas and on governors‘ desks. Interestingly, attempts to
assuage the anxiety of those opposed to teacher collective bargaining were
shaped, consciously or not, by the argument FDR had advanced with business
representatives three decades earlier. Worry not, collective bargaining
opponents were told, teachers will never join unions, embrace the industry-
inspired trappings of labor-management relations, or be caught up in the

world of negotiations and contracts.

They were wrong. Teacher unions built powerful organizations and
influential constituencies. Collective bargaining for public school employees
became law in 37 states. Today, nearly 90 percent of this nation's more than
two million teachers are members of the American Federation of Teachers or
the National Education Association, and teachers‘ professional lives are
shaped in important ways by the actions of their unions and the process of

collective bargaining.

Achievements notwithstanding, America's teacher unions today are at a

crossroads. They face a period of simultaneous strength and vulnerability.

Unions appear strong because they are the most stable and well organized
constituents of the existing institution of education. The NBA and the AFT
have arguably been the most potent forces in American public education over
the last half-century. They effectively have dwarfed the influence of school
administrators and college school of education deans, the other two legs of
the historic “iron triangle” of education. Over the past decades, the two
national unions have been active and visible symbols of the existing

institution of education and of the struggles to reform it.

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Still teacher unionism remains highly vulnerable. American education labor
relations and the conventional structure of schooling have developed a
powerful symbiotic relationship. Unions are now utterly dependent on the
existing organization and power alignments within public education. This
situation might be tenable if the nation's public school system were stable and

secure. It is not.

America's public schools, for all they have accomplished, increasingly are
seen as ill-fitted to the requirements of post-industrial society. Characterized
by a massive, rule-bound hierarchical public bureaucracy, the organizational
arrangements which form the architecture for schooling in America are often
now described as anachronistic and outmoded. Moreover, despite the
whirlwinds of rhetoric, rush of activity, and abundance of good intentions,
the education reforms of the 19805 and early 19905 have left the education

bureaucracy largely intact.

As education structures have remained untouched, so, too, has labor

relations remained relatively unchanged. Thus, teacher unions have become
vulnerable because they spend enormous energy defending the old system, to
which they are institutionally tied, and relatively little designing and bringing

about a new one.

We argue in this paper that teacher unionism, like education itself, faces a
clear challenge. The task for unions lies not in sustaining the existing
institution of education, but in helping to construct the new one. By thinking
about, planning for, and creating public policy around institutional
arrangements other than those that now bound education, unions can

maintain their historic commitment to employee welfare, create of teaching a

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 3

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

true profession, and help to bring about a new and revitalized system of

education.
BUILDING A NEW INSTlTUTION

In making the case for a teacher unionism fitted to a new institution of

education, we assert the following:

1. Fundamental changes are taking place in the organization of society and
the economy. One need not look very far to see the wrenchings of a
society once again (or still) in transition. The rapid shift from an
industrial economy to a service-based economy to an economy
increasingly dependent on ”smart workers” with high level technological
skills has both redefined America‘s industrial base and produced a
widening gap between the economic ”haves” and ”have nots”.

Devolution of governmental authority and responsibility to state and local
entities, part of the ”reinventing government” trend, simultaneously tears
at the fabric of decades—old social policy and reshapes the arena of public
versus private responsibility. The concurrent emphasis on recreating
community is causing us to consider what a ”community" is --who

comprises it, supports it, and sustains it.

2. These changes will cause fundamental reorganization of education.
Preparing students to meet the workplace challenges of the let century
requires a much different education system than the one created for, and
adequate for, an economy based on farms and factories. The concurrent
policy taste for devolving authority will continue to create pressure on the
traditional education hierarchy to move decisions to local schools and

communities.

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

3. At the core, many of these changes in education are about reorganization
of learning. What is learning, who is capable of learning, and what is the
responsibility of teachers in creating learning? We call these relationships
the Instructional Core of Education. The instructional core contains the
transactions between teachers and students, books and blackboards,

corridors and curriculum, through which learning takes place.

4. Changes in the Instructional Core of Education will cause major
dislocations in the way schools are organized and governed. The schools
we have now rest on behavioral psychology and a belief that learning can
be broken down into small steps arranged sequentially. Since W.W. II,
however, behavioral approaches to learning have been increasingly
challenged by the rise of cognitive science. Learning, we now know, is not

so easily compartmentalized or standardized.

Under the new instructional core, knowledge is created in schools. This is
a far different conception of knowledge than that which occurs in our
current industrial era schools, and it has profound implications for
teaching. One gains knowledge of practice by engaging in it, not by reading
manuals or participating in college seminars. It is in the creation of
knowledge of practice that teaching lays claim to the title profession. This
type of autonomy forces teachers to confront the three keys to creating
knowledge of practice: innovation, adaptation, and continuous

improvement.

5. Changes in school organization and governance will change existing

power and influence relationships. Teacher unions will find their

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 5

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

conventional sources of power and influence vastly diminished. At the

same time, new terrain for organizing will open.

If unions are to follow the emerging sources of power, they will need to shift
from organizing around job control, work rules, and uniformity, to
organizing around career security, increased productivity through

innovation, and quality control.
THE NEW LABOR RELATIONS DESIGN

We have written previously2 of the need for conventional teacher unionism
to transform itself into a form of organization we have called ”professional
unionism.” Professional unionism represents a sharp turn away from
industrial unionism which creates a separation between management work
and labor work, emphasizes adversarial relations between employers and
employees, and has as its principal activity developing and maintaining
contracts designed to protect workers’ self-interests. The hallmarks of
professional unionism, by contrast, are joint union-management custody of
reform, employer-employee collaboration, and an emphasis in contract
negotiations and work rule formation on institutional welfare and the public

interest.

We now expand this notion of professional unionism by introducing a new

conceptual model of labor relations. In this proposed new system, the union
becomes a partner with the district in educational improvement and assumes
a large measure of responsibility for insuring the quality of the teaching force.

The focus of responsibility for educational performance shifts from

 

2Charles Taylor Kerchner and Julia E. Koppich, A Union of Professionals: Labor Relations and
Education Reform, New York: Teachers College Press, 1993.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 6

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

centralized district bureaucracies to individual schools. This is a new

unionism suited to a new institution of education.

Among the components of this expanded version of professional unionism

are the following:

1. A modern electronic hiring hall that allows teachers to move from school
to school with relative ease and organizes teachers' professional lives

around career security rather than job security.

2. A career ladder concept that places teaching at the top and creates training
and job mobility opportunities for paraprofessionals and others interested

in pursuing careers in the classroom.

3. Mandatory peer review of teacher performance as a central means of

securing and maintaining quality within teaching practice.

4. A bare bones district-wide contract that includes measurable education
goals, a new teacher salary schedule in which teacher pay is based on

knowledge and skills, and portable pensions and benefits.

5. School—based educational compacts comprised of statements of school
philosophy, measurable student performance targets, resource allocation
mechanisms, criteria for hiring and evaluating staff, and programs for

ongoing professional development.

6. A new labor law fitted to the outlines and requirements of this new labor

relations system.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 7

    
  
   
 
 
 
   
    
   
  
  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

CREATING A LABOR MARKET FOR TEACHERS

The structure we outline anticipates a highly decentralized system. We
assume, in other words, that the individual school becomes the primary
employer. We assume moreover that unions must become part of the

market solution to obtaining an adequate supply of qualified workers.

The literature on modern, productive organizations, those which have come
to be called knowledge era organizations, suggests that they put a premium
on flexibility and organic change, the very qualities that cause problems for
existing bureaucratic and union structures. We suggest rearranging the
teacher labor market to make it simultaneously self-advancing and socially
productive. We attempt here to strike a balance between the two legs of
unionism: workers' rights of self-determination and society's need for
institutions that are simultaneously productive and just. Doing this requires

several major changes in the teacher labor market.
Emphasizing Career Security Rather Than Job Security

Classically, organizations have been defined by their boundaries. One was
either part of an organization or was not, and employee status set the
boundary. If one had a job, one belonged to the organization; no job, no

membership.

In teaching, belonging has been achieved through the hiring process. It has
been secured with the passage of time, the accumulation of seniority, and the
granting of tenure. Seniority and tenure have provided teachers with a

comfortable kind of security of employment and position.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 8

       
 
 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

To be sure, job protection is not now, and never has been, absolute. Teachers
are not shielded from layoff in times of fiscal crisis and, conventional wisdom
notwithstanding, bad teachers can be fired. Nonetheless, a teacher has been
relatively safe in assuming that, absent some sort of crisis, a job with the
district, and even a position in a particular school, was secure. Union contract
provisions in large measure created this kind of stability for teaching

employees.

But the historical relationship of the teacher to the education institution is
beginning to break down. The organization we know as school increasingly
operates with part-time employees who are part of the organization, but not
entirely, contractual services where people perform vital functions but are
not on the payroll, consultants who perform highly strategic activities but
only for a short period of time, and volunteers or community resources from
other organizations and agencies in which the participant may never have an

economic relationship to the school.

One gains a picture of a highly organic organization that changes rapidly with
conditions and combines and recombines itself with fluidity. In this setting,

the union's historical weapon of building a set of rights around a particular

job is challenged, and the union has two possible avenues of action. One is to
fight each of the boundaries: redefinition of teacher work, contracting out, the
use of interns, substitution of volunteers or employees of other organizations
or agencies. Or the union can begin to organize around career security rather

than job security.

By career security we mean that union members would be buffered from the

winds of organizational change through a series of mechanisms that would

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 9

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

allow members to move relatively easily from school to school, from job to
job, and from one type of economic relationship to another. A new version

of an old union classic, the hiring hall, would make this possible.
Creating the Modern Hiring Hall

The hiring hall grew from the craft tradition of project-based employment,
relatively frequent job changes, and peripatetic workers. In an era when the

nature of work is rapidly changing, it is an idea whose time has come again.

The union ought to become the exclusive provider of teachers to the schools
in a district for which it is the recognized exclusive representative. As in the
case with the old craft unions, one would gain access to work through the
union. Unlike the historic craft union hiring hall, where individuals lined
up daily for their work assignments, this hiring hall would function as a
sophisticated human resources organization offering placement and

counseling services and access to training and development.

Historically, teacher supply has been a primary problem for school districts.
Teacher shortages cause districts to greatly compromise the standards they use
in hiring teachers. The union, through the hiring hall, could bring the
supply and demand of labor into balance and assure schools that there will be

a supply of qualified people to work.
In our conception, the hiring hall would have multiple functions:

1. Registration—Just as a personnel office now does, the hiring hall would
receive and qualify applications. It would determine whether the person
had the basic legal requirements for a job and whether the person met the

requirements of an individual posting.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 10

    
   
     
  
 
  
    
   
   
  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

2. Preparation and recommendation—The hall would assist applicants in
preparing employment portfolios, more compact versions of the kinds of
presentations now being required for certification by the National Board
for Professional Teaching Standards. Of course, for those teachers who
were Board certified, their certification would become part of their
registration information. The hall might also provide screening, career

counseling, and assistance in interview training.

3. An electronic database—Registration information, including selections
from a teacher‘s portfolio, would be made available to all schools in a
hiring hall's service area and, given compatible data formats, could be
transferred among geographic locations as well. A school could thus
screen applicants according to criteria they chose, with the knowledge that
if they followed the proper screening techniques, their search would meet
all the anti-discriminatory and civil rights requirements. All the
information, including registrant preferences and work experience, would

be available to a school.

4. Employment broker—Particularly for employees with highly specialized
skills, or a desire to work an unusual schedule, the hiring hall would
serve an additional brokerage function. The hall, for example, would be
able to create full time employment for teachers of art or music, who
might not be affordable at a single elementary school, but who might find
a shared arrangement among several schools. Or it would be able to assist
teachers who choose a practice centered on creating curriculum or
developing educational software, skills that a single school might have
need of for an intense period of development lasting only a few months

but which several schools might require over the course of an academic

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 11

  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

year. The hiring hall, in other words, would enable teachers to develop

the kinds of professional practice options suited to their talents and needs

while maintaining steady employment.

Under the hiring hall plan as well, persons who were not employed at a
school would become part of a pool of workers in transition between jobs.
Members of the pool would be supported by a fund financed by all employees
as part of districtwide bargaining agreements. The length of time an
employee would be economically supported while in the pool would depend

on the employee's seniority in the union.

We recognize that there is always the possibility of poorly run hiring halls
that discourage or discriminate against applicants. Thus, the hiring hall
would be the personnel office of first resort. Schools would be obliged to seek
teachers through the hiring hall mechanism before turning to other sources.
A persistent failure of a school or schools to use the hiring hall or of the
hiring hall to have qualified workers available would be grounds for an

unfair labor practice complaint, just as failure to bargain in good faith is now.
Developing a Career Ladder with Teaching at the Top

Decades after the publication of Schoolteacher (Lortie), teaching remains an
”unstaged career.” To be sure, informal leadership and positions of respect
and influence accrue with experience. And over the past 20 years we have
witnessed substantial differentiation in teaching work in the form both of job
specialization and job enlargement. But these arrangements, whether they be
mentor teacher programs or career ladders, fall far short of constituting the
kind of career progression that other occupations of highly trained

individuals enjoy.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 12

 

 

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We focus here on the career ladder. Most existing career ladder plans take
entry level teaching as their bottom rung. Classroom teachers, the
individuals who work with children everyday, are at the bottom of the
ladder. The message that is sent is clear: those who work with children have

the lowest status, and those who work with adults have the highest.

We suggest a different ladder, one that places teaching at the top and creates
an orderly career progression into teaching. The duties and responsibilities
now ascribed to lead teachers would become part of the normal responsibility

of senior teachers, part of the world into which they become socialized.

Putting teaching at the top of a career ladder allows those who are classroom
teachers to have a teaching relationship with other adults. It makes possible
real apprenticeships in the schools. It creates a natural situation in which

teachers can train and socialize new entrants and insure their quality.
And it offers the potential of connecting teachers with communities.

Unions and districts together should develop such career ladders. These
arrangements WOuld enable paraprofessionals, or teachers' aides, for example,
to work their way toward college degrees, teaching certification, and
employment as full-fledged teachers. Paraprofessionals bring important
qualities to schools. They generally live in the community in which the
school is located and often, particularly in immigrant communities, speak the
home language of the students. These individuals have worked in
classrooms. If they indicate a desire to earn the title of teacher, one can have

reasonable confidence that the commitment is a serious one.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 13

   

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

A few districts and unions have begun to develop components of the career
ladder described here. We believe these efforts need to be expanded and

become significantly more widespread.
Implementing Peer Review

We place peer review in the section on creating a quality labor market
because, in our judgment, peer review is central to the issue of teacher
quality. Peer review is probably the most powerful demonstration of teacher
creation and demonstration of a knowledge of practice. In the 20 or so
districts that have tried it, peer review brings higher standards to teaching. It
significantly changes the conception of teaching work by recognizing the
importance of engagement and commitment as well as skill and technique. It
recognizes a legitimate role for teachers in establishing and enforcing
standards in their own occupation. Peer review also fundamentally changes
the role of the union. As Al Fondy, President of the Pittsburgh Federation of
Teachers notes, ”It is not the primary purpose of the union to defend the least

competent of its members."

Peer review began in 1981 when the Toledo, Ohio schools and the Toledo
Federation of Teachers added to their collective bargaining agreement a one-
sentence clause by which teachers agreed to police the ranks of their veterans
in return for the right to review the professional performance of new
teachers. In the last decade-and-a-half peer review has spread among a

number of progressive school districts.

Peer review brings higher standards to teaching in two ways. First peer
review systems generally have more resources, and thus put forward a more

thorough system of evaluation, than do conventional administratively-

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 14

  
 
 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

driven evaluation schemes. In districts with peer review plans, unions and
districts negotiate substantial financial set-asides (approximately $2,000 for
each teacher to be reviewed) for purposes of implementing the evaluation

system.

Second, peer review systems link good teaching and professional
development. The traditional evaluation system captures only a sliver of a
teacher‘s work, principally that which can be observed in a brief
administrative visit to a teacher‘s classroom. It is designed as a kind of
checklist accountability system. Peer review, on the other hand, taps a
broader segment of a teacher's professional portfolio through prolonged and
extensive engagement with and observation by teaching colleagues and an

emphasis on enhancing professional practice.

Most peer review systems are patterned after the Toledo Plan. Novices are
supervised, assisted, and evaluated by experienced teachers, who are selected
in a competitive process by others who have done the same job. The
evaluators, called consulting teachers, spend fulltime for up to three years in

their positions as peer reviewers.

Another component of the peer review system involves the effort to assist
experienced teachers “in trouble”. Cooperating teachers work with these
individuals, recommend a program of remediation, and then, at the end of a

designated period of time, assess the success of the improvements efforts.

In the case of both novices undergoing their early-years assessments and
experienced teachers participating in the remediation (often called
”intervention”), consulting teachers report to a joint union—management

Board of Review which makes recommendations to the district school board

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 15

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

regarding the status of continuing employment for the teachers who have

been reviewed.

Available evidence suggests that peer review is tougher than conventional
administrator-driven evaluation. There is no evidence that teachers will soft
peddle evaluation in order to save the jobs of colleagues. To the contrary,
unionized teachers will vote to fire other union members who are not living

up to teacher-established standards of professional practice.

In addition to providing novice teachers with intensive early assistance and
offering support and assistance to veteran teachers experiencing difficulty,
peer review can be a means by which teachers whose professional practice is
not in question can engage in ongoing professional development. Poway,
California, a district in San Diego County, has expanded its peer review
program so that the system now operates as an alternative to conventional
evaluation for successful experienced teachers. The program involves the
development by a participating teacher of a goal statement and evaluation
plan that may include collaboration with a group of colleagues to conduct
self-evaluations, create professional portfolios, undertake peer coaching,
conduct classroom action research, participate in structured staff

development, and observe other colleagues in their classrooms.

Peer review changes the stakes in evaluation. As Miles Myers, executive
director of the National Council of Teachers of English and former president
of the California Federation of Teachers has observed, “Peer review forces
teachers to define good teaching. Teachers have to be able to express good

teaching in language that other teachers understand and accept.”

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 16

 

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Peer review also represents a radical departure for teacher unions from
established industrial norms in which evaluation is the province of school
administrators. The union's role, in this scenario, is to watchdog the process
and protect members from violations of their due process rights. Under peer
review, the union's role becomes one of balancing protection of individual

teachers with the protection of teaching.
Providing Portable Pensions and Benefits

Localized pensions and benefits, the standard in education today, create

pronounced rigidity in the teacher labor market. Just as teacher job protection
is tied to a particular employer, so too are benefits. Thus, another component
of creating a new labor market for teachers is the development of pension and
benefit plans that teachers can carry with them when they move to a different

locale.

Pensions are largely part of state plans in which employee contributions are
only matched by the state at retirement. Moving employment out of state
carries heavy penalties. Other fringe benefits, particularly health benefits, are
usually school district specific. Simply moving to a different district, even in
the same geographic region, can jeopardize a teacher's continuing coverage.
We are convinced that creating the new labor market for teachers requires
that pensions and benefits be portable. Teachers must not be tethered to their
current, and often their first, school district for fear of losing accumulated

retirement or health benefits.

Teaching ought to abandon state—run pension plans in favor of an
independent national pension cooperative outside of school employers,

states, and direct union control. A model, not unlike TIAA-CREF which has

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 17

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

had a 70-year scandal free reputation for pension and investment services to

teachers and college professors, would be well worth consideration.

In health care and other benefits where services must be locally delivered, the
unions themselves should serve as the plan holder, contracting with HMOs
and other care providers. The key is to move access to health care from the
employer to the occupation so that benefits continue when employment

status changes.
Additionally Expanding the Portfolio

Developing a modern hiring hall, creating a career ladder with teaching at the
top, requiring peer review of professional performance, and implementing a
system of portable pensions and benefits all are designed to insure the quality
of the teaching workforce and expand the flexibility of employment
opportunities for its members. An additional set of organizational and
institutional changes will enhance the viability of this new quality labor

market.
Teacher Preparation

Teacher unions traditionally have taken a backseat role when it comes to the
preparation of new members of the profession. While the NBA in particular
has established programs to recruit individuals in teacher education
programs into the union's ranks, this activity has been undertaken with an
eye toward capturing new members, and cementing organizational loyalty, in
anticipation of future employment. Recruitment has not typically included
substantive participation in core teacher preparation activities. We believe

union involvement in preparing new entrants to the profession is critical.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 18

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

For teaching, licensure remains a muddle. Public policy and the market for
teachers drives licensure simultaneously in two directions. Advocates of
higher formal entry standards seek longer training programs and more
rigorous examinations. Meanwhile, the forces of supply and demand cause
even existing licensure standards to be trivialized, and advocates of a more
fluid and diverse supply of teachers seek alternative pathways that in some
cases obviate the meaning of licensing altogether. Between these two

pressures, supply and demand is always the stronger.

Unions need to reestablish teachers as primary agents of socialization and
education of novices. Unions are not likely to be successful in going it alone
to create a new genre of teacher preservice preparation, but can be powerful
collaborators, either with universities unconventional programs or through
alternative routes to certification. Professional involvement in preservice
standard setting and program development, particularly in the case of
alternative certification programs, ought to become a legitimate and expected

union function as a means of maintaining quality in teaching.

One of the most promising opportunities to link practicing professionals with
their novice colleagues is offered by Professional Development Schools. The
PDS model offers an institutional structure for unions to help teachers embed

learning in their own work.
Professional Practice Contracts

Professional practice contracts are the means by which high-paid workers are
linked to organizations. The ability of teacher unions to assist teachers to
form this type of organization is an important ingredient in what is likely to

be a long period of experimentation in how schools are organized.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 19

   

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Unions should assume as one of their responsibilities serving as broker to
arrange agreements between a group of teachers and a school to provide

educational services. In a situation such as this, the teachers would not be
employees of the school, but would be members of their own professional

services corporation.

Unions would be in a much stronger position by creating the machinery that
allows their members to form professional practice organizations and to
support members in doing so than they would in fighting a war of attrition

against structural changes in how education is delivered.
Contracting Out

Contracting out seriously threatens existing union structures. Historically in
education most contracting out has been done in ancillary service areas—food
service, maintenance, janitorial. But increasingly the use of contract workers
has come closer to the core functions of teaching and learning. As schools
decentralize, and as budgetary decisions are made at school sites, teachers
themselves, as members of school site decision bodies, are likely to be
involved in decisions about how labor is to be divided. Some services are

likely to be contracted out.

Unions ought not simply to adopt the conventional anti-contracting out
stance. At a minimum, this position will diminish the support of those of
their members who believe some educational services at their particular
schools can be better provided through outside-of—district contract workers.
Instead, we believe unions ought to insist on and help to establish a set of
baseline enforceable rules about contracting out. We suggest two rules in

particular.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 20

  
   
  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

First, no one should be forced to accept bad services. No local site council
should be forced to accept the services of either bad employees or bad
contractors. Since the people most affected by bad services are those in the

schools, decisions about contracting out should be lodged in schools.

Second, all contracts should require basic worker protections. Placing decency
structures on contracts tends to level the field and allow groups of workers
internal to an organization to compete with outsiders for contract

relationships.
The Logic of the Labor Market

Our goal in the proposals thus far is to link union security with an
institutionally useful labor market, one that provides high quality workers,
allows the market to adjust for supply and demand, and provides career
continuity for educators without hobbling school reform and change in the

process.

Creation of a quality labor market for teaching is the first major component in
our reconceptualized model of professional unionism. The second
encompasses a comprehensive revamping of the purpose and substance of

collectively bargained contracts.
SHIFTIN G THE FOCUS OF BARGAINING

We have made the case that knowledge is created—knowledge work is
done——in schools, more particularly, in schools which operate as relatively
autonomous centers of learning. Districts (or states or the federal
government) need to establish the architecture for operational autonomy via

measurable education goals, standards, and systems of accountability and

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 21

     
 
 
  
   
 
    
  
  

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appraisal. But it is schools themselves that function as the individual units
of production. In this conception, the schools, and the knowledge workers in
them, need a great deal of discretion to make fundamental decisions about
matters such as personnel deployment, resource allocation, and the content

and conduct of the instructional program.

This sort of operational independence flies in the face of the conventional
American education structure in which education decision making authority
is largely lodged at the center, in school district headquarters. Standard
education labor-management arrangements, which result in districtwide

master contracts, serve to reify the centralized nature of schooling.

Reconceptualizing teaching as knowledge creation work entails a
fundamental redistribution of power and authority. Critical to breaking the
centralized hold on education decisions is shifting the emphasis of collective
bargaining from negotiating districtwide contracts, which standardize work
rules, to achieving school-based agreements which allow for considerable site

discretion and variability.

We propose here the development of a new set of interlocking models of
union-management accord. A slender district level contract would establish
salary minima, a benefits package, a basic school year calendar, and newly
conceived hiring, assignment, and evaluation procedures. School site
educational compacts, which would shift resources and workplace decisions
to employees and hold them responsible for educational performance, would
include salary ranges above minimum levels as well as procedures regarding
resource allocation, class and course organization, hiring, and professional

development.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 7-2

     
    
    
 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

These types of agreements represent a sea change from conventional
collective bargaining contracts on matters of purpose, substantive scope and
content, and the assumed professional relationship of union and

management.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 7-3

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

 

INDUSTRIAL STYLE
CONTRACTS

KNOWLEDGE ERA CONTRACTS

 

“District" Level Contract

Site Level Compact

 

RECOGNITION AND SCOPE

OF BARGAINING

union recognized to represent
members' economic rights and
protect their employment
security

policy and operational decisions
reserved to management
assumed division of interest
between labor and management

. union recognized to represent
members' interests in all areas of
educational improvement

- assumed partnership in much
education decision making

- assumed common interest in
educational improvement

- employees gain the right to make
workplace decisions

- employees assume responsibility
for educational performance

 

WAGES AND BENEFITS

standard salary schedule

salary levels based on longevity
and college credits

negotiated benefit package
administered by district

benefits attached to employment
in district

- salary schedule establishes
baseline minima

- salary levels based on
demonstrated knowledge and
skills

- negotiated benefit package
administered through pension
and benefits trust

- benefits portable

- annual salaries above minimum
levels possible

 

WORK RULES AND

CONTENT

specific days and hours of
employment, including school
year calendar

delineation of allowable non-
teaching duties

class size parameters

- basic school year calendar
outlined

- school budget and program
decision procedures

- class and course organization
procedures

. quality assurance mechanisms

 

PERSONNEL

assignment and transfer
evaluation

- hiring hall operations and
structure

. peer review procedures

- professional development
system

- hiring criteria and decision
procedures

- peer review implementation

- professional development

 

DISPUTE RESOLUTION

hierarchical grievance procedure
early stages informal

binding arbitration (often) as
final step

disputes resolved solely on the
basis of contract language

- simplified procedure

- first stage informal

- second stage. dispute submitted
to “permanent umpire”

- disputes resolved by balancing
welfare of institution and
individual teacher equity

' informal resolution at the school
- unresolved issues submitted to
district level binding arbitration

 

 

ASSUMED RELATIONSHIP

OF THE PARTIES
adversarial —-—assumes
management-labor conflict over
roles and division of resources
conflict tempered by dispute
resolution techniques
surrounding limited scope
agreements

cooperation employed as means
of achieving détente, but
substance of contracts remains
virtually unaltered

efforts at cooperation leave
underlying assumptions intact
(e.g. inherent conflicts between
labor and management)

 

- cooperative—assumes union-
managcmcnt partnership focused
on educational improvement

- conflict arises over issues of
educational improvement

 

 

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE)

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Industrial-Style Bargaining: A Short Course

Collective bargaining is designed to give teachers a formal and legally
recognized purchase on the conditions of their employment. Prior to
collective bargaining, teachers did not speak for themselves, they were spoken
for. Salaries, hours of employment, class sizes, and assignment and transfer
procedures were set by school boards and enforced by administrators.

Teachers generally had little influence over, and even less say in, establishing

the conditions of their professional employment.

Negotiated contracts, the products of bargaining, represent legal ”footprints”
of discussions, compromises, and agreements between teachers and their
school district employers. Through the contract, an often long (some
contracts run to more than 100 pages) and quasi-legalistic districtwide
agreement, rules, procedures, and, to a large extent roles, are set to writing in
a legally binding and enforceable document that is the product of mutual
agreement between teachers, as represented by their union, and the school

board, as represented by district administration.

Contracts establish teachers‘ rates of pay and benefit packages. They delineate
procedures by which teachers who desire to transfer to a different school or a
different assignment may do so. They outline agreements for setting the
level of class sizes, define the length of teachers' salaried work day and work
year, establish procedures for evaluating professional performance, and
provide a mechanism for adjudicating procedural and substantive disputes

that arise between teachers and school or district administration.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 25

  
   
  
  
 
   
 
 
   

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Contracts are meant to create fairness in a bureaucracy. The union is
deputized by its members to represent their economic interests, through
salary and benefit arrangements, and to protect their employment security,
through standardized work rules and districtwide personnel procedures.
Negotiated agreements apply a districtwide template to teachers' conditions of

employment. The same professional rules of engagement attaches equally to

all teachers in a given school district.

Conventional collective bargaining agreements, which grow out of the
industrial union tradition, assume a division of interests between labor and
management. The union, through the contract, represents the economic and
day-to-day work concerns of the employees. Management establishes policy
and makes operational decisions. This implicit separation of interests lays the

groundwork for adversarial labor-management relations.

Adversarial bargaining establishes a dynamic in which teacher unions and
school management are enmeshed in a continual test of wills. Labor
relations becomes permanently contested terrain as employers and employees
each strive to have their particular interests reflected in bilateral agreements.
Union and management eventually achieve a written treaty, the contract, but
relations between the parties, even after the contract is signed, often more

closely resemble an uneasy truce than a cooperative partnership.
The Issue of Scope

The adversarial nature of bargaining is enhanced by the legally limited scope
of contract agreement. “Scope" refers to the issues and items about which the
parties to the collective bargaining agreement are required or allowed to

negotiate.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 26

  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

The central tension in the scope debate is framed by the” unresolved matter of
which decisions should be delegated by the school board, the legal
representative of the district, to the union in the process of collective
bargaining. Professional employees desire to stake a larger claim on the
content and conduct of their work. Their employer, the school board,
entrusted with representing the public in critical policy decisions, generally is

reluctant to relinquish authority over significant education matters.

Teachers and school management thus discuss and reach agreement about
how long teachers work and how much they are paid. But the district is
under no obligation, in fact is often expressly prohibited by state law from
reaching agreement with its teachers on matters related to the organization of
the educational enterprise, the allocation of resources, or the implementation
of educational programs. Bargaining law enshrines the assumption that
employees' interests stop at compensation and work rule issues. It is
management which has an interest in, and assumes responsibility for, the

policy and operational decisions which shape the education system.

The limited, and limiting, nature of the statutorily determined scope of
bargaining creates a false dichotomy. Namely, restricting the topics of
allowable discussion between professional employees and their employers
assumes that the conditions of employment can be separated from the
substantive work of the enterprise. Utilizing this framework, ”bread and
butter” issues of compensation, benefits, job security, and general conditions
of employment are properly part of the employee‘s purview. The mission of
the institution and the content of the work are not. The narrow scope of

union-management bargaining serves to constrain districts and unions from

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 27

   
 
 
 
   
  
  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

engaging in substantive discussions about matters central to improving

schools and enhancing student achievement.

Attempts at Change

Over a decade of contemporary American education reform efforts, some
courageous districts and their teacher unions have attempted to confront the
twin challenges of industrial—style bargaining: the adversarial nature of labor-
management relations and the artificially restricted scope of negotiated

agreements.

A number of school districts have adopted the "win-win” approach to
collective negotiations. Popularized by the Harvard Negotiation Project,
win-win bargaining represents a turn away from traditional distributive
bargaining, in which a fixed pot of resources is divided up issue by issue, and
a concurrent move toward integrative bargaining in which issues and
interests overlap.3 Union and management seek common interests and
solve common problems. The product of these discussions, the contract, is
the product of a set of compromises that, cumulatively, represent a “win” for

both sides.

Throughout the 19805 and into the 19905, collaborative bargaining, the generic
name for the win-win approach, was adopted by an expanded number of
districts, and by affiliates of both the American Federation of Teachers and the
National Education Association. Some districts, Miami, Florida; Rochester,
New York; and Cincinnati, Ohio, for example, have been visible and vocal

about their determination to alter the way in which union and management

 

3Most bargaining is actually ”mixed bargaining.” See Walton and McKersie, A Theory of
Behavioral Negotiation; 1965.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 28

  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

COHdUCt business With one another. Other districts have been quieter about

their changing labor relations milieus, but no less determined to redefine the

form of the union-management relationship.

At the same time as districts and unions have sought ways to dampen the
adversarial nature of bargaining, a number of school districts and their
unions (often the same ones who embraced collaborative bargaining) have
initiated reforms designed to modify the lockstep nature of the contract.
These efforts, which have been designed with the dual purpose of expanding
the range of union-management discussions and providing added
professional decision making flexibility and discretion, generally have
proceeded along three paths: joint union—management committees,

educational policy trust agreements, and contract waivers.

Joint union-management committees have been established to extend union-
management decision making into relatively uncharted cooperative waters.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for example established a joint committee to
oversee the district's school-based management undertaking. In Cincinnati,
the union and the district removed the thorny issue of resolving class size
disputes from the contract grievance procedure and placed it in the hands of a
joint committee. Poway, California's peer review system is overseen by a
committee composed of union and management representatives. Joint
committees are meant to expand the portfolio of the negotiated agreement in

a cooperative labor—management environment.

Trust agreements, legally binding bilateral accords which sit outside the
collectively bargained contract, are designed to deal with issues that arguably

fall outside the scope of bargaining (particularly important when discussions

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 29

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

of legally allowable scope are likely to eclipse discussions of substance) or that
are better handled in an arena less formal than contract negotiations with an
outcome less rigid than a contract. A four—year-long California experiment
involving 12 school districts resulted in union-management trust agreements
covering issues such as peer review, professional development, and school
site collaborative management and decision making. Another means of
expanding union-management cooperative decision making, trust
agreements also serve as vehicles for expanding the envelope of union

involvement in education policy formation and implementation.

A few contracts have established procedures that enable individual schools to
request waivers from specific portions of the agreement for school-
determined educational reasons. For example, a school wants to experiment
with some very large classes and some quite small ones. Doing so would
violate the class size provision of the contract. A waiver provision allows the

school to request relief from that portion of the agreement.

Contracts which include waiver provisions require that the school seeking
the waiver submit a written request to a team of designated central union and
management representatives. The team considers the request and makes a
decision, which is binding on the school. The waiver, if granted, is limited to

the school requesting it, and is in effect for a specified period of time.
Good But Insufficient

In our judgment, reforms in bargaining form and substance, no matter how
faithfully conducted and thoughtfully executed, have failed to move unions
and districts much beyond the education reform starting gate. Many efforts

aimed at collaborative bargaining seem to stop there. Achieving an enhanced

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 30

   

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

level of cordiality, without changing the substance of the negotiated

agreement, is assumed to be the goal.

Even efforts aimed at altering the substance of the negotiated pact have
produced only modest change. Trust agreements and joint committees
expand the range of union-management discussion, but they are, themselves,
centralized accords, offering little in the way of school site flexibility. The
clearest effort to decentralize decision making authority, waivers, are

enmeshed in their own web of rules.

Moreover, waivers, trust agreements, and joint operating committees sit
outside the regular bureaucratic structure and have about them a perpetual
air of impermanence. Generally accorded about equal status as other ”pilot
projects” in a school district, these efforts at reforming the labor-management
relationship tend to be seen by teachers and administrators as temporary
educational aberrations. The bureaucracy continues to operate as if little had
changed. In the inevitable test of wills between change and the status quo,
change invariably blinks first. None of these bargaining reforms has had the
effect of moving teaching professionals and school management significantly
closer to confronting the complexities of improving education in measurable

and demonstrable ways.
FROM CENTRALIZED CONTRACTS TO
SCHOOL-BASED COMPACT S
We propose that the all-encompassing, standardized districtwide contract be
replaced by two separate kinds of agreements, a slender, limited version of the

centralized contract and a more encompassing school-based educational

compact.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 31

    
  
   
 
  
 
  
     
  
   
    
    

 

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

The districtwide agreement would contain a set of basic wage and working
condition provisions (many of which would be subject to school site
modification). More importantly, it would recognize the union for purposes
of representing members‘ interests in all areas of educational improvement.
Unlike conventional bargaining agreements which assume a division of
interest between labor and management, this new form of districtwide
agreement would be structured around and framed in language which makes
clear the union's and management's shared interest in educational

improvement.

The central agreement would provide a kind of bare bones philosophical and
operational architecture. More comprehensive educational agreements, in

the form of operational compacts, would be forged at local schools.

We borrow the notion of the modern day workplace compact from the work
of Irving and Barry Bluestone. In their book, Negotiating the Future, the

Bluestones write:

A contract is essentially adversarial in nature, representing
a compromise between the separate interests of each party
to the agreement. In contrast, a compact is fundamentally
a cooperative document, providing for a mutual Vision
and a joint system for achieving common goals that foster
the general well-being of all stakeholders in a given
endeavor. [With a compact], labor takes on greater
responsibility for productivity and quality; management
assumes a greater obligation to provide employment
security. Together, management and the union work
jointly to make decisions at every level of the [enterprise].

The educational compact would confront one of the key dilemmas posed by
conventional collective bargaining. Namely, it would be school-based.
Fundamental educational decisions would shift from the central school
system to individual school sites.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 32

      
   
 
    
    

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Signators to the educational compact would include all of the staff members
at a particular school—administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals, the clerical

and custodial staff. In union parlance, the compact would be a ”wall-to-wall”

agreement.4

There would be an additional party to the compact, namely, the community.
In a sense, the educational compact would serve as a social contract between
the employees of the school and the parents and community. Obligations and
responsibilities would be mutual and mutually reinforcing. The parties to
the agreement—union and management in the case of the districtwide

agreement, the full school community in the instance of the site-based

 

educational compact would reach decisions based on their assessment of a

common vision of education and common goals for the district or school.

The reach and range of both negotiated documents would be broad. Both the
centralized contract and the school site compact would adopt as their
organizational and operating framework improving the quality of the
educational enterprise through a continuing focus‘on means of ratcheting up
student achievement. In order to achieve such agreements, all topics of

educational purpose and substance would be fair game for discussion.
The New Central Agreement

Six basic provisions would compose the districtwide contract: 1) union-district
joint responsibility for improving education, 2) a new kind of pay schedule
and a basic benefits package, 3) professional development and assessment of

professional performance, 4) a standard minimum school year calendar, 5)

 

4This paper deals only with teachers. Thus, the descriptions of some compact provisions
offered in the following sections apply particularly to the teaching staff.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 33

     
  
 
   
      
 
  
   
  
  
 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

union and employment security guarantees, and 6) a mechanism for

resolving disputes.
Ioint Responsibility

This would be a clear statement of the union's and district’s intention to
assume mutual obligation for improving and maintaining the health of the
educational enterprise. Both parties—the union as the recognized
representative of employees and the district as the employer—would commit
to joint action which furthers the district's educational mission. The
agreement would be grounded in the assumption that union and
management share a common purpose in improving schooling. Thus, the
union would be recognized to represent members' interests in all areas of

educational improvement.

As a means of framing joint action and establishing a clear course and
direction, the union and the district together would set broad-based,
measurable educational goals toward which the district, and all schools in the
district, would strive. Goals would be focused on student achievement, as
defined in multiple ways—levels of academic performance, school attendance
and completion rates, rates of student participation in extracurricular
activities, levels of parent and community participation in schools and
school-related activities, and the like. Goals would be specific enough to be
measurable, but not so specific as to limit schools' ability to adapt the goals to
the needs of their particular student populations. Measurable educational
goals would serve as a public statement to the community of the union's and
district‘s commitment to educational improvement and their willingness to

be held accountable for the results of their efforts.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 34

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

As an additional component of assuming joint responsibility for educational
quality, the union and district would develop a quality review procedure for

nonperforming schools. ”Nonperformance” could be established in three

ways.

A school could experience some sort of disaster that makes it impossible to
operate the educational program. Such a school would be unable to meet its

instructional obligations, and would therefore be subject to district takeover.

Alternatively, a school might be declared nonperforming if it is unable to
reach agreement on an educational compact. Since the compact essentially
establishes the plan of operation for the school, failure to construct such a
plan, after an agreed upon period of time, would qualify as nonperformance

and render the school a candidate for district takeover.

Finally, the district and union would agree that schools that do not meet
established educational goals, that in effect are failing to provide adequate
education, could be declared nonperforming. The districtwide contract would
spell out procedures for certifying schools as nonperforming as well as

processes by which the district would assume responsibility for such schools.
A New Salary Structure and Benefits Package

The standard single salary schedule which currently governs pay setting for
nearly all of the nation's two million teachers is not calibrated to take into
account teachers' demonstrated knowledge or expertise. This is not simply a
case of poorly performing teachers rating the same pay as superb teachers,

however ”poor” and ”superb” are judged.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 35

  
 
  
   
 
   
 
   
   
 
    

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Rather, the current pay structure assumes accumulated college credits and
time served in the job are adequate and appropriate proxies for professional
competence. In fact, courses taken for salary schedule credit may be irrelevant
to a teacher's class or school assignment, and time served is just that. In the
current pay configuration, there is little professional incentive (beyond
personal fulfillment) for teachers to deveIOp new skills and demonstrate that

they have acquired them.

We propose a new pay structure for teachers be established. We do not
suggest here a compensation scheme along the lines of merit pay plans which
intensify competition among individual professionals, or traditional career
ladders which offer added remuneration for nonteaching tasks. Rather, the
new teacher salary schedule would be constructed around salary incentives

for demonstrated knowledge and skills.5

The plan would structure financial compensation around the acquisition of
three types of knowledge and skills. The first would be demonstrated depth
in the areas of content, curriculum, and instructional expertise. The second
would be “breadth” skills such as curriculum development and professional
development. The third type of expertise which would result in additional

salary advancement would be so-called management skills critical to schools

involved in school-based management efforts. ( Kelley and Odden, 1995)

The central contract would contain a salary structure formulated along the
lines described above. Union and district jointly would agree upon both the

set of skills that would translate into higher compensation for teachers as well

 

5A project is currently underway at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop such a
prototype salary schedule. Led by Professor Allan Odden, the effort has the active
participation of many education groups, including the American Federation of Teachers, the
National Education Association, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 36

 

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as the method for assessing these skills. Skill-based pay increments might, for
example, be based on passing a content test in an area of licensure, becoming
licensed in a second area, achieving demonstrated proficiency in an
additional language, or being certified an ”accomplished teacher” by the
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The decision as to
which skills would produce pay increments would be based on the union's

and district's assessment regarding district needs.

The districtwide schedule would represent teachers‘ minimum or basic rates

of pay. These could be enhanced by individual school sites.

Teachers' pay would be structured on a twelve-month calendar. In other
words, teachers would receive a full year's compensation, in exchange for
which they would be expected to work eleven months, with a month's paid

vacation.6

As part of the central agreement, the union and district would also establish a
joint salary board for the purpose of annually reviewing the salary structure
and recommending to the school board warranted internal adjustments.
Adjustments could be based on a number of factors. The salary board might,
for example, conduct an annual survey of the surrounding communities in
an effort to determine the extent to which a district's basic salary schedule
met, exceeded, or lagged behind the compensation structures of neighboring
districts. Thus, the salary board would have current data enabling it to
understand the degree to which a financially competitive stance, at least in

regional terms, was being maintained.

 

6The eleven month work year would not necessarily mean teaching for eleven months, although
that might be an option some individuals would select. In general, the longer paid work year
would be designed to afford teachers an opportunity for added professional development,
curriculum planning, etc.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 37

 

     

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In terms of considerations for salary adjustment, the salary board would also
need to be sensitive to the extent to which its alterations to the districtwide
schedule would limit the flexibility of schools to offer teachers additional
compensation. This would require a delicate balancing act. If the board set
the districtwide salary bar too high, schools would be constrained in their
ability to delegate resources. Alternatively, if minimum salaries were not
kept competitive with at least neighboring districts, the low levels of

compensation might cause teachers to seek employment elsewhere.

Economies of scale likely will warrant a districtwide (or even regional)

benefits package. Our purpose here is not to suggest a specific benefits plan,

but simply to recommend a structure for such a plan.

The district and union would establish a set rate to be contributed by the
employer per employee for a package of coverages such as health insurance, a
dental plan, vision care, life insurance, retirement, etc. The rate, which might
be adjusted annually, would serve as a “cap” for the employer benefit

contribution. Employees would be free to supplement this amount.

Two provisions of the benefit plan—health care and retirement—would be
standard. Employees would be required to subscribe to health care coverage
(though they would have a range of options from which to choose) and they
would be required to participate in the retirement plan. Beyond these two
requirements, a range of possible benefits would be offered to employees in
the form of a ”cafeteria plan." As previously described, benefits would be
administered outside the district and pensions overseen by a TIAA-CREF-type

agency.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 38

   

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Professional Development and Professional Performance

Means for assisting teachers continually to improve their professional skills,
and procedures for assessing the results of their professional efforts, would
constitute two of the fundamental components of the centralized union-

management agreement.
Professional Development

We know the dimensions of quality professional development. It is largely
teacher-driven, teacher-directed and continuous. Perhaps most significantly,
good professional development is school-based and directed at what teachers

actually do in schools and classrooms (Little, 1994; Corcoran 1995).

In the new bargaining model we propose, the majority of professional
development would be school-based. However, the union and the district, as
part of their central agreement, might choose to join forces on some

development dimensions.

For example, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards might
be the focus of some districtwide professional development efforts,
particularly if certification by the National Board carried with it added
financial compensation for teachers. Together, the union and district could
offer courses to assist teachers to prepare for National Board certification. Or
they might set aside funds to reimburse teachers who achieve Board

Certification for the fees required to undergo the process.

Additionally, the district and union might take the long view, extrapolate the
district's future needs and determine areas of anticipated teacher shortage.

Joint professional development programs might then be organized for the

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 39

 

  
     
 
   
     
 
 

  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

purpose of ”retraining” willing teachers who would develop new

professional skills and competencies designed to meet the district's future

educational needs.

The principal purpose of districtwide statements about and programs for
professional development would be to reinforce joint expectations for or
commitment to ongoing professional growth. This would be an additional
tacit signal that the teaching career is not static, and that learning is a

continuous undertaking both for those who teach and for those whom they

teach.
Assessing Professional Performance

We asserted previously that peer review, the process by which teachers assess
the professional competence of their colleagues, is an essential component of
the union assuming responsibility for the quality of the teaching profession.
Thus, a procedure for implementing peer review would be contained in the

new districtwide contract.

The assessment of professional performance would be governed by a Board of
Professional Practice, composed principally of teachers. The Board would
have two fundamental responsibilities. First, it would act on any
recommendations for mandatory professional development or termination
submitted by peer reviewers. As part of this process, the Board would review
the evidence submitted by reviewers, including reports of classroom
observations, portfolios of teachers' work, and information regarding steps
taken by reviewers to assist the teachers in question to improve their

professional practice.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 40

       
      
  

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

The Board of Professional Practice would have a second important function,
namely, to hear appeals from decisions made by school principals to remove
individual teachers for dereliction of duty. This is designed as an important

safeguard, both for teachers and for schools.

A teacher, for example, is habitually late for work, or consistently exhibits
inappropriate professional behavior. This teacher is not eligible for the peer
review sequence for another year, but the principal believes the teacher must
be removed from the school or classroom as quickly as possible. The
principal would submit to the Board of Professional Practice the reasons for
requesting removal of the teacher. The Board would hear the principal's case,
listen to the teacher‘s response, perhaps conduct some sort of independent

investigation, and render a decision.

In cases of prospective termination, imposition of mandatory professional
development, or the removal of a teacher from an assignment for specified
professional malfeasance, all decisions of the Board of Professional Practice

would be final and binding.
School Year Calendar

The majority of a conventional district-based collective bargaining agreement
centers on work rules and content—days and hours of employment, class size
parameters, delineation of nonteaching duties. The new districtwide
agreement would contain just one ”work rule” provision. The contract
would establish a standard school year calendar which would specify the days
during which schools typically would be expected to be in session. Individual
sites, through their educational compacts, would be free to modify this

calendar by increasing the minimum number of school days.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 41

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

All other workload matters that typically would be part of a district wide

negotiated agreement would be included in school~based educational

compacts.
Union and Employment Security

The district's obligation in this new mutual arrangement would be to
guarantee to teachers employment security and to guarantee to the union
organizational security. The purpose would be to provide a stable work
environment, and a ready supply of qualified labor, without imposing undue
restrictions on either school site flexibility or professionals’ ability to market

their services and accept the most attractive job offer.

We differentiate here, as we explained more fully in an earlier section of this
paper, between employment security and job security. Employment
security—the right to a teaching position in the school district, assuming
satisfactory performance——wou1d be assured by a no layoffs provision in the
agreement. 10b security—the right to remain at a particular school—would
not be a contractual guarantee. Decisions about which teachers were assigned
to which schools would rest with school staffs and would be based on schools'

particular needs.

The district and union would also agree to a union security contract
provision in the form of the hiring hall. This portion of the agreement
would have the effect of preserving the institutional integrity of the union as

the source of the supply of competent professional labor for the district.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 42

    
  

    

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Dispute Resolution

Disagreements regarding the application or interpretation of provisions of
both the central districtwide agreement and school-based educational
compacts are bound to arise. Thus, the union-district pact would include

means by which to resolve these kinds of disputes.

The emphasis in adjudicating disputes would focus largely on preserving the
integrity of the educational institution and the goals it is attempting to
achieve. Thus, this new sort of grievance procedure would need to balance
institutional welfare with individual rights, insuring at the same time that
school-based educational programs remain intact and that the system does

not treat individual teachers in an arbitrary or capricious manner.

For purposes of adjudicating disputes regarding the districtwide agreement,
the union and the district jointly would select an individual to serve as a
kind of “permanent umpire.”7 Disagreements which are not resolved
through informal district and union discussions would be submitted to the
umpire, who would be empowered to render a binding decision which would
take into account the obvious language of the disputed contract provision as
well as the intent of the parties in developing it. In other words, the
permanent umpire would enter the dispute resolution process with a clear
sense of the district's, and schools', goals, missions, and rules of engagement.
That understanding would contribute substantially to the umpire's

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7Actually, the parties might agree to a panel of ”permanent umpires” rather than to a single
individual.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 43

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching
Focusing on the School Site: The Educational Compact

The new districtwide contract serves to frame the basics. Much of the ”heart”
of the educational enterprise would be shaped by and incorporated into a new

"educational compact” whose authority is lodged at the school site.

By means of the compact, employees would gain the right to make essential
workplace decisions. In exchange for this new authority, the parties to the
compact would assume responsibility for the educational performance of the
school. In order to ensure that the compact was structured in a manner
designed to assist the school to reach established educational goals, the school

district would retain authority to approve these agreements.

The basic components of the enterprise compact would include the following:
1) a statement of educational philosophy, 2) student performance targets, 3)
resource allocation mechanisms, 4) hiring procedures, 5) means for achieving
salary decisions, 6) class and course organization procedures, 7) programs for
professional development and assessment of professional performance, 8) a
statement about quality assurance and community support, and 9) a dispute

resolution plan.

Educational Philosophy

An initial feature of the compact would be a statement of the school's
operating mission and principles. In effect, this provision would provide an
opportunity for the school staff and community mutually to determine the
fundamental philosophy and educational underpinnings of the institution.
The purpose of this section would be to reach consensus on the answer to the

question, ”What is it our school stands for?”

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 44

    

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Student Performance ”Targets”

The compact would contain a set of measurable student performance targets.
Keyed to the student achievement goals enunciated in the central union-
district pact, the compact targets would be tailored to the school's clients and

mission. Targets would be more specific than goals, but would, like the goals,

focus on measures of student achievement.

Compact-enshrined targets would serve as a set of quality indicators for the
school. Annually the school would assess and make public the degree to
which it was making progress toward reaching the targets and achieving the
districtwide goals. The school would also be obliged to study, attempt to
understand, and explain to the wider school community conditions or
impediments which might, in any given year, prevent the school from

reaching its anticipated targets.

Resource Allocation

The majority of resources, as much as 90 percent, would be controlled at the
school site. Resources would be allocated to the school by the district on a per
pupil basis. In other words, each school would be able to anticipate its
complement of fiscal resources based on its student enrollment. The union
and district might determine, at the district level, additionally to develop a
"weighted” pupil allocation formula for special needs students (e.g., limited-
and non-English speaking pupils, those with physical and mental handicaps,

etc).

The principle purpose of the per pupil allocation arrangement is to prevent

the central district office from skimming resources that ought to be the

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 45

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

province of the school. Insofar as schools are able to predict their student

populations, they ought to be able to predict their revenue streams.

Parties to the school-based educational compact would establish procedures by
which to determine resource allocation priorities. All resource decisions
would be stated in terms that clearly link resource distribution to efforts to
further the educational program of the school. Here is where the staffing

rubber meets the conventional union road.

Should a school collectively decide that an individual teacher's skills, while
perhaps valuable in past years, no longer meets the needs of that school, the
staff would have the authority, based on the school‘s mission and educational
targets, to replace that teacher with another staff member (another teacher
with different skills, an administrator, a classified employee). The displaced
teacher's seniority would not provide him or her with an extra advantage in
terms of remaining at the school. Instead, that teacher would contact the
union and, through the hiring hall, seek a position more clearly suited to his

or her particular professional skills.

Hiring

Hiring would be a school site function. Prospective teachers would be sent for
interviews from the union hiring hall to schools with advertised positions.
Schools would develop procedures by which to make decisions regarding the
numerical and job specific composition of their staffs as well as mechanisms
for adding and deleting staff positions. Hiring decisions would be grounded
in judgments about the welfare of the educational program and school—

determined priorities regarding resource allocation.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 46

 

   
    
   
  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Salary Decisions

Teachers' pay would be structured on the basis of demonstrated knowledge
and skill. The districtwide salary schedule would serve as the baseline.
Schools would be free, within the limits of their available resources, to offer

teachers additional financial compensation.

Added compensation might be paid as a kind of ”signing bonus” to induce a
particularly well thought of, or well suited, teacher to come to a school. Or a
school might decide to award added dollars to a teacher or a group of teachers
who have made an especially significant contribution to the school in

reaching its performance targets.

Teachers who receive financial compensation above that to which they
would ordinarily have been entitled by virtue of their placement on the
salary schedule would not have those dollars permanently attached to their
pay scheme. Instead, these would become one-time bonuses, renewable at a
school's discretion. Determination of the distribution, if any, of added salary
to teachers or groups of teachers would be made at the school using the

procedure established in the compact.

Allowing schools to supplement teachers‘ basic compensation serves two
essential purposes. Namely, it enables schools to compete for teachers'
services and to tangibly reward those professionals whose contributions
measurably advance the school toward fulfilling its mission and achieving its

performance targets.

We are aware that the option selectively to award teachers added financial
compensation might appear to offer the prospect of encouraging a kind of

unhealthy interpersonal competition which could constrain teachers from

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 47

  
 
 
 
   
  

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

cooperating with one another. We believe in practice, however, this system
would have a different result. Namely, it would enhance the ability of
individual teachers or groups of teachers to be entrepreneurs. Moreover, in

most instances of furthering school programs, we believe advantage w0uld

accrue to collective rather than individual efforts.

Class and Course Organization

Schools would be free to determine the length of the school day, the number
of days school would operate (though they would not be able to fall below the
minimum specified in the districtwide contract), and the organization of
time. Fifty minute periods might give way to two-hour class blocks in high
schools. Elementary schools might structure their day so as to allow teachers
to team teach. Class sizes would “float” depending on the school-determined

needs of the educational program.

The educational compact would acknowledge time as a flexible and precious
resource. The agreement would contain a set of school-determined
procedures detailing the ways in which decisions about the allocation and use

of time would be made.

Professional Development and Professional Performance

Each school would determine a regular, ongoing program of professional
growth and development. This program would be tied specifically to
increasing teachers' capacity to improve student educational performance in

order to meet school-developed targets and district—promulgated goals.

The compact might, for example, include a set of school-specific incentives,
supports, and rewards for teachers who become certified through the

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Or it might designate

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 48

     
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
       
  
  
 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

particular areas of needed staff knowledge and skill and establish a program

designed to assist teachers to achieve these.

Performance assessment would be accomplished by means of the peer review
system previously described. Schools would adhere to the districtwide peer
review scheme, although they might contribute additional components of

professional accomplishment which individually they elect to assess.

Quality Assurance and Community Support

The educational compact is not simply a bargain among school staff members.
It is also an agreement with the school‘s public, a statement of mutual
obligation and commitment, professional accountability as well as public

accountability.

Teachers would agree to guarantee the quality of the educational program.
They would agree to act in the service of improved student achievement, to
make every reasonable effort to meet measurable educational goals, and to
continually upgrade and assess their own professional practice so as to

contribute to the welfare of the school.

In exchange, parents and the community would commit to support teachers
and the school. Support might be achieved in various ways. Parents, for
example, would agree to encourage students at home, assist students to the
degree possible with homework, attend parent conferences and back-to-school
events, and, to the extent their schedules permit, volunteer at their children's
schools. In addition, parents and the broader community would commit to

preserving the fiscal viability of schools.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 49

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

We believe that by including this kind of provision directly in the
educational compact, parents and the broader community are included as
partners in the educational program. Partnership does not simply imply
some form of modest participation in school or schooling activities. Rather,

this arrangement requires a mutual and symbiotic commitment of educators,

parents, and the full school community in insuring student success.

Dispute Resolution

The agreement would include a set of procedures to resolve compact issues
that fall into contention. The first step would be an informal meeting
between the aggrieved parties to try to resolve the dispute. Should this not
result in resolution of the disagreement, the issue would be submitted to a
school-based panel which would act as a sort of court of competent
jurisdiction. Like the permanent umpire in districtwide disputes, the school-
based “court” would, in developing a proposed solution to the problem, take
into account the welfare of the school and the furtherance of its educational
mission as well as the rights of the individual or individuals who are

asserting that they have been wronged

Disputes that are not resolved at the school level would be submitted to the

district-based permanent umpire for final adjudication.
New Agreements for a New System

We have suggested here new forms and a new format for negotiated
education labor agreements. Districtwide contracts would establish the basic
architecture for a flexible but fair system of employment which focuses on

educational processes and outcomes.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 50

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Educational compacts would be school-based agreements of interdependent

parts. Performance targets would be linked to quality assurance which would

be tied to resource allocation and professional development.

Perhaps more important than any single feature of the new system we have
outlined here is the principle of operation which underlies the development
of the accords. This new vision of collective bargaining assumes that union
and management share a common interest in educational improvement. It

is this interest that shapes decisions, influences actions, and produces results.
THE NEED FOR A NEW LABOR LAW

This brings us to the final prong of a reconceptualized education labor
relations system, the reform of labor law. Labor law reform is at best dicey,
particularly in these uncertain political times. Unions fear that opening the
door to statutory change plays into the hands of bargaining opponents and
paves the way for substantial diminution of organizing rights. This is not
union paranoia at work. Vocal individuals from the “if only” school of
thought—”If only we could...”—have asserted, without much evidence, that
eliminating the right of teachers to bargain collectively would cure much of

what ails American education.

Potential political difficulties notwithstanding, we are convinced that the new
labor relations system we have outlined in this paper is a mismatch with

existing labor statutes. Reforming the system requires changing the law.

The principles underlying current labor policy are found in the National
Labor Relations Act (1935) and two laws which amended the NLRA, the Taft-
Hartley Act (1947) and the Landrum-Griffin Act (1959). These laws apply to

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 51

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

the private sector, but many of their tenets have been employed in the
development of state labor relations laws governing teachers and other public

employees.

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), an outgrowth of increased pro-
organized labor public sentiment in the wake of the New Deal, defined the
rights of employees to select an exclusive representative, established the right
of unions to bargain collectively, required that employers negotiate in good
faith, and created the National Labor Relations Board to administer the Act.
The Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin Acts refined the responsibilities of
unions and the rights of employees and employers. Taft-Hartley restricted
some union activities, such as the secondary boycott, and created the Federal
Mediation and Conciliation Service for the purpose of resolving union-
management disputes short of resorting to legal action. Landrum-Griffin,
also called the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, was
designed to regulate the relationship between the union and its members.
Labeled by some as the ”bill of rights for union members,” Landrum-Griffin

allows members to sue unions for inappropriate or unfair representation.

US. labor law is built on an industrial model. Collective bargaining statutes,
be they federal laws for private employees or state statutes covering teachers
and other public employees8, create separate functions of labor and
management, assume employers and employees have different interests in
the workplace relationship, and shelter adversarial union-management

interactions.

 

8All public sector labor-management statutes are state laws. There is no federal law covering
public employees in their right to organize and bargain collectively with their employer.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 52

  
 

 

 

 

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The protections of labor law were intended to apply to those whose work
content and condition were controlled by others, thus the emphasis on
separation of labor and management reSponsibilities. The 1980 US. Supreme
Court Yeshiva decision reinforced this separation in higher education.
Faculty members at Yeshiva University were denied collective bargaining
rights because their faculty senate and its committees made substantive
decisions at their university.9 While this federal legal doctrine has never
been applied in any state case governing public school teachers, it has a
potentially chilling effect on reshaping the boundaries between labor work

and management work.

Fearing the continuance of company-dominated unions, the NLRA created a
clear prohibition against management acts that would help unions.
Subsequent case law made the barrier explicit and reinforced the ideal that
labor relations properly understood and practiced required an arms-length,

adversarial relationship.

We are thus left with an odd situation in which it is possible for teacher
unions to encourage professionalization among teachers but in which
existing labor law does not encourage it. Thus far, few reformers have
considered driving professionalism through statutory change for the reasons
already cited. Teacher unionists strongly fear changing labor statutes except to
adopt collective bargaining in those states where it is still illegal. Legislative
sentiment is generally not pro—union, and any attempt to change labor
statutes would open the door to opponents who would strip bargaining rights

from teachers.

 

9Yeshiva is a private university. Thus, its employees are covered by the provisions of the
National Labor Relations Act.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 53

   
    

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

The tactical difficulty of changing labor statutes has inhibited active
consideration of the patterning effect of a statute based on the professional
union model. However, the potential patterning effect is substantial. It was
only after the NLRA was signed, for example, that unionism took off in the
19305. In teacher labor relations, it was only after the ”little NLRA” statutes

started to be adopted and copied by the states that teacher collective bargaining

expanded rapidly across the country.

Without such a patterning effect, professional unionism is not likely to
spread very far very fast. Although professionalism may flow from worker
instinct and their communities, it requires statutory institutionalization and

changes in authority and norm systems to bring it about.

We do not intend fully to explore the details of a new labor statute in this
paper. We can, however, suggest here some of the principal dimensions of a

new law.

The statute would need to take into account who is represented and at what
level. Current law makes provisions for bargaining units (the constellation
of employees covered by a particular contract) at a district level. Existing law
also creates categories of employees. Professional employees, for example,
cannot be part of the same bargaining unit as non-professional employees.
The new law would need to make provision for both districtwide and school-
based bargaining units and, in the case of school-based units, would need to

eliminate the distinction among categories of employees.

The new labor statute would also need to make labor-management
cooperation a recognized feature of the relationship, not a source of suspicion.

Joint enterprises, such as professional development schools, cannot flourish

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 54

       
  
      
 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

in an atmosphere in which the law looks with disfavor upon collaborative

efforts between employer and employee.

We have already spoken of the dilemmas created by a restricted scope of
bargaining. Suffice it here to reiterate that the new labor statute should lift all
constraints on topics of labor-management agreement. The labor relations
system we have suggested builds in professional accountability and public
involvement such that citizens should not have cause to worry about

collaborative policy formation.

Peer review, we have written, is an essential element of professional
unionism. Current law makes peer systems of professional assessment all but
illegal.10 The new law must reverse this and not only allow for, but strongly

encourage, peer evaluation.

Current statutes for public sector employees do not envision an arrangement
such as the hiring hall. On the other hand, there is nothing in law that
would prevent the development of such a mechanism. However, the move
away from industrial collective bargaining with its emphasis on district-based
rules of work would be enhanced by a provision in the new law that expressly

acknowledges the hiring hall function.

We hope that the labor relations system we have outlined will, in practice, be
a largely cooperative one. However, it would be naive to assume disputes
would never arise. Both districtwide contracts and school-based compacts

would contain within them means to resolve disagreements. This is not the

 

10 We say here ”all but” illegal because, while the language of collective bargaining statutes
would seem to render peer review illegal, there have been no court challenges to peer review
systems that have been implemented.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 55

      
  
  
   

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

province of state or federal statute. The issue of the right to strike, however,

is a legal matter.

We believe it is folly simply to legislate a prohibition on strikes. If employees
wish to withhold their labor, they will, law or no law. Recent history,
however, suggests that the utility of strikes as a means of resolving labor-

management disagreements may nearly have reached its saturation point.

Thus, we suggest a specific set of parameters for strikes be established in the
new labor law. We do not believe that under the school-based system we
have proposed the right to strike should be extended to individual schools
except under two circumstances: when employees are brought into the school
improperly (e.g., without making use of the hiring hall), and when work is
contracted Out in contravention of the processes established in the
educational compact. Teachers would retain the right to strike against the
central authority. However, since the districtwide contract is slender and
salary issues are jointly the province of an independent Salary Review Board
and individual schools, we would anticipate instances of economic-based
work stoppages would be few. Still, disputes about various matters may go
unresolved. The new statute needs to acknowledge this possibility and make

provision for it.

Finally, the new labor statute would require a regulatory board to oversee
administration of the law. Current labor law administrative bodies—the
National Labor Relations Board for federal law, state-appointed public
employment relations boards for state statutes—function as legislators,
promulgating rules and regulations about the conduct of bargaining and

administration of contracts, and as quasi-judicial entities, hearing complaints

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 56

 

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of unfair labor practices and illegal or improper work stoppages. The result is
agencies which wrap labor-management proceedings in complex systems of
legalisms. We foresee a much more attenuated set of responsibilities for labor

boards under the new system.

The new statute would be designed around the rights, responsibilities, and
obligations of the new system. The law would have the effect of moving
labor relations in education from an industrial—based system to that of

professional unionism.

We purposely here have avoided discussion of whether the new statute
ought to be state-based or federal. Individual state statutes, given the
experience with current bargaining law, are likely to be quite similar and,
perhaps sufficiently useful. Federal law would have the salutary effect of
making the teacher labor market all the more flexible, but public employee
representation does not have a history in federal statute. We thus remain

agnostic on this issue.
BRINGING THE NEW SYSTEM INTO BEING

This paper has made the case for a fundamental transformation of the
purposes and operational procedures of teacher unions. We are convinced
unions can, and should, play a central role in bringing into being a new
institutional structure for education. Building the new institution causes
unions to let go of tradition and concurrently opens new opportunities for

organizing.

We have argued for the creation of a new, flexible labor market for teachers.

Teachers and their unions would organize around career security rather than

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 57

 

 

   
  

 

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

job security. Exclusive representation would be achieved through the
modern hiring hall. A new career ladder would provide opportunities for
logical career progression in teaching. Portable pensions and benefits would
offer teachers the prospect of marketing their professional services without
jeopardizing their long-run welfare. Opportunities for professional practice
contracts would allow teachers to be entrepreneurial and create jobs that
match their professional skills. Quality control within the profession would
be maintained through union participation in teacher preparation,

professional development, and peer review.

The reconceptualized labor relations system we have presented here also
requires fundamental revision of the nature and substance of written labor-
management agreements. Districtwide contracts which encompass
centralized work rules and compensation routines would be replaced by two
new kinds of agreement. The revised version of the district level contract
would establish the union and school district as partners in the educational
enterprise. Together they would develop student-focused goals, create
redefined salary and benefit packages, and initiate peer systems of professional
review. The vast majority of education decision making would shift from
the district level to individual school sites. Through educational compacts,
school-based employees would have the authority to make workplace
decisions and, in exchange, would assume responsibility for educational
performance. All of these changes would be enshrined in a new labor law

fitted to the new system.

We do not underestimate the challenge set before unions. The system of
professional unionism we have outlined here represents a radical departure

from established norms. We also do not underestimate the power of unions

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 58

   

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

to persuade. Should unions embrace fundamental institutional reform, we
believe they can succeed not only in preserving their own organizational
integrity but, more importantly, they can be instrumental in bringing into

being a revitalized system of public schooling in America.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 59

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Organizing the Other Half of Teaching

Sources

Bluestone, Barry and Irving. Negotiating the Future: A Labor Perspective on

American Business. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1992.

Kelley, Carolyn and Allen Odden. ”Reinventing Teacher Compensation
Systems,” CPRE Finance Brief, Consortium for Policy Research in Education,

New Jersey: Rutgers University, 1995.

Kerchner, Charles and Julia E. Koppich. A Union of Professionals: Labor

Relations and Educational Reform , New York: Teachers College Press, 1993.

Lortie, Dan C. Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1975.

Walton, RE, and RB. McKersie. A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations,
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Page 60

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