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Collective Bargaining
Public education is the most heavily unionized occupation in the United States. The National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers union, has about 2.5 million members, about 2 million of whom are K–12 teachers. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest teachers union, has about 1 million members, and about half of these members are classroom teachers.
NEA and AFT grew from different traditions, which initially shaped their approach to unionization and collective bargaining. In its early years, NEA was considered a professional organization and was not dominated by classroom teachers. Rather, its leadership tended to be superintendents, college presidents, and college professors. In contrast, AFT, from its inception, has seen itself as a teachers union.
The emergence of AFT in the 1960s forced NEA to shift its focus more strongly toward teachers' interests. Today, differences between the nation's two largest unions have faded, and both AFT and NEA now clearly see themselves as advocates and representatives of classroom teachers and as unions.
In recent years, both major teachers unions have become powerful participants in the nation's educational policy debates, where they make their voices heard regarding the interests of teachers and teachers' views about educational practice. Teacher unions are now major players in American educational policy and practice. At the same time, as unions have gained influence over public education, the education reform movement has grown and intensified. Questions have now arisen with regard to whether teachers unions can be effective promoters of educational reform while maintaining their traditional role as assertive advocates on the bread-and-butter issues important to their members.
Collective Bargaining and Public Education: The Context
All unions exist primarily to protect and enhance the social and economic welfare of their members, and this truism certainly applies to the teachers unions. Teachers unions advance their members' interests chiefly through bargaining collectively with school districts. Prior to the emergence of collective bargaining in the public schools, teachers were largely powerless to improve their working conditions or their economic status.
Private sector workers gained the right to organize and bargain collectively with their employers in 1935, with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The NLRA did not apply to public sector workers, however. In 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to enact a collective-bargaining law for public sector employees; but the watershed event may be the teacher collective-bargaining agreement that was signed in New York City in 1961. From this beginning, collective bargaining for public school teachers eventually spread to approximately two thirds of the states. In fact, with the exception of Texas, all states with significant urban populations authorize collective bargaining between school systems and the teachers unions.
In all states that have adopted collective bargaining in the public education sector, state law governs the relationship between teachers unions and school districts. These laws differ somewhat from state to state, but in general, they require school districts to bargain in good faith with the teachers' exclusive representative over teachers' wages and benefits and other terms and conditions of employment. In many states, school districts bargain collectively with other employee groups as well, including bus drivers, clerical workers, custodians, and principals.
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