Collective bargaining,teachers, and student achievement

Approximately two-thirds of the nation’s elementary and secondary schoolteachers are represented by the American Federation of Teachers or the National Education Association. Surprisingly, however, relatively little is known of the impact of teachers’ unions on student achievement. The authors offer evidence on this point by estimating “college entrance exam production functions” for a national sample of 2,360 students. Of particular importance, the estimation includes a correction for the selectivity bias inherent if the analysis considers only the performance of test-takers. Results indicate that students in a unionized environment score about 4.7 percent higher on their college entrance exams (SAT and ACT) than their counterparts from a nonunion environment. This study was partially supported by the Joint Council on Economic Education through funding provided by the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust. Additional support was provided by the Dean’s Office and the Division of Business Research, College of Business and Industry, Mississippi State University. The authors thank Margaret Ray for her assistance.     

Collective bargaining and the determinants of teachers’ salaries

Using a national sample of public high schools, we find that bargaining spillovers play an important role in teachers’ labor markets. The spillover variable consistently indicates a larger bargaining effect than does the collective bargaining coverage dummy. We estimate that a 10 percent increase in the state density of teachers’ unions increases the highest teacher salaries by 2.6 percent and the lowest by 0.2 percent. Consistent with prior research, teacher union density was most strongly associated with highest salaries and had a nonsignificant positive association with lowest salaries. Teachers’ unions also affect the structural determinants of teachers’ salaries, offering some additional evidence supporting a median voter model. The proportion of unionized teachers with higher levels of education and experience (i.e., the highest paid) is positively related to highest salaries. Finally, our results confirm the importance of demand factors in teacher wage determination. The authors thank Shawn Windsor for his excellent research assistance and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper. The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research provided the primary data set used in this paper. The U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics compiled the original data set. We gratefully acknoledge the assistance of Eric Hanushek and Lori Taylor who also provided data used herein. This research was funded in part by a grant from the McGill Faculty of Management Research Committee.     

From union hegemony to union disintegration: Collective bargaining in cement and related industries

The cement industry provides an interesting example of the impact of collective bargaining where management determines that it cannot afford a strike, yields to extreme union demands, but deludes itself that it can withstand the economic impact of unionism under such circumstances because almost all competitors are similarly situated and labor costs can be partially offset by automation. The small Cement, Lime, and Gypsum Workers Union won not only high wages and benefits, but imposed restrictive rules as severe as those in any industry. Eventually, however, foreign competition and economic realities forced the companies to revolt, and the union found that it could not sustain strikes. An ill-conceived merger broke up, an independent union was formed, and today unionism, once so strong, is weak and divided as management imposes or forces acceptance of its conditions. The story, while unique in many ways, resembles what has occurred in other industries with high fixed costs, militant unions, and the reluctance of management to sacrifice current gains for longer run needs. Professor Emeritus of Management and former Director, Industrial Research Unit. Ms. Sue Torelli, Librarian, Industrial Research Unit, and Kevin Barry, Librarian, Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University, provided helpful information and numerous documents.     

Making connections: Global Production Networks and World City Networks

This article offers a sympathetic critique of recent attempts to forge a dialogue between Global Commodity Chain (GCC) and World City Network (WCN) approaches to global economic change. While broadly supportive of the endeavour, we make three observations about this ongoing project. First, we question the utility of emphasizing the common roots of these approaches in World Systems Theory given that both have subsequently moved into new epistemological terrain and, additionally, that the language of core and periphery seems ever less pertinent to global economic realities. Second, we seek to highlight the potential dangers of essentializing the global system as one that is primarily shaped by certain kinds of connections – namely the intra-firm relationships of advanced producer service firms – between certain kinds of cities – namely the leading tiers of global cities. Third, we point to the need to expand the interpretations of relationality within global networks to include a wider variety of actors, particularly beyond the corporate realm, and to explore the dynamic power relations between those actors. We also discuss the methodological challenges of expanding the purview of research in this way. This commentary has been stimulated by the articles in the special issue of Global Networks on 'World City Networks and Global Commodity Chains'.     

Making connections: Severe mental illness and closeness with other people

Much has been written about social lives of people with severe mental illness (SMI). Before social lives can flourish, however, people with SMI must first get close to other people. We studied this closeness by holding three hour-long focus groups at Fountain House, a community mental health agency in New York City. We found that closeness between two people with SMI is challenging because someone with depression, for example, may have trouble understanding someone with a different disorder (e.g., schizophrenia). Romantically, closeness is also challenging—SMI is hard to explain to partners. In the workplace, closeness is difficult because SMI can alienate co-workers. It could push them away. In mental health programs, we found that closeness has more of a chance to develop (1) during evening and weekend activities; (2) when activities are planned often enough to prevent isolation; and (3) when staff reach out to people before extended absence causes distance.     

Collective consumption models with restricted bargaining weights: an empirical assessment based on experimental data

We use experimental data to analyze consumption decisions by groups of individuals who have to reach a consensus on spending a joint budget. Our experiment involves dyads (i.e. two-member groups) who have to compose consumption bundles consisting of three commodities (wine, orange juice and M&Ms). We focus on the collective consumption model to describe group behavior. This model represents group decisions as Pareto optimal outcomes of a within-group bargaining process, with rational group members who are each characterized by individual bargaining weights. We also consider specifications of the collective model that restrict the variation of these bargaining weights. A distinguishing feature of our study is that we use revealed preference testing tools to assess the goodness-of-fit and discriminatory power of alternative specifications of the collective model. Our experimental results suggest that the most appropriate model specification allows for a limited variation of the bargaining weights.     

The Collective Artistry of Activism: A Review of Making Trouble: Life and Politics

Lynne Segal's autobiography upholds the feminist tradition of writing about women's marginalized experiences but she does so without creating the traditional unitary isolated subject. Consciously or not, she has written an autobiography that is psychosocial, often focusing on the social in favor of the psyche. This review discusses this unique book, which writes a life always within a rich cultural context. We are taken from her childhood life in Australia to her days as a single mother in the political and cultural maelstrom of 1960s London. Here her book becomes not just autobiography but also a cultural history of radical movements and the change they created. Written clearly with personal stories from other women, Segal's book is a timely reminder of how simply complicated social activism can be.     

Making Sense of Social Change: Observing Collective Action in Networked Cultures

This article presents an overview of rising trends in the study of networked interactions conveyed by social media technologies and the emergence of new meanings associated with social change. In recent years, a healthy amount of studies has focused on ICT uses within collective action, considering social media tools to have become crucial components of many transnational movements and social change projects. Crossing boundaries between social movements theories, political science, and communication studies, literature suggests that ‘online activism’ and increasingly networked interactions may have transformed the meanings and definitions associated with ‘collective action’ and ‘social change’. To make sense of these meanings, we identify three approaches used by scholars, which focus on (i) the actual networking of actors, (ii) the diffusion of new repertoires and frames through networks, and (iii) making sense of new meanings conveyed within networked cultures. We conclude by suggesting the need for more comprehensive research to better observe and make sense of how's actors define collective action and how they use social media tools when striving to convey social change.     

Making and missing connections: learning disability services and the transition from adolescence to adulthood

The transition from adolescence to young adulthood for people with a learning disability is complex and has not generally been handled well in the UK. The response from Government agencies has been to introduce law, regulation, guidance and good practice guides, but these appear to have only limited effect. Drawing upon evidence from a national study, this article examines explanations for the limited progress in this area. It identifies inter-organisational divisions as a crucial factor, and is critical of the 'top-down' approach that has characterised policy responses. It is suggested that a person-centred approach based upon Elmore's concept of 'backward mapping' provides both a tool for understanding and a model for improved implementation.     

Concession bargaining and unions: Impacts and implications

The characteristics of concession bargaining relating to management behavior, information disclosure, intraunion activity, and union member attitudes are formulated and briefly described, followed by an exploration of the impact of the experience on and the implications for unions. The analysis suggests that union solidarity, union leader credibility, and union effectiveness have been negatively affected. Concession bargaining appears to lead to more difficulty in administering unions, a further decline in union image, an emphasis on adversarial relations with management, and the potential use of new tactics in collective bargaining. The authors express appreciation to Dr. Donald McPherson, Dr. Antone Aboud, and Commissioner Joseph Biondo, FMCS, for helpful comments.     

Collective bargaining,compulsory arbitration,and salary settlements in the public sector: The case of New Jersey’s municipal police officers

This study investigates the effect of the use of final-offer arbitration on the salaries of municipal police officers in New Jersey using a regression model to control for the possible biases introduced by non-random use of the procedure. The results indicate that salary settlements which resulted from final-offer arbitration awards were not significantly higher or lower than conventionally arbitrated settlements or nonarbitrated settlements, despite the fact that arbitrators chose union final offers more frequently than they chose employer final offers. The results also contain evidence of asymmetric behavior by the parties under final-offer arbitration with the unions appearing more risk averse than the employers. An earlier version of this study was circulated under a different title as Working Paper No. 129 of the Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University. The author wishes to thank Joseph Altonji, Orley Ashenfelter, James Bennett, Gilles Grenier, Thomas Kochan, Richard Lester, John Pencavel, Jeffrey Tener, and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The author also wishes to acknowledge the support for this study provided by the Center for New Jersey Affairs at Princeton University.     

Collective Bargaining and Alcoholism:

In this project 106 collective bargaining contracts were analyzed to identify union-management responses to the problem of alcoholism in the workplace. The original contracts were collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and published on microfiche by the Microfilming Corporation of America. The contracts in this set were executed between 1977 and 1982, and cover all private sector employers with over 900 employees in Michigan. The purpose of this study was to determine the present state of collective bargaining language as a basis for identifying how employers in a unionized setting handle the problem of alcoholism at the work site. The authors discovered that alcoholism is most frequently dealt with in the disciplinary procedure. Clauses dealing with insurance benefits are the next most frequent site. There is evidence of alcoholism increasingly becoming an area for labor-management cooperation. The paper concludcs with some suggestions as to how EAP practitioners can enhance the success of programs in a unionized setting.     

Collective Memory Anchors: Collective Identity and Continuity in Social Movements

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data from two social movement organizations, this article highlights the way that remembrances of the past are inserted into present interactions to help maintain a sense of movement continuity. Seeing collective identity and collective memory as intertwined dynamic processes, the article argues that the continuity of a social movement is maintained, in part, when movement members insert narrative commemorations that constrain current collective identity development. The process examined is that of “collective memory anchoring,” in which participants instrumentally and/or contextually bring forward the past during interactions in such a way that the formulation of elements in a movement's collective identity appears to mirror past formulations. The common constraints of preexisting networks, participants' shared cultural backgrounds, and a movement's collective action frames are explored.