The legal status of collective bargaining by public school teachers

This paper examines the characteristics of area populations that predict the content of bargaining legislation for public school teachers. The authors provide evidence suggesting that 1) pro-bargaining legislation is correlated with the representation of union members and related workers who benefit from collective bargaining, and 2) the legislation appears to be demanded by career workers as a means of transferring resources away from teachers with relatively short career horizons. An N-chotomous probit model is used to estimate the form of legislation that ranges from bargaining prohibition to prescribed bargaining. Data for the study were obtained from 95 SMSAs in 35 states. We are indebted to Paul H. Rubin and Elchanon Cohn for their substantial contributions to this project. We also received helpful suggestions from Chris Paul and R. Carter Hill.