Although Illinois has not enacted a comprehensive bargaining statute, school districts have been using the collective bargaining process to determine teacher salaries, benefits, and conditions of employment for more than a decade. Nevertheless, since the 1977-78 school year, Illinois public schools have experienced 139 teacher strikes. The purpose…

Conclusions about public school labor relations advanced in this report are based on analysis of data from a two-phase study. The first phase consisted of case studies conducted during entire collective bargaining cycles in eight school districts--four in Illinois and four in California. The second phase of the research expanded the work into 65…