This paper highlights some of the similarities and differences in the labor-management experiences of Boston University (Massachusetts), Temple University (Pennsylvania), the University of Bridgeport (Connecticut), and Yeshiva University (New York) to determine which may represent failures and which do not. In comparing the Yeshiva and Boston…

School improvement cannot be negotiated. In many educational circles, negotiation carries a negative connotation that creates a perception of adversaries, causing trust levels between participants to decline. Decisions made in an atmosphere of adversarial relationships between teacher unions and school boards are not always the productive…

There has been for over a century a movement for the humanization of work. The movement's two branches--a European one emphasizing worker alienation and structural change and a North American one emphasizing job enrichment--have converged somewhat as the concept of "quality of work life" (QWL) has emerged in the 1970's. Business concepts…

Collective bargaining contracts with teachers unions have reduced principals' autonomy but have still left them opportunities for effective administration of their schools. Interviews with 289 educators in six diverse school districts across the country show that contracts have limited principals' powers both from above, by centralizing labor…

This study involved the identification of factors associated with major organizational changes in public schools as affected by collective bargaining. The goal was to replicate Whyte's 1951 study of private sector organizational change to determine whether similar patterns existed in public sector organizational behavior. The study used Whyte's…

This paper looks at the meaning of academic freedom and threats to that freedom in recent conflicts and legal rulings. The introduction calls academic freedom confusing and widely misunderstood and offers an historical and legal explanation of the concept as well as discussion of the traditional areas of conflict in instruction, research,…

Most employees in the United States are employees at will--they can be fired for any or no reason. In one exception to this rule, however, federal or state statutes protect employee expression, most significantly in the area of private employee testimony. The protective schemes developed by Congress and the state legislatures are of two types:…

Arbitration decisions resulting from school district disciplinary actions and professional employee grievances are studied to determine the extent to which school district decisions are upheld by arbitrators, and to identify factors for the support, modification, or contest of a district decision. Data sources are 333 arbitration cases from 27…

Multi-year employee contracts can substantially reduce the time and energy that goes into negotiations. In this transcript, panelists from the Strongsville (Ohio) city schools discuss their recent 5-year settlement with their non-teaching (classified) employees. Each panelist is introduced, and then the first, James Marietta, provides an overview…

This publication consists of two papers that examine different topics related to collective bargaining for school personnel and alternative methods of determining teachers' and principals' salaries. The papers were originally prepared to serve as a basis for discussion at a 1976 meeting sponsored by the Canadian School Trustees' Association for…

Whether or not collective bargaining in the public sector becomes a universal practice, work stoppages cannot be considered an acceptable method for resolving contract disputes. Public opposition to strikes by teachers is growing. School districts and teachers must realize that collective bargaining is a process of compromise, and that candor,…

The subject of collective bargaining negotiation impasse procedures in the public sector, which includes public school systems, is a broad one. In this speech, the author introduces the various procedures, explains how they are used, and lists their advantages and disadvantages. Procedures discussed are mediation, fact-finding, arbitration,…

This paper--part of a collection of 54 papers from the 48th annual conference of the Education Law Association held in November 2002--is an outline of a presentation on collective bargaining in higher education. The first section covers representation issues, historical issues, and current trends, and includes subsections on faculty; training and…

School-based management (SBM) and its counterpart, shared decision making, raise traditional questions about power, representativeness, decentralization, and professionalism. This paper turns to history to provide a framework for untangling the issues that have come to the fore in current debates about power and shared school governance. In a…

This paper examines the 1991 graduate assistant strike at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the underlying reasons for the strike, and the role of graduate assistants at American universities. It argues that low pay, lack of fringe benefits, poor working conditions, and uncompromising administration attitudes forced graduate assistants…