In "The Teacher Insurgency," Leo Casey addresses how the unexpected wave of recent teacher strikes has had a dramatic impact on American public education, teacher unions, and the larger labor movement. Casey explains how this uprising was not only born out of opposition to government policies that underfunded public schools and…

While the South African Constitution enshrines both children's right to a basic education and teachers' right to strike, conflict between these two often occurs when the way in which teachers' unions conduct strike actions detracts from learners' education. This article identifies the parties affected by industrial action in the school context,…

This article examines the legal and political significance of teacher unionization in rural and suburban school districts between 1960 and 1975. While most historians focus on the growth of unions in urban areas, strikes in outlying districts played a determinative role in the development of public sector labor law, particularly in the arbitration…

A strike last week by some 29,000 teachers in Chicago pushed long-simmering tensions over deeply divisive school improvement ideas--including changes in teacher evaluation and the takeover or closure of underperforming schools--into the national spotlight. A framework for a tentative agreement emerged last Friday, and the union's house of…

In 2002, approximately two thirds of school teachers in the Canadian province of Alberta went on strike. Drawing on media, government and union documents, this case study reveals some contours of the political economy of labor relations in education that are normally hidden from view. Among these features are that the state can react to worker…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate the strength of correlation between union-administrator relationships and principals' opportunities to create a positive school culture for learning during intent to strike conditions. The goal of this positivist study was to allow for an exploration of the extent to which…

Union-management relationships have been filled with fear since the rise of capitalism; public education is no different. Workers fear exploitation by owners (profits depend on it) and capitalist/management has always worried that the working classes will organize and either take over the firm or strike and bring production to a screeching halt.…

This study investigated the phenomena of strike propensity and strike compliance among teachers in an illegal teachers' strike that occurred in British Columbia, Canada, in 1983. A questionnaire developed for this study was distributed in early 1984 to a random sample of 1,000 teachers from eight school districts; a total of 456 responded. The…

Profiles Robert P. Bates, director of field services for the American Federation of Teachers. (IRT)

This paper reviews seven specific components of change that labor militancy in public education will have on the American economic system in the future. First, teacher militancy will influence other public employees to become more militant and will pressure private-sector employees to unionize. Second, additional state and federal public-employer…

A superintendent narrates the events preceding a strike in his district, and the steps he took to prepare for and weather the strike. (IRT)

Reviews the literature on the effects of teacher strikes on students and reports the results of a study analyzing student achievement in the presence or absence of strikes. Students in schools not experiencing strikes showed consistent gains, especially in mathematics, over students in schools where strikes took place. (WD)

A superintendent's personal account of a teacher strike reveals the lessons learned from the conflict and offers suggestions for avoiding similar situations. (WD)