Are changing labor laws silencing the teachers’ voice?
Many states have made significant changes to the laws governing public sector labor relations in recent years, changes that are already impacting teachers unions’ efforts to maintain membership. Most of the controversy in Wisconsin – and other states undergoing similar labor retrenchment – has centered on economic consequences such as government spending and worker wages. Yet, states’ ongoing efforts to redesign public sector labor law may prove even more consequential for the political power and influence of public employees unions in the years ahead.
As his critics are quick to emphasize, Gov. Scott Walker weakened collective bargaining rights for the public employees whose unions have historically been strong supporters of the Democratic Party (e.g., teachers and state, county, and municipal employees). This change leaves the state’s more Republican-friendly police and firefighter unions intact, showing that politicians believe union-friendly labor laws help enhance the political effectiveness of union interest groups. In a forthcoming article in The American Journal of Political Science, Patrick Flavin (Baylor University) and I examine just how instrumental one union-favored policy—mandatory public sector collective bargaining laws enacted in the 1960s and 1970s—have been to union efforts to mobilize their supporters in electoral politics.
In particular, we looked at data on the political participation of public school teachers from 1956 to 2004. During this time period, 34 states adopted mandatory collective bargaining laws for teachers, which enabled us to compare the political activity of individual teachers before and after their unions operated with the benefit of a mandatory bargaining law. Substantively, our quantitative analysis found that the effect of a teacher working in a mandatory bargaining law environment significantly influences his or her likelihood of participating in politics (e.g., campaign contributions, volunteering, attending political meetings). The big surprise is that this effect of the bargaining law environment is greater than the effect of a teacher’s household income, education, and union membership status. We further identified increased contact (outreach) from organized groups (i.e. teacher unions) seeking to mobilize rank-and-file teachers as a likely explanation for this finding.
What specifically about mandatory bargaining laws helped catalyze political participation among teachers? For one thing, the onset of collective bargaining in the public sector conferred an assortment of benefits (often formal and contractual) to teacher unions at the organizational level, benefits that in turn made it easier and less costly for unions to focus on recruiting rank-and-file employees to participate in politics. To mention just two small examples: it is quite common to find collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) that provideAre changing labor laws silencing the teachers’ voice? | Brookings Institution:
