Negotiating the Great Recession: How Teacher Collective Bargaining Outcomes Change in Times of Financial Duress

Abstract

This article examines how teacher collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), teacher salaries, and class sizes changed during the Great Recession. Using a district-level data set of California teacher CBAs that includes measures of subarea contract strength and salaries from 2005–2006 and 2011–2012 tied to district-level longitudinal data, we estimate difference-in-difference models to examine bargaining outcomes for districts that should have been more or less fiscally constrained. We find that unions and administrators change critical elements of CBAs and district policy during times of fiscal duress. This includes increasing class sizes, reducing instructional time, and lowering base salaries to relieve financial pressures and negotiating increased protections for teachers in areas with less direct financial implications, including grievance procedures and nonteaching duties.

Equity, engagement, and health: school organisational issues and priorities during COVID-19

“…From a more abstract theoretical perspective, this research contributes to understanding school organisations during times of crises, and the role that values play in the decisions to be made during different crises. Many of the studies on schools during times of crises focus on the effects of these crises on student learning, teacher employment and other educational outcomes (Berkman 2008;Strunk and Marianno 2019;Azevedo et al 2020). However, less understood and documented are the decisionmaking dynamics in response to crises, teachers' and school leaders' concerns with the consequences of these decisions, and the competing values inherent in these concerns.…”

“…However, more than the centralised dynamics of policy and decision-making regarding school closures, it is equally important to understand how school staff enact such policies and how these 'street-level bureaucrats' are active agents whose priorities and concerns must be heard and addressed (Taylor 2007;Trinidad 2019). Although research on teachers' interaction with and within organisations has been extensive (Ingersoll 2001;Conley and Glasman 2008;Ball 2012), specific research on teachers during times of societal crisessuch as recessionstend to focus on financial, bargaining, and employment outcomes (Simpkins, Roza, and Simburg 2012;Goldhaber et al 2016;Strunk and Marianno 2019). However, teaching does continue during times of crises, and the experience and priorities of educators on the ground need to be documented and theorised to understand how they make sense and function during a time of societal crisis.…”

Teachers’ Unions, Collective Bargaining, and the Response to COVID-19

“…Prior research on CBAs shows that contracts are resistant to change without a large precipitating event serving as an impetus for revision Pascal 1979, 1988;Cowen and Fowles 2013;Ingle and Wisman 2018;Strunk and Marianno 2019;Strunk et al 2018). Pascal (1979, 1988) study changes to content in 151 teacher CBAs from two time periods (between 1970 and 1975, and between 1980 and 1985) and find few substantive modifications.…”

“…However, other research shows that shocks to state budgets and top-down state policy changes can trigger modifications to local CBAs. For example, Strunk and Marianno (2019) find that pressures from the Great Recession required California school districts and teachers' unions to revisit longstanding contract language. Strunk et al (2018) find that state policies that reduce the scope of collective bargaining led to changes in CBAs in both Washington and Michigan.…”

“…New economic realities may mean it is no longer possible to both reduce teacher workload (should districts not be able to maintain a normal face-to-face schedule) and preserve levels of teacher compensation. School districts could consider mostly costless contract enhancements, should economic concessions to teacher pay be necessary, as done during the Great Recession (Strunk and Marianno 2019). This could include, for example, providing or establishing a Sick Leave Bank for teachers caring for a sick family member, and/or lessening the burden of personnel evaluation systems by reducing the paperwork burden placed on teachers, reducing the required number of observations or standards on which they focus, or suspending measures of student growth (which will likely be confounded with prior and ongoing COVID-19 learning disruptions).…”