Reframing the narrative: Renewing power resources and capabilities in union campaigns for public education

Abstract

Neoliberal logics have put teacher unions on the defensive, requiring evaluation of the resources and capabilities necessary to improve teachers’ industrial and professional conditions and broader public education issues. This article examines the case of a teachers' union in Australia – the NSW Teachers’ Federation – and their renewal of resources and capabilities in recent public education campaigns. In applying a power resources and capabilities framework to the analysis of two prominent campaigns, this article develops the argument for renewal of power resources and capabilities through mobilising and transforming narrative resources and reframing public education issues in order to challenge ideological narratives around public education, build discursive power and sustain influence within a neoliberal environment.

From marketising to empowering: Evaluating union responses to devolutionary policies in education

“…While mobilising certain power resources will necessarily shift depending on the political and social conditions (Schmalz et al, 2018), the current 'postbureaucratic' environment that unions operate in invites consideration of ways forward for renewing union power. While industrial action was not a prominent response to LSLD, contemporary regulatory limitations on industrial avenues for unions has necessitated efforts to leverage power from other sources, including coalitional power (Gavin, 2021), notwithstanding the limitations of activating this power resource as described. At an institutional level, the marginalisation of legal and industrial avenues limits the ableness, and willingness, of public sector unions to mount resistance campaigns.…”

“…To complement and re-activate these power resources, teacher unions must also build new forms of discursive and symbolic power that challenge dominant neoliberal discourses deriding public education as a system in need of 'reform' (Gavin, 2021;Lévesque and Murray, 2013). Dominant discourses, like neoliberalism, can constrain union action by promoting the belief that 'there is no alternative' or delegitimising alternative ideas.…”

Collaborating for policy impact: Academic-practitioner collaboration in industrial relations research

“…Understanding how unions develop strategies to influence outcomes for workers has been an enduring debate in union renewal literature (Murray, 2017). While education unions have retained comparatively high membership levels, the institutional and regulatory pressures facing such unions have prompted re-evaluation of strategies to generate influence (Gavin, 2021). Union activities in many countries today are constrained to some degree by the power of the state and employers.…”

“…For instance, in NSW, legislative restrictions on strike action (i.e. diminishing structural power) has prompted the NSWTF to re-evaluate its traditional (industrial) strategies for advancing member conditions of work, and instead position the organisation as an advocate of teachers' industrial and professional interests (Gavin, 2021).…”

“…The issue of knowledge co-production through collaborating with the academic community is particularly absent in the scholarship on education trade unions, despite the strong political attention directed, since the 1990s, towards 'reforming' education and teachers' work, and teaching being one of the most unionised professions globally (Gavin, 2021;Robertson, 2012). Education unions face diverse operational and strategic challenges within this policy landscape, particularly as policymaking resides largely with those outside the profession.…”