Remembering, Reimagining, and Reviving Social Justice Teacher Unionism

Rottmann, Cindy; Kuehn, Larry Morris; Stewart, Christine; Turner, Jane; Chamberlain, James A.

doi:10.1057/9781137426567_4

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Despite this, gender has played an important role in this history, with calls for teacher unionization and collective bargaining rights growing out of demands for protection against sexist treatment by administrators (Kahlenberg, 2006;Murphy, 1990). These were particularly prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, when groups of mainly unionized teachers across the globe joined feminist and civil rights organizations (Rottman et al, 2015).…”

Section: Lack Of Attention To Racial Class-based and Gender Dynamics ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Current Perspectives on Teacher Unionization, and What They’re Missing

Lyon

2022

Educational Policy

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Educational policy research on teacher unionization in the United States has been dominated by two theoretical perspectives: rent-seeking and teacher voice. While bringing valuable insights to bear, these views have mutated into rigid and often ideologically charged alternatives with strong normative claims about teacher collective bargaining. Drawing from a political economy framework, this article advances a distinct theoretical perspective focusing on the progressive coalition building activities of teachers’ unions (i.e., organizing and mobilizing to promote the interests of working people in policymaking). This perspective resolves previous theoretical anomalies of union behavior; provides many new avenues for research; and highlights distinct considerations for the practice of teacher organizing.

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Section: Lack Of Attention To Racial Class-based and Gender Dynamics ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Current Perspectives on Teacher Unionization, and What They’re Missing

Lyon

2022

Educational Policy

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“…As Rottmann, Kuehn, Stewart, Turner, and Chamberlain (2015) articulated, social movement unionist efforts have marked the landscape of education labor organizing for more than a century. Yet, for just as long, administrators and educators have articulated teaching as a profession along the lines of medicine and law.…”

Section: The Rising Tide Of Social Movement Unionism: Tensions With Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Educators Striking for a Better World: The Significance of Social Movement and Solidarity Unionisms

Dyke¹,

Bates²

2020

BRE

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In the spring of 2018, West Virginia educators shut down schools statewide for two weeks to protest poor teacher and staff pay, rising healthcare costs, and perpetually decreasing public education funding, winning many of their demands. Soon after, statewide strikes in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona followed suit. The following fall, citing inspiration from these red state strikes, the second-most populous school district in the nation, the Los Angeles Unified School District, struck for more school funding and much-needed resources (Quinlan, 2018). Oakland, California, followed soon after, and district actions across states like Colorado, Massachusetts, and Arkansas, among other places, continued. In October 2019, the third largest school district in the nation, Chicago Public Schools, struck for such radical demands as a district sanctuary policy and resources for undocumented students; rent control for educators, students, and families in a rapidly gentrifying city; and more school nurses and social workers (Jaffe, 2019). On November 19, 2019, teachers across the entire state of Indiana-a place with stringent anti-union legislation-conducted a one-day strike (Herron, 2019). In the United States, these events have introduced hundreds of thousands of educators, staff, and students to direct action, and, collectively, educators have won significant gains in public education spending. Evident from the widespread supportive mainstream media attention, the predominant public narrative has shifted from the need for individual school, teacher, and student accountability via achievement measures to the need to hold legislators and low-tax-paying corporations accountable for the siphoning of public resources for private profit. 2 Many education and labor scholars have experienced this resounding wave of refusals to accept the status quo in education as an exciting surprise. The last few decades have seen increasing attacks on educators' right to participate in formal unions. In urban and more unionized places like Chicago and Los Angeles, the mass privatization of public neighborhood schools has led to a proliferation of nonunionized charter schools, and city leaders have been explicit about their aims to weaken local unions (Lipman, 2011). Many of the red states in which teachers struck in 2018 had seen the effects of decades

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“…As Dawkins (2010) notes, a commitment to principles of justice are among the three primary objectives of union roles and activitieseconomic equity, workplace democracy, and social justicewhich focuses on justice in the broad societal context, as union members are also part of the community and society at large. In their study of teacher union activist activity, Rotteman et al (2015) identify four distinct activist periods in teacher labor organizing in the United States: (1) the fight for fair representation by women in the late 1800s; (2) the fight for academic freedom leading up to World War I; (3) collaboration with the feminist and civil rights movements in the fight for representation and inclusivity in the 1960s-1970s; and (4) the 1980s-1990s work of the National Coalition of Education Activists (NCEA 1994) that brought NEA and AFT members together to draft "Social Justice Unionism: A Working Draft." Rotteman et al (2015) suggest that social justice-oriented approaches to unionism are not new (nearly two decades passed between the NCEA draft and the 2012 CTU action) but rather that, until recently, the conditions have not been favorable for social justice approaches to gain traction.…”

Section: A Brief Us History Of Educator Labor Organizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the right for teachers to unionize and collectively bargain is important, what is significant for this examination into how labor actions can function as social justice intervention in education is the nature of the kinds of union and bargaining activity in which educators have been engaging for the last decade. To argue that teachers have not previously fought on behalf of justice and equity concerns is inaccurate (Dandala 2019;Peterson 1999;Rotteman et al 2015). Labor disputes writ large begin in conflict over fairness and equity matters.…”

Section: Nature Of Contemporary Educator Labor Actionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teacher Labor Actions as Social Justice Intervention in Education

Konkol¹,

Ramirez-Alonzo²

2020

Springer International Handbooks of Education

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The right for educators to bargain collectively or call a strike is neither a US federal mandate nor a guarantee across the nation. Each state regulates whether or not teacher unions can collectively bargain or call a strike and governs the issues over which unions are permitted to negotiate. Despite these restrictions, recent educator strikes in union cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as protest actions in right-to-work states like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Wisconsin where unionization, collective bargaining, and striking is not a right, have been notable. The unions have openly challenged the nature of these restrictions by seeking to bargain and engage in labor actions for community-and social justiceoriented demands that go beyond traditional employment issues like compensation, benefits, and evaluation. By bargaining for the common good, the unions have effectively changed the landscape of what's worth striking for when it comes to the work of teachers and educator advocacy for children, families, and

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Remembering, Reimagining, and Reviving Social Justice Teacher Unionism

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

Current Perspectives on Teacher Unionization, and What They’re Missing

Current Perspectives on Teacher Unionization, and What They’re Missing

Educators Striking for a Better World: The Significance of Social Movement and Solidarity Unionisms

Teacher Labor Actions as Social Justice Intervention in Education

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