Classroom, Community, and Contract: A New Framework for Building Moral Legitimacy and Member Activism in Teacher Unions

Abstract

The face of the teacher union has changed. In many countries today, teacher union members are less active than ever before. After sustained growth in union membership and activism and subsequent expansion of benefits and bargaining rights in the early 1900s through the 1990s, teacher union membership has remained relatively fixed in the past 20 years, and member engagement in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and other countries has been jeopardized by policy decisions that limit collective bargaining, privatize public schools, and standardize educational programs (Boyd et al. 2000; Buras 2010; Compton and Weiner 2008; Cooper 2000; Farber 2006; Hargreaves and Fullan 2012; Hypolito 2008; Murphy 1990; Rincones 2008; Robertson 2008; Rousmaniere 1997, 2005; Urban 1982). Teachers who have recently entered the profession tend to favor nontraditional and marketbased policies opposed by teacher unions, such as the elimination of tenure and seniority, using student test scores to evaluate teachers, and enacting nontraditional salary structures such as pay for performance or bonus pay (Farkas et al. 2003; Feistritzer 2011; Yarrow 2009). Newer teachers are also less likely to be active in the union, owing, in part, to their lack of connection to union values, lack of understanding of the role collective bargaining has played in securing better working conditions, and questioning of the union’s moral legitimacy in its protection of teachers and teachers’ rights (Bascia 2008; Chaison and Bigelow 2002; Popiel 2013).