David Meyer Amanda Pullum University of California-Irvine
While private sector unions have been experiencing a precipitous decline in membership for the past 50 years, public K-12 teachers have the highest union membership rates of any American workers. With this prominence has come opposition. In 2011 alone, twenty state legislatures held floor votes on bills restricting collective bargaining and tenure protections for public schoolteachers. Faced with these similar actions, teachers unions mounted a variety of responses, including rallies of all sizes, lobbying, and judicial and legislative challenges. The researcher will study why unions responded differently to similar legislative action. Examining the strategic choices made by unions will shed new light on how both labor and non-labor activists work to bring about social and legislative change.
This study brings important insights to an important debate in the literature on social movements: what factors do activists consider when deciding upon strategy? Previous scholarship has offered many possible answers, such as the nature of the threat, existing laws, organizational structure, and ideology. This research examines strategic choices of teachers unions and the process through which particular strategies were chosen in four states-- Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee, and Idaho. Two of the states, Tennessee and Idaho are right-to-work states; and two, Wisconsin and Ohio, are not right-to-work states. The planned analysis will identify the causal conditions most important to teachers unions? strategic decision-making processes; explain the mechanisms by which these conditions influenced strategic choice and resulted in widely varying responses to similar legislation; and compare how union members in the four states considered these causal factors when choosing strategies.
Broader Impacts
Results of this study will be disseminated to both academic and public audiences. The findings will be presented at a wide variety of conferences, and ultimately, the dissertation will be transformed into a book, which will be easily accessible to members of the public with an interest in labor unions. The findings of this study will be of use to scholars of social movement strategy, labor unions, and similar organizations such as public interest groups. In addition, this study will contribute to public knowledge and discourse on social movements and organized labor in education and the modern American workforce.
This project is a dissertation on strategic choice in teachers' unions as they worked against legislative threats to tenure and collective bargaining in 2011. The overarching question of this study is: What factors are most important to activists when deciding upon strategy? The dissertation used a mixed-methods approach to answer that question. Using case studies of Idaho, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Tennessee, I compare strategic choice processes in right-to-work states and in states without these laws. With qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), I examined all states in which laws limiting teachers' collective bargaining and tenure were passed in 2011, and asked why unions in most of these states did not turn to citizen-initiated electoral strategies for overturning these laws or recalling politicians involved in their passage. Using NSF funds, I traveled to the National Education Association's annual Representative Assembly, where I observed the proceedings of the union's legislative body and conducted interviews with union members. I also traveled to Wisconsin, where I conducted interviews and collected data in the archives of Madison Teachers Inc., and to Ohio, where I conducted interviews and collected data in the archives of the Ohio Education Association. NSF funds allowed me to have these interviews professionally transcribed and to purchase qualitative data analysis software. My case studies indicated that right-to-work laws reflect larger obstacles to union mobilization. Unions in right-to-work states tend to be smaller and fewer, and right-to-work legislation reflects longterm political opposition to unionism. These obstacles pushed unions to form broader alliances with non-labor organizations when possible, while in states without right-to-work laws, coalitions are made up primarily of labor organizations. But these broad coalitions may be short-lived, whereas predominantly labor coalitions were sustained after the campaign in question had ended. Where alliances were not available, unions struggled to counter these bills. Campaigns in right-to-work states also necessitated framing of unions' claims in broader terms that were more pertinent to members of the general public, focusing on quality of public education rather than on workers' rights. Broad coalitions of labor and community groups could agree on these values and work together to persuade voters as well. In states without right-to-work laws, campaigns focused more strongly on public sector workers' rights. Case studies also indicated that tactical diversity--pursuing multiple tactics simultaneously--resulted from lack of confidence in electoral tactics, as well as disagreement within the coalition. Less cohesive coalitions contributed to this uncertainty, but uncertainty also made coalitions less cohesive. Tactical diversity was "insurance" against potential defeat, as well as an outcome of allies’ disagreement. The amount of resources dedicated to alternative tactics was inversely proportional to confidence in the favored tactic: when coalitions were very confident in electoral tactics, no alternatives were pursued, but when there was not agreement or confidence in any one tactic, substantial resources were expended in both venues. Despite union leaders’ reports that certain tactics were "the only option," there was never only one option available in my case study states, though not all potential tactics are equally preferable. But some tactics were deemed more likely to succeed than others, and disagreements among allies influenced those decisions. Unions pursued diverse tactics as a result of uncertainty. In addition, judicial tactics were considered a good "backup" choice because they did not require coalition support, could be used in any state, and required resources that unions typically had available already. Citizen-initiated electoral tactics (such as recalls or veto referenda), when they were available, were the primary tactics in a strategic plan, though they did not always succeed. However, even though some form of these electoral tactics are available in most states, few unions chose to turn to the ballot box to address legislative threats. My QCA results find that there are two "paths" of strategic choice that avoid electoral tactics. I refer to these as "compromise" and "perfect storm" paths. In a "compromise" path, at least one state legislative chamber is controlled by Democrats, there is high public sector union coverage, and either a legislative threat that does not affect collective bargaining, or lack of a right-to-work law. In these states, union leaders did not pursue electoral tactics because some form of compromise with legislators was possible. However, in a "perfect storm" path, political and labor contexts are much less favorable for the unions: there is a right-to-work law, Republican control of the state legislature, low public sector union coverage, and a legislative threat that does not affect collective bargaining. In this situation, proposed legislation does not threaten the union's overall survival, political opportunities for unions were relatively low, and in general, ballot tactics were not expected to succeed had they been used.
