Extra-Governmental Powers in Public Schooling: The Unions and the Courts

In: Public choice, Band 36, Heft 3, S. 619-637

Abstract

The Supreme Court case of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977) is examined to illustrate the government practice of allowing public employee unions & the judiciary to have a strong influence over the course of public educational policy. It is suggested that the regulation requiring schools to use agency shops in the negotiation of teacher contracts has considerable political implications & encourages labor monopoly in the public sector. The undemocratic effects on government of collective bargaining agencies & associations are discussed, as are the inadvertent high costs of the 1947 National Labor Relations Act. In Comments on E. G. West and R. J. Staaf, William L. Boyd (Pennsylvania State U, University Park) distinguishes "qualitative differences" in the collective bargaining used by public & private sectors, which give political powers to public employee unions. While West & Staaf correctly raise the issue of the threat to the public interest posed by public employee unions, their attribution of "labor monopoly" potential in the agency shop clauses in Abood is imprecise. Furthermore, legislatures, more than courts, have been primarily responsible for the political strength of public employee unions. Ronald G. Ehrenberg (Cornell U, Ithaca, NY) notes that agency shop use is the exception rather than the rule, as West & Staaf imply; a review of states' policies shows that union security clauses are used in only 16 states; 31 states forbid the adoption of union security clauses in public school teacher negotiations. They also ignore recent research pointing to the beneficial effects of collective bargaining in the public sector; further, their ascriptions of monopsony in the teacher-bargaining situation are based exclusively on a competitive model. 3 Figures. D. Dunseath.