When Government Subsidizes Its Own: Collective Bargaining Laws as Agents of Political Mobilization

Government policies can activate a political constituency not only by providing material resources to, or altering the interpretive experiences of, individual citizens, but also by directly subsidizing established interest groups. We argue that state laws mandating collective bargaining for public employees provided organizational subsidies to public sector labor unions that lowered the costs of mobilizing their members to political action. Exploiting variation in the timing of laws across the states and using data on the political participation of public school teachers from 1956 to 2004, we find that the enactment of a mandatory bargaining law significantly boosted subsequent political participation among teachers. We also identify increased contact from organized groups seeking to mobilize teachers as a likely mechanism that explains this finding. These results have important implications for the current debate over collective bargaining rights and for our understanding of policy feedback, political parties and interest groups, and the bureaucracy.     

Public Pensions and Collective Bargaining Rights: Evidence from State and Local Governments

An aging workforce and increasing retirement benefits are ongoing problems for states and municipalities. Unions are often blamed for governments offering too generous pension benefits. This contributes to budgetary pressures in some state and municipal governments. This article analyzes the impact of collective bargaining on pension benefit generosity under different economic conditions. The study finds that the impact of collective bargaining on pension benefits is not consistent over time or across pension plans. Collective bargaining has a positive effect on pension benefits under worsening economic conditions. Additionally, unions indirectly influence pension benefit generosity through campaign donations and unionization intensity. The findings suggest mixed impacts of collective bargaining on different groups of public employees regarding pension contributions. The article concludes with implications for the role of unions in public financial performance and strategic human resource management during fiscal austerity.     

Collective Bargaining and The Performance of the Public Schools

Students of American politics rarely study public sector unions and their impacts on government. The literature sees bureaucratic power as rooted in expertise, but largely ignores the fact that bureaucrats often join unions to promote their own interests, and that the power of their unions may affect government and its performance. This article focuses on the public schools, which are among the most numerous government agencies in the country, and investigates whether collective bargaining by teachers—the key bureaucrats—affects the schools' capacity to educate children. Using California data, analysis shows that, in large school districts, restrictive labor contracts have a very negative impact on academic achievement, particularly for minority students. The evidence suggests, then, that public sector unions do indeed have important consequences for American public education. Whether they are consequential in other areas of government remains to be seen, but it is an avenue well worth pursuing.     

The dilemma of youth unemployment: Trade union responses in the federal republic of Germany,the UK and France

The high political salience of youth unemployent in European countries is not matched by a prompt coherent and concerted response by trade unions. In particular, measures to ease the transition from school to working life have evoked very mixed reactions. Aspects of the national trade union movements themselves are important determinants of this situation: political alignment and the legitimacy of their policy‐making role; financial, membership, and organisational resources; the structure and practice of collective bargaining, and finally, relations with other organisations representing youth. The three countries examined ‐ West Germany, Britain and France ‐ show that although the trade unions concerned are aware of the problems, they differ in their capacity to take effective action.     

Modeling government behavior in collective bargaining: A test for self-interested bureaucrats

This paper tests for self-interested behavior by local-government bureaucrats engaged in collective bargaining with public employee unions. A theoretical model is developed that shows the effect of Niskanen-style bureaucratic self-interest in the two standard bargaining models: the demand-constrained model and the efficient-bargain model. These predictions are then tested using national cross-section data on unionized police, fire, and sanitation workers.We wish to thank the Institute for Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois for its support of this research. Also, we thank Larry Kahn, Fran Blau, and Pablo Spiller for useful comments. Errors, of course, are ours.     

Challenges to the trade unions: The British and west German cases

The article compares the current crises of the British and West German trade union movements. It argues that re‐organisation strategies to adapt to political and workplace‐related changes are insufficient to reverse the decline in the unions’ influence on government policies and hostile employer strategies. The unions’ position is shaped by both international economic and domestic factors, primarily the relationship to the conservative parties and the bargaining position at the firm level. Strategies to revitalise union power have to be political, not economic or organisational.     

The theory of economic regulation and public choice and the determinants of public sector bargaining legislation

In this study we used the theory of economic regulation and public choice to derive a model to explain the pattern of public sector bargaining laws among the states. We find this type of legislation is influenced by the following demand factors: (1) the extent of public sector union membership, which represents the interest group hypothesis, has a positive influence on pro-union legislation; (2) the extent of employer opposition to unions, as measured by unfair labor practice charges against employers in representation elections, has a negative effect on bargaining laws; (3) two taste variables — the salaries of public employees and the percent of nonwhite employment in the state — have a positive influence on these laws. A result which will be surprising to many people is that the extent of private sector union membership has no significant influence on the passage of public sector bargaining legislation.Our empirical analysis indicates that supply factors are also important in explaining the pattern of public employee bargaining laws across the state. We find that states are more likely to enact pro-union legislation under the following conditions: (1) constituents appear to hold pro-labor views as represented by their Congressmen's voting record; (2) neighboring states have passed mandatory bargaining laws; and (3) when competition is greater among the political parties.     

Industrial Relations and the Limits of the State: Can a Left Labour Government Resurrect Comprehensive Sectoral Collective Bargaining and Restore Trade Union Power?

Since 2017 the British Labour Party has proposed mandatory sectoral collective bargaining (SCB) as a comprehensive strategy to rebuild the trade union voice across the entire economy. The intellectual roots lie in the Institute of Employment Rights’ (IER) Manifesto for Labour Law (2016). First, this article explains the core IER approach, questioning its feasibility given current low levels of union membership and bargaining coverage and whether it would produce the stable and productive economy promised. Second, the article develops four social science objections to this state-driven approach centred on industrial relations history; political sociology; economics; and political philosophy. The conclusion argues that while stronger voluntary trade unions could help, it is neither practicable nor desirable for the state to impose a trade union, single-channel approach to employee voice. Instead, a ‘mixed economy of voice’ is proposed, perhaps including statutory works councils, which speaks directly to all employees—union and non-union—and wins broader political, employer and public support.     

Coping with economic integration: Corporatist strategies in Germany and Austria in the 1990s

While Germany is facing the wholesale disorganisation of sectoral collective bargaining, the Austrian social partnership has gained new strength in the 1990s. Comparatively, Austro‐corporatism proved able to undergo a process of skilful adaptation. This divergence in performance poses a puzzle, given Germany's commanding presence both in international markets and in the European Union, and given Austria's traditional hostility to modernisation. This article explains German—Austrian differences in the performance and resilience of corporatist governance in the face of modernisation and market integration in terms of (i) the organisational differences between German and Austrian corporatism (sectoral concentration versus vertical centralisation and little horizontal formalisation); (ii) the long term policy strategies employed by labour unions in either system (co‐determination versus macro‐level policy influence); and (Hi) by the different responses to modernisation chosen by German and Austrian corporatist actors (internal organisational reforms verus becoming modernisation brokers).     

Employers,the state and the politics of institutional change: Vocational education and training in Austria,Germany and Switzerland

An in‐depth comparison of Austria, Germany and Switzerland shows that the employers' constellation and the elites of the public education administration affect patterns of institutional change. If large firms are the dominant actors and collaborate with elites in the public education administration, institutional change follows a transformative pattern. If small and medium‐sized firms are in a strong position and have the power to influence public elites according to their interests, self‐preserving institutional change results. The article also shows that it is not so much trade unions as small and medium‐sized firms that act as a brake on transformative change. The article adds to the literature of institutional change by arguing that specifying and explaining patterns of institutional change requires that sufficient scope be allowed for actors' creative handling of institutions. It also suggests that in order to differentiate between self‐preserving and transformative change, one has to specify the important institutional dimensions that sustain an institution. The article combines Mill's method of agreement and difference.     

Policies for Decent Labour Standards in Britain

Decent labour standards are a prerequisite for perceived justice and social cohesion. Insofar as they have been achieved in Britain in the past, it has been the result of collective bargaining between employers and trade unions. This has all but vanished in the private sector and, it is argued, there is no chance of its being revived. Upholding labour standards now lies in the provision of statutory individual employment rights. Experience with minimum wages provides some guidance on how these might be developed through social partnership arrangements. Once achieved, such rights amount to little without effective enforcement. Increasingly important for this is the use of the law and consumer campaigns to expose poor employment practices and complex supply chains so that offending employers can be held to account. If Britain is to avoid falling into a competitive ‘race to the bottom’ with Brexit, it must institute a robust means of implementing and enforcing decent labour standards.     

Proposal Rights and Political Power

In a canonical model of sequential collective bargaining over a divisible good we show that equilibrium expected payoffs are not restricted by players' voting rights or their impatience. For all monotonic voting rules and discount factors, and for all divisions of the good among players, there exists a stationary proposal-making rule such that this division represents players' expected payoffs in a Stationary Subgame Perfect Nash equilibrium in pure strategies . The result highlights the significance of proposal rights in determining political power in collective deliberations.     

From the curriculum to the classroom: The urgent need for preservice human rights teacher education in the United States

Abstract

Despite recent progress made by the human rights education movement in the United States to bring human rights education into curriculum standards, textbooks, and classrooms, preservice and in-service teachers have few opportunities to receive human rights education themselves. I argue that future teachers urgently need to receive preservice human right teacher education for a number of reasons. First, social studies curriculum standards in forty-two US states include human rights standards (Advocates for Human Rights 2016). Second, human rights education allows learners to engage with the human rights framework and gain skills to advocate to end human rights violations. Third, for human rights education to be effective in ending human rights violations, teachers must teach in a way that can help to dismantle oppression rather than perpetuate it. Thus, teacher educators must implement preservice human rights teacher education thoughtfully. I address challenges to, critiques of, and recommendations for implementation. Following this, I build on these ideas with my own recommendations for implementation. These recommendations are based on interviews I conducted with members of Human Rights Educators USA, a national volunteer network of educators and advocates who promote human rights education in the United States (HRE USA 2018).     

‘Domestic transnationalism’: legal advocacy for Mexican migrant workers' rights in Canada

Every year thousands of Mexicans travel to Canada to work in Canadian fields and greenhouses under the Mexico-Canada Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. While the programme is often praised, it has also been the subject of persistent criticism about its failure to meet certain human rights standards. In this article, we examine the legal strategies civil society advocates of migrant workers have adopted to promote migrant workers' rights in Canada. Specifically, we examine legal struggles undertaken by the United Food and Commercial Workers union to challenge Ontario government legislation that does not permit collective bargaining by farmworkers in the province. We argue that this case demonstrates that despite the fact that many of the workers involved are transnationalized, appeals to international bodies or to international human rights standards have been of limited utility in promoting their rights. Despite frequent arguments about the increased relevance of international human rights and citizenship norms and transnational human rights advocacy, in this case the national and sub-national scales remain predominant. The result, we argue, is a form of ‘domestic transnationalism’, in which domestic political actors engage in advocacy within domestic legal institutions to promote the rights of a transnational mobile labour force.     

Negotiating Education Reform: Teacher Evaluations and Incentives in Chile (1990–2010)

Reforms designed to improve the quality of teaching by reforming personnel practices, such as pay for performance arrangements, usually run into opposition from well‐organized teacher unions that can either block reform in the short run or undermine it over the longer term. The experience of a series of reforms that introduced collective and individual pay incentives for teachers in Chile from 1990 to 2010 provide a rare example of ongoing negotiation with the teacher union that resulted in an institutionalized structure of incentive pay for teachers as well as widespread attitudes of sustained support among teachers for performance pay. Chile offers an important example of how sustained change in incentive pay can be achieved through ongoing negotiation.     

How and Why Bureaucrats Control their Governance Structure

This article assumes that bureaucrats, like other actors, follow their interests. However, it is also recognized that bureaucrats in political environments face a multilevel game situation with unstable property rights, where priorities between institutional position and more pecuniary goods, e.g. budget maximization, especially in reform situations have to be made. Thus, bureaucrats realize that in order to obtain the latter, the precondition is a secured institutional position and that this position has to be obtained through a bargaining process involving transaction costs, externally due to negotiations with the political principals, and internally through union organization. Empirically, the phenomenon it examined in the case of the Danish day care system which went through a reform period during the late eighties and early nineties. It suggests that although demand for day care rose significantly during this period, day care workers (and their unions) worked for – and succeeded in – securing their institutional position.     

Old Ideas and New Investments: Divergent Pathways to a Knowledge Economy in Denmark and Finland

This article identifies and explains two very different pathways to a knowledge economy, based on investment in training in Denmark and research in Finland. The fact that these ostensibly similar countries have pursued such divergent strategies cannot be explained using the established literature on employer organization, labor power resources, and small states. This article develops and resolves this puzzle by focusing on the interaction among organized actors. It argues that nineteenth‐century economic and geopolitical challenges generated two distinctive and enduring collective responses based on industry–labor cooperation in Denmark and state–industry cooperation in Finland. Those coalitions continue to shape the twenty‐first‐century experimentation, supporting investment in continuing education in Denmark and technological innovation in Finland. In explaining these differences, this article not only identifies an enduring and constructive role for strategic cooperation but also explains how it varies among ostensibly similar coordinated economies.     

What can Post‐Democracy tell us about TNCs and Extraterritorial Violations of Human Rights?

This article considers the problem of extraterritorial human rights violations committed by transnational corporations (TNCs), and draws on Crouch's framework in Post‐democracy to illustrate why the issue has proved so difficult for states to regulate. I begin by examining the problem of corporate regulation more generally, and set out Crouch's analysis to show why and how corporations have become so influential. The second section considers the area of business and human rights, and explains why there is ‘a governance gap’ in relation to extraterritorial human rights violations committed by corporations. The third section describes efforts at the international and domestic levels to regulate corporations in relation to this issue. It concludes that while new international principles and innovative hybrid schemes are playing a valuable role in norm creation and standard‐setting, the enforcement of these principles remains limited. Corporations have largely succeeded to date in their lobbying efforts to remain free of any direct obligations under international law.     

Defending the organisation,not the members: Unions and the reform of job security legislation in Western Europe

European labour markets are often described as rigid with comparatively high levels of job protection that do not allow for the flexible adjustment of employment to economic fluctuations. This interpretation overlooks important sources of flexibility, however. Research has shown that recent labour market policy reforms have allowed for the creation of two‐tier labour markets consisting of insiders in standard employment relationships and outsiders in non‐standard employment. This outcome has typically been explained by pointing to the representational interests of unions or social‐democratic parties. It has been argued that rather than protecting all labour market participants, unions and social‐democratic parties focus on the interests of their members and their core constituency, respectively, most of whom are in standard employment relationships. In contrast, it is argued here that unions' institutional power resources are the crucial variable explaining this outcome. In difficult economic times, when unions are asked to make concessions, they will assent to labour market reforms, but only to those that do not fundamentally threaten to undermine their organisational interests. In the context of job security legislation, this means that unions defend the protection of permanent contracts while they compromise on the regulation of temporary employment. This ‘second best solution’ allows them to protect their organisational interests, both by retaining their institutional role in the administration of dismissals and by living up to their institutional role as one of the organisations responsible for the direction of labour market policy reform. Using fsQCA this article shows that unions' institutional power resources are more apt to explain the observed two‐tier reform pattern than the unions' or the social‐democratic parties' representational interests.     

Inconvenient Truth? Do Collective Bargaining Agreements Help Explain the Mobility of Teachers within School Districts?

We utilize detailed teacher‐level longitudinal data from Washington State to investigate patterns of teacher mobility in districts with different collective bargaining agreement (CBA) transfer provisions. Specifically, we estimate the log odds that teachers of varying experience and effectiveness levels transfer out of their schools to other schools in the district in Washington kindergarten through 12th grade (K‐12) public schools. We find little consistent evidence relating voluntary transfer provisions in CBAs to patterns in teacher mobility, but do find evidence that patterns in within‐district mobility by teacher experience and effectiveness vary between districts that do not use seniority in involuntary transfer decisions and those that use seniority as a tiebreaker or the only factor in these moves. In models that consider teacher experience, the interaction between teacher experience and school disadvantage in teacher transfer decisions is more extreme in districts with strong involuntary seniority transfer protections; novice teachers are even more likely to stay in disadvantaged schools, and veteran teachers are even more likely to leave disadvantaged schools. On the other hand, models that consider value‐added measures of teacher effectiveness suggest that more effective teachers are less likely to leave disadvantaged schools in districts that do use seniority in involuntary transfer decisions, that is, seniority transfer provisions could actually make the distribution of output‐based measures of quality more equitable. Taken together, these results suggest that seniority transfer provisions may have differential impacts on the distributions of teacher experience and effectiveness.