Issues
Defend your collective bargaining rights Collective bargaining is a right that is fundamental to democracy and to ensuring that societies, and not just elections, are democratic. Collective bargaining in education is closely linked with education quality. Making collective bargaining illegal or limiting its scope limits democracy. In some countries, education unions, which are the guardians and representatives of the teaching profession, are no longer considered privileged partners for education policy discussions. In some situations, handpicked “experts” are substituted for educators’ elected representatives, which makes it much less likely that the experience of educators will inform education reform. A Malaysian teacher expressed a view shared by most teachers: “Classroom teachers with rich experience should be given the opportunity to share their views on the strengths and weaknesses of the present system before [governments start] planning changes” (Education International, 2015, p. 32). Is it not odd that public authorities often need to be persuaded that they should consult with the teaching profession and their organisations on education reform matters? Not only is it odd, but it is also undemocratic. The right of workers to form trade unions and to engage in collective bargaining is among the fundamental human rights recognised at the global level.1 These rights are directly related to democracy because they enhance the process of democracy through expanded participation by those affected by decisions. Trade union rights are, like the right to education, enabling rights: they enable the exercise of other rights. 22
Western Teacher
July 2020
There are many countries where those rights are denied. In the public sector, including education, it is common to ban strikes and to limit the scope of bargaining. Rights of workers do not expand in a continuous, irreversible process. There are also setbacks, and not only in undemocratic countries. For example, in the United States in recent years, there has been an unprecedented assault on the trade union rights of teachers. The recognition of the rights of education workers is the responsibility of individual states. Great progress was made in the 1970s and 1980s to the point that rights to organise and bargain were accepted in most states. However, in recent years, in several states, rights have been reduced or removed for education workers. This is, in part, retaliation for the effective exercise by trade unions of their right to participate in the political process. In Wisconsin, collective bargaining rights for most public employees, including teachers, were eliminated in 2011. In Tennessee, collective bargaining by teachers has been replaced by “collaborative conferencing” (Wintour, 2013). A few states have reduced the scope of bargaining for teachers, taking many education and professional issues off the bargaining table. Limits on the scope of bargaining have included placement of teachers, discipline and dismissal procedures, teacher evaluation and hours of work and working days. There have been limitations on the scope of bargaining in many other countries as well. In Gabon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, unions were thrown out of government advisory committees the moment they started challenging the
management of education funds (EFA Report 2015). In Denmark, teachers were even thrown out of their own schools! That happened in 2016 when they refused to accept that working time issues were to be decided exclusively by management without negotiations with their trade union. The president of the Danish education union DLF2, Anders Bondo Christensen, says that his union was side-lined despite findings of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Committee on Freedom of Association which supported DLF’s position. In 2018, an agreement was reached to establish a commission to look into teachers’ working conditions, which, according to Christensen, could lead to a restoration of free collective bargaining in Denmark. Such optimism does not exist in Argentina where, in 2015, all negotiations at the national level were broken off. The government insisted that, as of 1 January 2016, negotiations would be dealt with at provincial level. The teachers, afraid that this would lead to provinces under-cutting each other on teacher minimum wage, opposed these plans. Sonia Alesso, general secretary of the largest teachers’ union, CTERA3, led several teachers’ demonstrations, one of which in April 2017 was violently repressed by police forces leaving many teachers injured. “The government does everything to weaken our trade union movement,” she says, “as if they want to silence all opposition and return to Argentina’s undemocratic past.” In Japan, with a firmly established democratic system, teachers have been consistently denied the right to collective
