Labor Unions in Schools: Boon or Bane

The bold declaration of a legal policy in the Clayton Act of 1914 that "the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce" signified the global uprising of the working class to assert all kinds of workers’ rights from fair wages, reasonable work hours and protection from a slew of perceived and real abuses at the hands of their employers.

As associations of employees which exist in whole or in part for the purpose of collective bargaining or of dealing with employers concerning terms and conditions of employment, labor unions have permeated through nearly all sectors of both private and public institutions by their active, persistent and sometimes even militant efforts. All around the world, labor unions have made indelible marks in defining global perspectives on the treatment of workers and the remuneration & benefits they now enjoy. Throughout its colorful and continuing history-shaping undertakings, labor unions have crafted a labor-management landscape that is so far removed from its early beginnings.

Looming among the milestones of labor union history include venerable achievements including the origination of profit sharing at Albert Gallatin's glass works in New Geneva, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1825, carpenters in Boston were the first to stage a strike for the 10-hour work-day. Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that unions were legal organizations and had the right to organize and strike. Before this decision, labor unions which attempted to 'close' or create a unionized workplace could be charged with conspiracy.

As early as 1847, teachers found the need to organize the Educational Institute of Scotland, the oldest teachers' trade union in the world. The first organized workers in the world to achieve an 8 hour day with no loss of pay were stonemasons and building workers in Melbourne, Australia. This achievement was replicated by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in the United States, passing a resolution stating that "8 hours shall constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886."

Realizing that more could be done to improve the deplorable plight of workers in many countries, the United Nations formed in 1919 through the negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles the International Labor Organization (ILO), now a specialized agency of the United Nations.

The passing of Fair Labor Standards Act resulted to the banning of child labor and setting the 40-hour work week. The Act went into effect in October 1940, and was upheld in the Supreme Court in 1941. More than 20 years later, United States Congress passed a law mandating equal pay to women.

But four decades after the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, Federal air traffic controllers in the U.S. began a nationwide strike after their union rejected the government's final offer for a new contract. Most of the 13,000 striking controllers defied the back-to-work order, and were dismissed by President Reagan. This, in essence, paved the way for the widespread acceptance of hard-ball strategies employed by heads of states against union actions by invoking the greater weight of protection of national interest over workers’ rights.

Labor laws, especially the collective bargaining provisions, have, of late, granted unions in the Philippines awesome powers to dictate and influence many crucial school policies. The provisions in the typical collective bargaining agreement between unions and school are all-encompassing and affect the day-to-day operations of local schools in many ways.

Spending teacher dues, union political operatives are involved at all levels of school politics, governance, and finance. In the United States, they even contribute campaign funds to candidates who promise to pursue and protect union interests. They hire lobbyists in the legislature, where appropriations are made and where laws are passed.

Many schools using extralegal methods are successful in preventing the formation of unions. Although the Philippine Constitution allows for the right to bargain collectively and is buttressed by the 1996 Labor Code, only 14.5 percent of the workforce, or approximately 540,000 workers, are covered by collective bargaining agreements. No school-specific statistics are readily available to indicate the number of educators covered by collective bargaining agreements. Most school administrators realize that keeping their workforce content by proactively preventing any potential labor disputes is a legal way to keep out the unions. These administrators realize that it is often profitable to provide sufficient benefits and rights to their highly trained workforce, thereby curtailing the call for union representation. While other industries resort to hiring employees on a contractual basis as another way in which employers prevent unionization and evade labor regulations, this tactic is not possible in the academe because of certain provisions in their accreditation asserting the employment of a threshold percentage of permanent employees.

Indeed, educators who join a union do so because they believe that it helps sustain for them a decent standard of living and professionalism. It protects against job exploitation of the weak, otherwise not organized to possess the clout to bargain with employers. Unions are also increasingly looked upon as a source for supplemental unemployment insurance or benefits.

While on one hand, union officials have courageously pared down the calloused skins of unfair, deceitful and even abusive employers, on the other, they have sent, knowingly or unknowingly, through various labor actions many of their members in harm’s way, to prison and even to slaughter. Many episodes in the history of union actions were concluded with members starved into submissive defeat, maimed or killed.

Between 1877 and 1968, 700 people have been killed in American labor disputes alone. In the two years that span 1902 and 1904, one worker was killed and 1,009 were injured for every 100,000 strikers. While in the 1890s in France, three French workers were injured for every 100,000 strikers. Between 1877 and 1968, American state and federal troops intervened in labor disputes more than 160 times, almost invariably on behalf of employers.

When the Nation Labor Union in the United States eventually persuaded Congress to pass an insubstantial law stipulating an eight hour day for Federal workers, it was widely blamed for the casualty of the sweeping economic depression that followed in 1873.

When school unions demand substantially unreasonable pay raises for their members, they leave school administrators with very little option but to raise tuitions fees. These fees could become so exorbitantly beyond the reach of middle class families that prospective students are lost to less expensive competitors and nonunion schools. This results in schools having to cut back important curricular and extracurricular programs which unnecessarily triggers the pernicious cycle of retrenchment and regression in enrollment until the inevitable closure of otherwise viable schools. Unions in general and some school unions in particular, in effect, become victims of their very own unbridled power and unfettered success.