This timely and comprehensive volume will spur and strengthen public debate over the role of teachers unions in education reform for years to come. Collective bargaining shapes the way public schools are organized, financed, staffed, and operated. Understanding collective bargaining in education and its impact on the day-to-day life of schools is critical to designing and implementing reforms that will successfully raise student achievement. But when it comes to public discussion of school reform, teachers unions are the proverbial elephant in the room. Despite the tremendous influence of teachers unions, there has not been a significant research-based book examining the role of collective bargaining in education in more than two decades. As a result, there is little basis for a constructive, empirically grounded dialogue about the role of teachers unions in education today.

Well-researched, extensively documented and up-to-date, this book covers legislative foundations of labour - relations, bargaining process, major provisions of collective bargaining agreements. It also addresses contingent workers, cultural diversity, and alternative forms of dispute resolution and representation.

Collective bargaining involves a process of negotiation between one or more unions and an employer or employers' organisation(s). The outcome is a collective agreement that defines terms of employment - typically wages, working hours and in-work benefits. The agreement affords labour protection: minimum wages, regular earnings; limits on working hours and predictable work schedules; safe working environments; parental leave and sick leave; and a fair share in the benefits of increased productivity. The International Labour Organization (ILO) Collective Agreements Recommendation 1951 (No. 91) considers, where appropriate and having regard to national practice, that measures should be taken to extend the application of all or some provisions of a collective agreement to all employers and workers included wthin the domain of the agreement. The extension of a collective agreement generalises the terms and conditions of employment, agreed between organised firms and workers, represented through their association(s) and union(s), to the non-organised firms within a sector, occupation or territory. The collection of chapters in this volume are about the extension of collective agreements as an act of public policy.