Faculty unions are an important part of the current higher education landscape, particularly in the public sector. Yet, the rise of unionism among university faculties during the 1960's and 1970's was an unexpected development that clashed with many assumptions about academic life. Amid campus tensions, economic crisis and state political controversies, the faculties of the Universities of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were among those joining ranks of organized labor during that era. This book follows the documentary record of faculty unionization at these New England universities to explore how and why unionization came about. As the book reveals, faculty unionization can be much more than the simple result of local controversies. When examined in light of the surrounding political and economic environment, a complex picture emerges. On these New England campuses, the process invoked the participation of many actors. Faculties, administrations, boards, state political leaders, and national associations all played a part in shaping the course of events, sometimes in unexpected and unintended ways. Gordon B. Arnold places these events in context, providing a 35-year overview of faculty unionism, and locating faculty unionization within the broader realm of organized labor and the rise of public sector collective bargaining.

Why are America's public schools falling so short of the mark in educating the nation's children? Why are they organized in ineffective ways that fly in the face of common sense, to the point that it is virtually impossible to get even the worst teachers out of the classroom? And why, after more than a quarter century of costly education reform, have the schools proven so resistant to change and so difficult to improve? In this path-breaking book, Terry M. Moe demonstrates that the answers to these questions have a great deal to do with teachers unions—which are by far the most powerful forces in American education and use their power to promote their own special interests at the expense of what is best for kids. Despite their importance, the teachers unions have barely been studied. Special Interest fills that gap with an extraordinary analysis that is at once brilliant and kaleidoscopic—shedding new light on their historical rise to power, the organizational foundations of that power, the ways it is exercised in collective bargaining and politics, and its vast consequences for American education. The bottom line is simple but devastating: as long as the teachers unions remain powerful, the nation's schools will never be organized to provide kids with the most effective education possible. Moe sees light at the end of the tunnel, however, due to two major transformations. One is political, the other technological, and the combination is destined to weaken the unions considerably in the coming years—loosening their special-interest grip and opening up a new era in which America's schools can finally be organized in the best interests of children.

This book provides new evidence on teachers unions and their political activities across nations, and offers a foundation for a comparative politics of education.

Abstract: Unions have been a part of many university political landscapes for over four decades. During the early years of faculty unionization, researchers explored the effects of faculty unionization on university governance bodies and the shared governance process, but the results of these initial inquiries were often mixed. Nonetheless, several researchers predicted that over time the union would have the effect of diminishing the influence and power of faculty senates as the union's strength and influence grew. Employing several Southern California CSU campuses as the study's primary research site, this qualitative study further explored the impact of faculty unionization through the eyes, ears, and experiences of thirteen faculty senators. This process provided the participants an opportunity to individually reflect on the events and issues most relevant to their experiences with shared governance from their own vantage point, allowing me to unearth a richer and thicker description of their perceptions and views. The result was a dialogue that yielded responses that were unconfined by predetermined or conventional responses which in turn allowed me to explore the question of whether or not faculty unionization results in a loss of power and influence for faculty governance bodies by using the participant's own experiences as a window to the phenomenon.

"Examines the history of teachers unions--their rise to power and the organizational foundations of that strength, use of collective bargaining and involvement in the political process, and unions' response to expanded use of technology in the classroom to teach children, and consequences for America's public schools"--Provided by publisher.

Public education, from pre-K through higher education, and labor unions, particularly those representing public sector workers, are today under attack from those who question the very need to have such basic institutions. United University Professions is a history of United University Professions (UUP), which grew from humble beginnings to become the nation's largest higher education union, representing some 35,000 academic and professional staff within the State University of New York (SUNY) system. Nuala McGann Drescher, William E. Scheuerman, and Ivan D. Steen chronicle how UUP built upon its early accomplishments at the bargaining table and in the political arena to become a national leader in the struggle to preserve academic freedom and the institution of tenure, the bedrock of academic freedom. More broadly, they argue, UUP in microcosm confirms the importance of unionization not only for the members it represents, but to core American values and American democracy itself.

Almost fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, a wealth of research shows that minority students continue to receive an unequal education. At the heart of this inequality is a complex and often conflicted relationship between teachers and civil rights activists, examined fully for the first time in Jonna Perrillo’s Uncivil Rights, which traces the tensions between the two groups in New York City from the Great Depression to the present.While movements for teachers’ rights and civil rights were not always in conflict, Perrillo uncovers the ways they have become so, brought about both by teachers who have come to see civil rights efforts as detracting from or competing with their own goals and by civil rights activists whose aims have de-professionalized the role of the educator. Focusing in particular on unionized teachers, Perrillo finds a new vantage point from which to examine the relationship between school and community, showing how in this struggle, educators, activists, and especially our students have lost out.