Teacher unions and their strategies in schools: a picture of a social process

Trade unions have improved the working lives of employees in l3elgium, and teacher unions (TU) have done the same for their members. Several studies (Boelen 1984; Geerens 1988; Simon 1993) show that the national TUs are important for defending the professional rights of their members, and for educational matters as well. Nevertheless, it is obvious that it is easier to mobilize the TU members when the issue is linked to the professional position of the teachers. Mobilization of union members is more difficult when TUs Light for educational issues that are educationally important but which do not directly affect the professional lives of their members. This pattern suggests the hypothesis that local TUs are interested in school-based management when the professional position of members is at stake, and less so when this management focuses on educational matters. First, 1 want to describe the membership of the local TUs and their relationship with headmasters. Since local school policy is concerned with the development of the school and not, in the first instante, with the improvement of the working conditions of the teachers, it might be expected that local unions would not be very much concerned with all parts of local school policy (Devos, Vandenberghe and Verhoeven 1989, pp. 328-331). Nevertheless, if local unions want to improve the position of their members within the school, they need to assemble the teachers in the union, attract enough support from them, and folter an adequate relationship with the headmaster. All these factors might have some influence on the strategies which unions use to influence local school policy. Second, to undcrstand the strategies of the TUs in local school policy the Opinions of the union representatives about their duties as representatives must be studied. Third, I will describe the strategies used by the TUs to influence local school policy, that is, "... ways of achieving goals" (Woods 1983, p. 9). These strategies of the local unions will be considered in relation to the strategies of the headmasters who face the cooperation, opposition or indifference of the TUs. Indeed, the goals of the unions and those of the headmasters are not always the same; often they have different perspectives (Shibutani 1955). At this point, the core of the micro-politics of the school is considered, that is, "those strategies by which individuals and groups in organizational contexts seek to use their resources of power and influence to further their interests" (Hoyle 1982, p. 88 in Ball 1987, p. 18). In short, three questions will be answered: I. what is the position of the TU in the schools and what kind of relationship do they have with the headmaster?; 2. how do representatives define their duties and those of the TU?; and 3. what strategies do they use to influence school policy?status: publishe