The Effect of Impasses on Teacher Bargaining Outcomes

209 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1983.This study examines the impact of strikes and compulsory interest arbitration on the collective bargaining outcomes achieved by public school teachers. The analysis makes an important distinction between the availability (by law) of compulsory arbitration or the right to strike and the actual use of these procedures. Further, because some states prohibit teacher strikes but do not enforce penalties against strikers, the study also estimates the impact of location in these de facto strike states on teacher pay.Because of the atheoretical nature of many earlier studies of the impasse-bargaining outcome relationship, the dependence theory of bargaining is employed here to derive specific strike and arbitration hypotheses. The propositions are tested using data provided by several sources. The availability analyses uses a national sample of 770 public school teachers selected from the May 1979 Current Population Survey. The impasse use analyses employ data on all unionized K-12 school districts in Illinois (de facto strike state), and Iowa (arbitration state) to identify strike and arbitration effects. These data include approximately 200 Illinois and 300 Iowa districts for each school year from 1978-79 to 1980-81.The results generally supported the dependence bargaining theory. In particular, strike use appeared to modestly increase teacher salary changes in Illinois. Strike activity in earlier years increased the favorableness of collective bargaining agreements to teachers by about 20 percent. The data did not indicate that strike use affected wage and nonwage bargaining outcome levels, or changes in nonwage outcomes. Analyses of the Iowa data revealed no evidence that teachers' wage and nonwage bargaining outcome levels and changes are affected by the use of interest arbitration.The national analyses suggested that the availability of either the right to strike or compulsory arbitration similarly increased public school teacher pay by approximately nine percent. Location in either a de facto strike state or a state that legally permits teacher strikes also raised teacher pay by about nine percent.It is concluded that the dependence bargaining theory provides a rich new framework for the analysis of industrial relations issues.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD