Decades ago, an advertising copywriter linked two logically inconsistent words to give us a detergent that was simultaneously new and improved. The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are trying to do the same: trying to change themselves in ways that both provide continuity with a long tradition of labor activism and at the same time become virtually new organizations. As was the case with the detergent, it's appropriate to ask whether this new tide of unionism will actually wash.
Clearly, there has been a proclamation of newness. NEA president Bob Chase announced "The New Unionism" at the National Press Club in a February 1997 speech titled, "It's Not Your Mother's NEA." Chase vowed to create a new union that would build partnerships with administrators, work to enhance school quality, and help incompetent teachers improve—or remove them from the classroom.
Chase's speech carried a poignant symbolism. More than a decade before, in an April 1985 speech to the New York State United Teachers, AFT president Albert Shanker stood at a similar rostrum to advocate reform. Shanker described "a union of professionals," one that would create "a revolution beyond bargaining" and uphold the highest professional standards. To accomplish this, Shanker advocated more rigorous standards for entry into teaching and a test to measure an applicant's knowledge and skill; expanded school choice for parents, teachers, and students; a professional teacher board to ensure high standards and rid the profession of those who did not measure up; and a restructured education system that would transform teachers from dispensers of knowledge to coaches for students, supervisors of novice teachers, and organizers of the school program.
Shanker would not live to see his union transformed around the principles he advocated. When he died in February 1997, many AFT locals were still in conflict about how to be simultaneously new and improved. Some were resisting being either. Union leaders who tried found that, in Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski's words, "real reform is real hard . . . and takes a real long time."
Not a Gimmick
Our judgment about the prospects for teacher unionism, then, needs to be based on understanding what "new and improved" is, and what it isn't. First, it is not a gimmick. As dedicated and organizationally savvy educators, NEA's Bob Chase and Sandra Feldman, the new AFT president, know that there are easier ways to spend their presidencies than by trying to change the belief systems of their own organizations. They, and scores of others, are engaged in the process of change because they think it is necessary, not because it is a public relations ploy.
Second, new and improved is not a bargaining style. It's not about substituting politeness for tough talk at the bargaining table or engaging in win-win or any other patterns of collaborative negotiation being marketed throughout the country. Bargaining styles may indeed change, but they are not at the core of this transformation.
Third, it is not about cooperation for its own sake, or about unions abandoning their traditional activism. By seizing the educational reform initiative, unions enter an arena in which there is an incentive for collaboration, but also great contention. Reforming education is not an activity for the faint of heart or weak of spirit. And the appropriateness of teachers engaging in these activities is likely to be a hard-fought battle.
Taking an Institutional Perspective
Union leaders have come to realize that their organizations cannot thrive unless public education does. Thus, they face the problem of advocating not only for their members' immediate interests, but also for teaching as an occupation and public education as an American institution. Taking an institutional perspective is challenging for a union, whose leaders are elected by teachers with a long list of hot-button issues. It is doubly difficult because the institution of public education itself is entering a period of historic transformation, one not unlike the massive change that occurred in the 1910s when most of the structures of our current institutions were established. Institutional thinking requires not only advocacy for the present, but designing for the future.
New and improved unionism also marks the demise of industrial organization as the driving force in labor activism. Teachers as industrial workers become teachers as knowledge workers. Industrial unionism and its counterpart, industrial management, assume a division of labor in which school districts prepackage solutions and teachers deliver them. Organizations structured around the tiny part of teaching that is akin to routine production work emphasize bureaucracy over learning: time-bound, instruction-following, don't-talk-back-to-the-boss labor. The so-called work-effort bargain is timed by a clock and monitored by a rule book.
Organizing a union, and a school, around knowledge work is far different. Knowledge workers assume that most educational solutions will be created from the classroom up rather than assembled centrally and handed down. Knowledge workers know that high levels of craft, artistry, and dedication are necessary, and that a new kind of bargain needs to be struck that gives teachers both authority and responsibility for reform.
A New Vision for Union Organization
What might a new and improved union look like? In United Mind Workers: Unions and Teaching in the Knowledge Society (1997), we sketch an alternative design for teacher unionism founded on the three principles of organizing around quality, organizing around individual schools, and organizing around teaching careers.
Organizing around quality. The United States is now engaged in a furious debate about student learning standards, assessment, and the consequences of meeting or failing to meet standards. Union leaders have been involved in these debates, but the discussions remain abstractions to most of the country's 2.5 million public school teachers. Unions need to internalize both the debate and the emerging standards. They need to support standards with adequate training, professional development, and perhaps most importantly, with a strong system of peer review. Peer review is probably the most powerful demonstration of teacher knowledge of practice and commitment to high professional standards. Peer review requires teachers to define, measure, and support good teaching. And ultimately, peer review requires educators to make decisions about removing colleagues who can't perform.
Organizing around individual schools. By changing the nature of labor agreements, most union critics seek to narrow the scope of bargaining and keep teachers away from public policy. We argue the opposite. Teachers, for example, ought to be required to address the question of resource allocation tied to student achievement. This can happen if we slim down district-level contracts and create what Barry and Irving Bluestone, in their book Negotiating the Future: A Labor Perspective on American Business (1992), call workplace compacts. In education, individual schools would form compacts connecting resources, work rules, and decision making procedures to the school's own plan for improvement. The labor agreement that divides most of a school's resources would thus serve as its road map for educational achievement.
Organizing around teacher careers. Industrial unions organized around jobs, but there is an older union tradition that organized around occupations, enabling members to switch jobs and change the nature of their work relatively easily. In a time of great flux for education, it makes sense to organize teaching as a career rather than as a single job. It makes sense to anticipate the role technology is likely to play in teaching, and to be thoughtful about who ought to gain property rights from its use. For example, how should teachers receive royalties for computer and multimedia products they create? It makes sense to organize a career ladder in teaching that allows people to enter as assistants or aides and advance to become full-fledged teachers. And it makes sense to organize around career security rather than around job security.
Time Is of the Essence
Prototypes of many new unionism ideas already exist. A small number of districts are engaged in peer review. Toledo, Ohio, and Poway, California, have been practicing peer review for more than a decade. Former maverick locals, such as Glenview, Illinois, and Columbus, Ohio, are now seen as leaders rather than heretics. Meanwhile, an organization of more than 20 mostly large-city locals has banded together to form a Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN). Perhaps most significantly, the NEA has joined the AFT in opening the conversational floodgates to new ideas. Ideas that were not discussed five years ago now receive thoughtful debate and attention.
The issue is now one of speed. The question is whether teacher unions can respond as fast as the institution of education needs them to.
