Teachers and College Professors

Education services is one of the economy's largest industries and one of the largest employers of professional and technical workers. The industry employed more than 11 million people in 1998, of whom more than 6 million were professional or technical workers. Many were teachers, including 1,677,000 in elementary and 1,425,000 in secondary schools, and 402,000 in special education.

Another 1,131,000 teachers worked at colleges, junior colleges, universities or at professional or technical schools in 1998. In 1997 — the latest year for which a detailed breakdown is available — a significant number of these teachers were graduate teaching assistants (92,950). Their numbers and their share of college teaching assignments are growing rapidly (National Industry-Occupation Employment Matrix). The number of all postsecondary teachers has increased dramatically since 1970.

Working Conditions, Earnings, Job Satisfaction:

Whether at the primary, secondary or postsecondary level, teachers find unity in their shared love of learning and the art of teaching. But working conditions, job satisfaction and earnings vary dramatically. Among elementary and secondary school teachers, for example, incomes vary widely depending, in part, on the length of time employed as a teacher and whether one is employed in a public or private school. Public school teachers generally have higher salaries than their counterparts in private schools, a situation that can be attributed to the higher rate of unionization in public schools.

College and university faculty earn significantly higher salaries than elementary and secondary school teachers. For the most part, this can be attributed to the higher education and experience required for these positions. One notably similar earning pattern among both groups is the fairly large gender-based gap in wages.

Teachers at all levels share somewhat similar working experiences: interacting with students, for example, preparing lectures or lesson plans, grading students’ work and evaluating their progress. Teachers at the college level, however, often must undertake additional responsibilities for carrying out and overseeing research and writing projects, serving on a wide variety of college and departmental committees, and providing outreach or extensive services to groups beyond the campus. When combined with the demands of class preparation time, these tasks can consume much more than forty hours of work per week.

Teachers at the elementary and secondary levels, while not facing comparable research and writing pressures, must also complete various administrative tasks in addition to their classroom activity, and they, too, often work very long hours. Moreover, school violence and increasing social problems, which schools are expected to address, add to the stress in a teacher's work life.

Despite these concerns, however, a decided minority of primary and secondary teachers report low levels of satisfaction with their jobs.

Employment Outlook in Education

Strong job growth is expected in both primary/secondary and postsecondary education due to rising enrollment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (1999) estimates that demand in the near future will be particularly strong at the postsecondary level, due to increased enrollment of both domestic and foreign students. And because large numbers of current teachers are nearing retirement, many more faculty positions will have to be filled.

Unionization and Trends in the Industry: Privatization, School Reform and Part-timing

Of the nearly seven million people employed by elementary and secondary school systems in 1998, over three million, or 44%, were union members (Bureau of National Affairs, 1999). The vast majority of the teachers in elementary and secondary schools were represented by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) or by the National Education Association (NEA). Both organizations not only engage in collective bargaining on behalf of their members but also engage in matters that shape public policy vis-a-vis education. In recent years, important debates have involved the pros and cons of voucher systems and charter schools. Teachers, through their unions, are playing a role in these debates.

Voucher programs, which vary from state to state, give parents either a tax exemption or actual vouchers to pay for tuition at private schools as an alternative to sending their children to public schools. One of the most widely publicized programs of this sort was begun in Milwaukee in 1990 when 1,600 Milwaukee parents were granted approximately $4,400 each to pay for their children's education. In 1995 the program was expanded (Lewis, 1998; Muwakkil, 1998).

Proponents of the voucher system claim it promotes parental choice in education, and forces all schools to compete for their favor by providing better quality education. Opponents argue these claims are specious because (a) private schools are not forced to accept vouchers from all comers; it is they, not the parents, who will choose which students go where, and (b) it presumes that all parents are knowledgeable about which schools are better and can make informed comparisons. A strong point in opposition is that voucher systems will undermine the public school system by siphoning away critical financial resources and destroying the diversity of student populations that make the public school system an important ingredient in a democratic society. And while public schools are held accountable to the community through school boards, which are democratically elected by members of the community, private schools are not required to have either a formal governance structure or open financial records. Finally, many private schools are exempt from certain state and district testing requirements, and so it is difficult to measure the outcomes of their educational efforts and hold them accountable. For these reasons and more, many educators in general, and teacher unions in particular, are opposed to voucher programs.

Regarding the concept of charter schools, many educators and the teacher unions have been lukewarm at best. Such schools may be formed by anyone wishing to promote a particular learning style, but they must be sponsored by a public authority, such as a district school board or a local university's board of regents. Proponents of charter schools argue that they encourage innovation and improvement within the public school system, and expand school choice for parents at little additional cost to taxpayers. However, critics point out that charter schools — which usually operate within a public school system yet are legally and fiscally autonomous — are exempt from many important requirements imposed on public schools.

Teachers hired by charter schools often do not have to meet the same certification standards as other public school teachers, and this raises serious questions about their professional quality. In some areas, charter schools have been used as a method for undermining collectively bargained contracts in the public school system by exempting the schools from the scope of existing contracts and restricting the ability of their employees to engage in collective bargaining.

Rather than promoting voucher systems or charter schools, education unions call for greater efforts to improve teacher training and testing, and raising and enforcing standards for student achievement. They emphasize collective bargaining as a process that builds "trust and cooperation while protecting employee rights" (Chase, 1997) and they endorse smaller teacher-student ratios and mechanisms for peer assistance and review. Such approaches, it is argued, will lead to better teacher performance, and to mutually acceptable mechanisms for correcting the situation when they do not.

The AFT has promoted several programs to improve the schools. Its "Success for All" (SFA) program, for example, offers intensive reading and writing instruction to "at-risk" elementary school students, and its School Development Program (SDP) works to alleviate low student achievement in urban schools by involving concerned individuals (parents, community leaders, administrators, teachers) in school governance and planning.

Although it remains to be seen whether these alternative programs will achieve true school reform, it is clear that teacher unions — and union members — are fighting fiercely to retain all that is positive in the public school system, while welcoming constructive changes that will enable the schools to serve our democratic society in the future as well as they have in the past.

Post Secondary Education

In postsecondary education, union density is lower than in elementary and secondary education, ranging in 1998 from a low of 10.4% among foreign language teachers to a high of 27% for math and computer science teachers (Bureau of National Affairs, 1999). Unlike the situation in elementary and secondary education where two teacher unions dominate, college and university faculty are represented by a number of different unions. The 1997 edition of Directory of Faculty Contracts and Bargaining Agents in Institutions of Higher Education estimates that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) represented 58 faculty bargaining units; the AFT, 159; the NEA, 230, and independent, generally one campus unions, 39. The overwhelming majority of these units are clustered in two- and four-year public institutions. This concentration in public institutions is largely due to the continuing effects of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that private sector faculty members are part of management and therefore not protected by the National Labor Relations Act. Although the decision seriously undermined union organizing at private colleges and universities, it left public educational institutions to be governed by state labor laws and organizing has been robust on these campuses.

As noted above, part-time, adjunct and graduate teaching assistants comprise an increasingly large proportion of college and university teaching staff. Such part-time employment in higher education has become so prevalent that a recent report from the AFT Higher Education Department (1998) asserts that the erosion of full-time, tenure-track faculty positions — and their replacement with part-time and non tenure-track faculty — is the most dangerous trend in higher education today. Part-time, non tenure-track and graduate teaching assistants do not receive the pay, benefits or job security of tenured or full-time members of the faculty. Part-time instructors are typically paid by the course, and while rates vary between institutions, they frequently are set as low as $1,500 to $2,500 per class. Many of these part-time, non-tenured teachers are graduate assistants. Their pay is even less. Furthermore, most part-time and graduate assistant teachers are given inadequate (or no) health insurance and no retirement benefits.

The use of part-timers, adjuncts and graduate teaching assistants clearly is on the rise, as universities in search of lower costs increasingly turn to more "cost-effective" employees. The 1998 AFT report asserts that 43% of all faculty at U.S. colleges and universities were working only part-time, compared with 38% in 1987. And while the number of full-time faculty grew 49% between 1970 and 1995, the number of part-time faculty shot up 266% — a trend that has dramatically affected higher education.

As the 21st century began, a growing number of part-time and graduate employees were organizing and demanding greater equity in pay and benefits. Approximately 19,500 graduate employees at the University of California, the University of Florida, University of Kansas, University of Massachusetts, University of Michigan, Rutgers, State University of New York, University of Oregon and the University of Wisconsin won collective bargaining rights (Hurd and Foerster, 1997), while many more were organized and seeking recognition of their unions. Here, again, labor laws have posed a problem. Until very recently, graduate assistants at universities and interns in medical schools were regarded as students, not employees. As such, they were not covered by basic labor relations laws. However, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and court cases now seem to be moving away from this position by holding that these people are, indeed, employees, and therefore entitled to the protection of labor relations laws when they seek to form or join unions and engage in collective bargaining.

The demand for equal treatment in pay and benefits also is increasing among part-time faculty. Many have organized into independent faculty committees and are exploring options to increase their bargaining power with recalcitrant administrators. Others have formed committees and caucuses within existing unions to better represent their own interests. Such was the case in a recent campaign at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, in which part-time faculty — represented by a Faculty Staff Union/NEA — organized to demand better benefits and salaried status. According to Massachusetts's law, half-time employees are entitled to health and pension benefits on the same basis as full-timers. University administrators, however, defined the majority of part-time faculty on the Boston campus as less than half time, regardless of the number of courses taught. The union victory in Boston over-turned that definition, increased the base pay offered to part-time instructors and allowed them to participate in the university's health and pension plans (Brill and Zabel, 1998).

Teachers at both elementary/secondary and postsecondary levels face a variety of challenges emanating from booming enrollments, cost cutting administrators and legislators, demands for reform, and out-dated labor laws. While the outcome remains to be seen, it is clear that educators are choosing union organizations to represent them in facing up to these and other challenges.

Sources Cited

American Federation of Teachers, Research Department. "Charter School Laws: Do They Measure Up?" Washington, DC, 1996.

American Federation of Teachers, Higher Education Department. "The Vanishing Professor," Washington, DC, 1998.

Brill, Harry and Gary Zabel. "U Mass Part-Time Faculty Win Benefits," Labor Notes, September 1998, p. 7.

Bureau of National Affairs. Union Membership and Earnings Data Book: Compilations from the Current Population Survey, Washington, DC, 1999.

Chase, Bob. "The New NEA: Reinventing Teacher Unions for a New Era," Comments before the National Press Club, February 5, 1997.

Hurd, Richard and Amy Foerster. Directory of Faculty Contracts and Bargaining Agents in Institutions of Higher Education, New York, National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Institutions of Higher Education, 1997.

Lewis, Neil A. "Supreme Court Roundup: School Vouchers Survive as Justices Sidestep a Debate," New York Times, November 10, 1998, p. A1.

Muwakkil, Salim. "School choice: Do vouchers help or harm black children?" In These Times, January 11, 1998, p. 11.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Career Guide to Industries 2000-01 Edition, Bulletin 2503, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. National Industry-Occupation Employment Matrix, http://stats.bls.gov/asp/oep/nioem/empiohm.asp.