2009 Volume 76 Issue 3 Pages 322-333
The purpose of this paper is to clarify recent legislative reforms of labor laws in American public education through the analysis on the amendment of the Michigan Public Employment Relations Act (PERA). In 1947, the Michigan Legislature passed the Hutchinson Act which was the first statute covering labor relations of public employees within the state, including public school teachers. Although the Hutchinson Act allowed public employees for the first time to "meet and confer" with their employers, the act did not impose the duty to bargain in good faith on public employers. More importantly, the act enjoined public employees from joining into strikes by enumerating the penalties; employees who entered into strikes were considered to be terminated their employment. While the Hutchinson Act had a great impact on public labor relations in Michigan, its major function was to prohibit strikes by public employees, not to give them the right to bargain collectively with their employers. "Teacher Militancy" in the mid-1960s changed the public employment relations even in Michigan. Aggressive lobbying efforts by teacher unions resulted in the passage of the PERA in 1965. Although the PERA did not legalize strikes by public employees either, it eliminated the penalties for them. Also the act legally recognized the public employees' rights to organize labor unions, to engage in lawful concerted actions, and to bargain collectively with their employers on the issues of "wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment." The newly enacted PERA served as a focal point for teacher unions to take part in policy-making for public education. Under the new statute, teacher unions soon became the predominant labor organizations in Michigan, utilizing labor tools such as strikes and intense collective bargaining. The enactment of PA112 of 1994, however, drastically undermined the teacher unions and their predominant power over public education. The new law penalized teacher unions $5,000 a day for each day they were on strikes and fined individual school employees the equivalent of their daily salary. In addition, only for public school employees, the act limited the scope of bargaining in nine areas and left those issues at the sole authority of school boards to decide. The rationale for the limits, according to the Michigan Legislature, was to avoid strikes by public school employees. The Michigan Supreme Court endorsed the rationale and concluded that "it is reasonable for the Legislature to assume that this limitation on collective bargaining will reduce the number of public school employee strikes." It is obvious that the new act discriminated against public school teachers from other public employees, and that the classification was justified under the rationale that teacher unions are more like a "labor union." From these analyses, it is found that the problem was caused by the industrial labor framework under which teacher unions became "labor unions," not "professional organizations." Other than the labor practices translated from the industrial sector, particular legislative frameworks for teachers are needed to convert teacher unions into professional organizations that would take responsibility for both teachers' rights and public education.
