Phi Delta Kappan, 60, 1979, 415-419.Typically, teachers try to resolve salary disputes through collective bargaining and unions. Some areas, like the Toronto school district, have passes back-to-work legislation that prevents the process of collective bargaining from occurring because it forces teachers off the picket lines and back into the classroom while issues that lower morale continue to exist. Despite overcrowding, rising violence, less authority and more responsibility, and other issues typically making the list of teacher complaints when it comes to factors that lower morale, salaries and pay-scales still remain the number one factor de-motivating teachers. Some industry experts argue that teachers are traditionally paid lower wages than industry counterparts because they are more often female “People’s views about how much teachers should be paid have a lot to do with the fact that classroom teachers are overwhelmingly female” (Chadwick 2). Alternatively, opponents of the imposition of this model on education cite the critical societal service issue and contend that the interests of society in general and students and parents in particular are subordinated to narrow self-interests. Nevertheless, Myron Lieberman (415), a pioneer advocate for collective bargaining for teachers, has argued that teachers in the public sector have many advantages over private sector employees including an important role in determining who is management, gaining more from state political activity, bargaining with a management that has less incentive than private sector management to resist union demands, many rights guaranteed by law in the absence of bargaining, and self-interests adverse to public interests. In Buffalo, teachers represented by the Buffalo Teachers Federation (BTF) walked off the job in the summer of 2000 due to failed negotiations between the BTF and the Buffalo Independent School District (BISD). The failure in negotiations was attributable t |
