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This thesis investigates the Teachers' League of South Africa's (TLSA, League or Teachers' League) ideas and practice of non-collaboration. It seeks to ascertain whether these ideas and practices continued after the organisation merged with several public sector unions in the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (NUPSAW) at the end of the last century. The thesis tracks the emergence and changing dynamics of the TLSA from the early decades of the twentieth century, as it developed and grew in the Western Cape, a region that was its nerve centre and where it was most active. There is a focus on the endeavours of the League to adapt and grow during the political and educational tumult of the 1990s, a period characterised by negotiations, reconciliatory and consensual politics that centred on nation building, and which was unreceptive if not clearly hostile to the organisation's non-collaborationist stance. The thesis employs an historical approach to contextualise the development of the League's non-collaborationism, and to elucidate the impact of South Africa's changing political, economic and educational landscape on the organisation. Extensive interviews were conducted, therewith giving a voice to the writing of history from below, embracing the experiences and perceptions of League members and the teacher activists who interacted with them before, but more so during and even beyond the 1990s. Documentary material of the TLSA and its umbrella body, the Unity Movement, dating back to the 1940s, provides the key primary sources for the study, while secondary information on the development of South Africa's political economy and the liberation movement offers valuable insights and alternative perspectives on the TLSA and Unity Movement. The thesis endorses the notion that appearances are at times intermingled with the opposite of what is being perceived, and thus challenges assumptions that the League's policy of non-collaboration was fixed and timeless. Instead, the thesis seeks to uncover the incongruities, nuances and complexity of this distinctive quality of the organisation, in an attempt finally, to elucidate its transformative potential in the present period.

School choice dominated discourses within educational policy in the last year; some have even described 2021 as “the year of school choice.” School choice allows public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that best fit their needs. This is often summarized by its advocates as “funding students over systems.” Generally, school choice allows market forces to influence education by providing more competition in the education market. Teachers’ unions have fought against school choice measures for years, but what impact do they have? This undergraduate thesis compares 49 states to determine if the proportion of public school teachers in teachers’ unions in a given state serves as a proxy to measure the impact of unions and to discover whether teachers’ unions influenced whether a state passed new school choice legislation in 2021. By employing a binary logistic regression analysis, the results provide evidence that as the share of public school teachers who are union members increases, a state’s likelihood to pass new school choice legislation increases. This thesis gives a broad view of the impact teachers’ unions have on school choice at the state level, but more research detailing the ways unions leverage these effects and how politicians respond to teachers’ unions in their states would be valuable.

This thesis explores the impact of the centralization of bargaining in Ontario’s education sector on the internal democracy of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), the province’s second-largest teacher union and self-described defender of public education. Using multiple theoretical lenses of union democracy, public sector unionism, labour geography and teacher professionalism, this thesis examines OSSTF’s history and the evolution of its internal processes and structures, with a focus on the union’s response to the gradual shift to a centralized bargaining regime. Initially formed in 1919 as a conservative organization committed to raising the professional status of teachers, OSSTF expanded into a union that represents both teachers and support staff, bargaining contracts for members with local employers. Positioned within a public sector context of austerity and neoliberal governments looking to contain the costs of public education, OSSTF found itself subjected to legislation intended to upscale education funding and bargaining, beginning in the late 1990s. This thesis finds that the external context of centralization of bargaining has been the most important factor in shaping the internal democratic life of OSSTF, shifting scales of power from the local to the provincial level of the union, exacerbating tensions between provincial and local actors, increasing the overall bureaucracy of the organization, and reducing democratic participation by the rank-and-file. These findings lead to the greater question of whether these internal changes have enhanced or limited the ability of OSSTF to effectively further their members’ interests and resist the neoliberalization of the school system, with a view to considering the role of teacher unions within the future of public education in Ontario. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This case study explores the impact of the centralization of bargaining in Ontario’s education sector on the internal processes of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), a union representing 60,000 teachers and education workers in Ontario. It includes an examination of the union’s history, its responses to legislative changes in contract negotiations, an analysis of internal union documents, and semi-structured interviews with key informants. The data and analysis reveal a more bureaucratized union, with members having less ability to direct it actions. This study considers whether a more bureaucratized union can be effective in its defense of public education.

The continued steady growth of public sector unions compels public administrators to understand the influence labor organizations exert upon local governments. The following study demonstrates the extent of union influence upon police expenditures in Florida. Union influence not only increases total police expenditures and personal services expenditures, it also causes operating expenses to rise. Union influence is less pronounced, and possibly even non-existent in capital outlays expenditures because of possible lack of interest on the part of the union in this area and also because of the existence of economically predetermined policies regarding capital outlays such as vehicle purchases. Public sector unions, by formalizing and enhancing the exit-voice phenomenon within government systems, influence the expenditures of local government. This influence manifests its presence specifically in local government expenditures. By examining the association between unionization and the level of expenditures in local government, this study attempts to illustrate the influence of unions upon local governments. Specifically, this study assesses the impact of police unionization has upon local government police department expenditures for municipalities in the state of Florida. A qualitative inquiry combines with a quantitative study to examine the extent of union influence on police expenditures in Florida.