A Comparison of Attitudes and Perceptions of Board Members, Superintendents and Negotiators Towards Regional Bargaining in Jackson and Macomb Counties.

Abstract

This study examined the perceptions of school administrators and school board members of regional collective bargaining. Regional bargaining is a process in which local unions from individual school districts reorganize into a larger single entity to achieve common goals. To determine whether experience with the process of regional bargaining is a factor in the administrative/board reaction, populations exposed and not exposed to regional bargaining were sampled. Utilizing the technique of survey research the opinions of board members, superintendents and negotiators were collected in two Michigan counties. The design focused on eight areas of concern: budget, working relationships, curricula, public support, bargaining process, enabling legislation, inevitability and net result for education. Four null hypotheses were utilized. On the opinion of respondents, the net effect of regional bargaining upon education will be negative because local control will be lost, boards will have less discretion, morale will suffer, and bargaining will take longer. Although respondents expected settlements to entail smaller class sizes, higher salaries and more fringe benefits, they also expect the settlements to cost more than a district can afford. Although they expect the influence of the union on the curricula to increase, they expect the influence of the teachers to diminish. The respondents do not desire enabling legislation for regional bargaining. For the eight areas under investigation in each of the first three hypotheses, the researcher utilized an independent t-test at the .05 level of significance. No significance was found for twenty-one of the resultant twenty-four tests indicating that experience was not a factor in the perception of respondents. For three of the tests significance was found: board members exposed to regional bargaining thought that morale would decline to a significantly greater extent than non-exposed board members thought, board members exposed to regional bargaining thought that the net effect on education would be significantly worse than non-exposed board members thought, and negotiators exposed to regional bargaining thought that the impact on budget would be significantly greater than non-exposed negotiators thought. A one way analysis of variance was employed for each of the eight areas under investigation. No significant difference was found.