Management and Labor in Education

Conflict.

American education reflected the labor struggles that so dominanted industrial relations in the 1930s. While management and labor battled over wages and working conditions in the steel and automobile industry, school administrators and teachers' unions did much the same. Like industrial workers, teachers were concerned with low wages, the lack of pension plans, and control of the workplace. The two leading education organizations, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT, begun 1916) and the National Education Association (NEA, begun 1857) struggled to change these conditions by advocating the "professionalization" of the workplace—by which they meant greater teacher control of schools and increased salaries. Opposing them were school administrators and school boards who had their own definition of professional education—one in which schools were run like businesses and teachers were treated like employees. The...

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