Book Reviews
| Published date | 01 November 1989 |
| Date | 01 November 1989 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1989.tb00348.x |
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
27:3
November
1989 0007-1080 $3.00
Book
Reviews
Sociul
Class, Status and Teacher Trade
Unionism.
The Case
of
Public Sector Further
and Higher Education
by Sandra M. Turner. Croom Helm,
1988, 207
pp.,
f22.50.
Teucher Militancy:
A
History
of
Teacher Strikes
1896-1987
by Roger
V.
Seifert.
Falmer Press,
1988,291
pp. Cloth
f19.00,
Paper
f9.50.
The Changing Idea
of
a
Teachers’ Union
by Charles
T.
Kerchner and D. E. Mit-
chell. Falmer Press,
1988,275
pp., Cloth
f24.00,
Paper
f10.95.
These three studies offer a range of perspective on teacher trade unionism and
professionalism in the
UK
and the USA. The studies have in common teacher trade
union responses to an increasingly hostile climate
-
perceived by teachers in the
British studies in terms of ‘the pressures of constant educational cuts, decline in
relative pay and the abandonment of any serious commitment to state education’
(Seifert, p.
49).
Compounding these pressures are the effects that professional
‘industrial’ action in defence of what are perceived as legitimate occupation interests
has on public esteem for the professions.
Turner’s book covers the history
of
NATFHE. the National Association of
Teachers in Further and Higher Education, and its predecessor ATTI, the
Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions. The heart of the book is an
analysis
of
the tension between professional identity and trade union activity. In the
evolution of ATTI and NATFHE we see a transition from a Durkheimian view of
professions as ‘moral milieux’ (professionals exercising a moral commitment to
altruistic service
to
their clients) to an increasingly political consciousness. This
entails a growing conflict
of
interest with employers which has several dimensions,
including the apparent contradiction between economistic self-interest in pursuit
of
more favourable pay and working conditions and the defence
of
professionalism as a
force for social change. One thus finds a profession with
a
conflicting sense
of
loyalties
-
to self,
or
to clients. The author dismisses attempts to ground the
changing nature
of
trade union activity in this group in structuralist notions, such as
the development
of
a ‘new middle class’. For this, the reader has to be grateful, as it
ensures that the book remains readable. The book does, however, end with ‘a good
old-fashioned Marxist’ view
of
class defined in terms
of
wage-labour and an emphasis
on the ‘college lecturers’ impotence as employees rather than their status as
professionals’ (p.
166).
Seifert’s study
of
teacher strikes in the
UK
covers similar issues to Turner’s. This
time the focus
is
on school-teachers, who are seen as having a power at their disposal
not available to those in further and higher education. as one
FE
teacher expresses it,
‘We’ve got even less power than the school teachers. When they go
on
strike, the
mums have to stay off work and there’s soon a rumpus’ (Turner, pp.
131-2).
Seifert
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