Austerity, Struggle, and Union Democracy

Bill 115 and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, an Insider View

Bibliographic Data

ID11230082
AuthorsChantal Mancini (McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume45
Issue1
Pages8-31
Publication date2020-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLabor Studies Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0160-449X • E-ISSN: 1538-9758
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0160449x20901646
OpenAlexW3004676528
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited13

In 2012, unions representing teachers and education workers in Ontario, Canada, were faced with Bill 115, legislation used by the provincial government to impose a collective agreement upon education workers and remove their right to strike. With a specific focus on the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, this paper is an insider view of how Bill 115 and the external political contexts of the time affected Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation’s internal democratic practices at the height of the struggle. It employs theories of union democracy in order to consider how external forces can shape teacher unions’ internal democracy, and how the competing pressures faced by union leaders can impact their actions and decisions. This paper takes the view that internal union democracy is an important consideration in teacher unions’ resistance to government austerity agendas

Austerity · Collective bargaining · Democracy · Government (linguistics · Insider · Legislation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Public Administration · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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