Individual Workplace Agreements in Schools: The Case Against

Introduction and Purpose

Memorandum Re: Individual Workplace Agreements

The members of the board of this secondary school — an institution serving approximately 700 students and carrying a tradition of excellence in education — have been considering the merits of making a fundamental change in the nature of the relationship between the school and its staff. That current relationship (with the exception of the administration) consists of traditional collective bargaining rights negotiated with the heads of each union's representatives at the school. This is the norm for schools in the region and, indeed, in the country, which has a highly unionized school workforce.

However, like other schools in the region and the country, this institution has been considering a change in the nature of staff–administration relations by instituting individual workplace agreements between each member of the staff and the administration (and thus the board as well). This memorandum argues against such a shift to individual workplace agreements.

These agreements vary slightly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from worker to worker, but the following description provides an excellent example of this type of arrangement:

A Queensland workplace agreement is a written individual employment agreement setting out the wages, conditions, and working arrangements between an employer and an individual employee. An employer can negotiate a Queensland workplace agreement with each employee individually or with a group of employees. If negotiated on a group basis, it must be signed individually by each of the employees covered. An employee has the right to appoint a bargaining agent to represent them in negotiations; a bargaining agent can be any person or even a union. A Queensland workplace agreement is a stand-alone agreement that completely overrides an award — it replaces the award under which an employee is currently working unless the agreement specifies otherwise. A Queensland workplace agreement overrides a certified agreement only if the certified agreement contains specific provisions that allow this to happen.

This might seem like a relatively innocuous arrangement. However, an investigation of the research on this issue — which draws on the experiences of other schools that have either considered or actually made the changeover to individual workplace agreements — suggests that such a move would be extremely unwise. This memo examines the reasons for this while also summarizing the arguments generally offered in favor of individual workplace agreements. We begin with those arguments.

Arguments in Favor of Individual Workplace Agreements

The most common complaints against union workplaces in general are frequently directed at unionized school sites as well. Chief among these are that unions tend to inflate labor costs without offering a proportionate return compared to what the same expenditure in salaries would achieve in an open shop, and — generally considered an even more damning charge — that unions create artificial boundaries and rules so that one group of workers who could easily accomplish a task must sit idle while those in a different job category authorized to do the work are still on their lunch break.

Certainly, as both Karmel (2000) and Levacic (1995) argue, this is sometimes the case. Let us take these two criticisms of the unionized workforce in turn.

Labor Costs and the Value of Specialization

First, it is generally true that unionized workers are better paid and receive better benefits than those operating under individual workplace agreements or simple work-for-hire arrangements. One interpretation of this fact is that union staff are more costly in terms of each hour worked.

But there are a number of different ways to assess both cost and value, and it is important to do so in as intelligent and nuanced a way as possible, as Knight (1993) argues. One of the primary reasons that unionized workforces are more expensive on an hourly basis is that they consist, on average, of more highly trained and more experienced workers. Karmel (2000) notes that individual workplace agreements tend to replace more experienced and more skilled workers with less experienced and less skilled ones. Individual workplace agreements are designed to expand the range of duties that an employee can be called upon to perform, increasing the number of positions that person can fill without running into the barriers that unions maintain to protect areas of specialization. Although this is not always the case, it is often true — and perhaps more often than not — that a specialized worker is in general the best person for a given job.

Individual workplace agreements directly and intentionally undercut such specialization and expertise by hiring people who can be "plugged in" wherever management needs them on any given day. This works in some cases — or rather, it works better in some cases than in others. In a position requiring relatively few skills and simply hard work, substituting one worker for another is comparatively straightforward. But there are still costs involved, because every position at a school requires some skills, and if the workforce is being constantly shifted among different jobs, there will always be a cost in terms of individuals having to learn — on the job, repeatedly, as that job changes — what they are supposed to be doing.

Conclusion

Taken together, the evidence from research and practical experience in comparable schools strongly suggests that the costs of transitioning to individual workplace agreements outweigh any potential benefits. Unionized workers bring greater experience, deeper specialization, and higher satisfaction to their roles — qualities that directly support a school's mission of educational excellence. A well-designed organizational structure can address the legitimate concerns about inflexibility without abandoning collective bargaining protections. For these reasons, this memorandum recommends that the board not proceed with individual workplace agreements.

References

Karmel, P. (Ed.) (2000). School resourcing: Models and practices in changing times. Melbourne: Australian College of Education.

Knight, B. (1993). Financial management for schools: The thinking manager's guide. Oxford: Heinemann.

Levacic, R. (1995). Local management of schools: Analysis and practice. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Marsden, S. (1997). Capital fundraising for schools. London: Pitman.

Odden, A., & Busch, C. (1998). Financing schools for high performance: Strategies for improving the use of educational resources.