Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal
Category
Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Political Science
Received
December 21, 2021
Accepted
February 1, 2022
Published
February 28, 2022
Copyright
Articles in Spectra are freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly cited.
Data Availability Statement
The author confirms that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restrictions upon request.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares that no conflicts of interest exist.
Ethical Considerations
Given that this project did not involve human or animal subjects, no IRB or IACUC approval was needed. All research was derived from publicly shared sources.
Funding
No funding was used to conduct this research.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic presented an array of policy problems for school districts across the country. This included balancing social distancing during in-person learning. The creation of the COVID-19 vaccine made in-person learning a more viable option again. However, the political polarization that surrounded COVID-19 extended to vaccines, with many communities experiencing hurdles in vaccinating their populace. Previous research shows how teachers’ unions influenced school district reopenings during the height of the pandemic in fall of 2020; this paper seeks to expand on this literature by looking at how teachers’ unions influence the adoption of vaccination mandates and testing. I test whether a school district has a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with a teachers’ union, the page length of that CBA. Using an OLS regression, I find that if a teachers’ union has a CBA with its school district, the district is 33% more likely to adopt a vaccination and testing mandate than a district without a CBA. Additionally, the page length CBA has a weaker, but still significant relationship in encouraging the adoption of a vaccination and testing mandate in a school district.
Keywords
Teachers’ unions, COVID-19, vaccination mandates, collective bargaining
Submission Type
Primary research article
Recommended Citation
Thymianos, K. (2022). How do teachers’ unions influence vaccine mandates? Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal, 2(1), 47-53. https://doi.org/10.9741/2766-7227.1015
