Recently, the question of how best to compensate teachers for the work they do has become newsworthy again. The authors report on work undertaken in three American Federation of Teachers (AFT) sites to develop new and comprehensive compensation plans. All three plans are viewed (locally and nationally) as comprehensive reforms of existing compensation systems, yet each plan is distinctive as well. Each of the compensation plans examined combines aspects of different compensation alternatives. Thus, each site is developing its own model, although the components are drawn from an apparently small set of alternative arrangements. Using union bargainers’descriptions as a starting point, the authors compare the three plans and their implementation (actual and proposed) and discuss several observations that bargainers made about their work. The article concludes with some observations concerning the emerging compensation negotiating process and products and some of the directions that compensation reform is moving in.
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