ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the impact of the marketisation of education on labour relations in UK schools. More specifically it is concerned with the effects of the market on the potential for organised teacher activity. I want to argue that, on the one hand, teacher unions have been emasculated by recent employment legislation and that the work of teacher unions has in many ways been made more difficult and complicated by the deregulation of schooling, competition between schools and the intensification of the labour process of teaching. On the other hand, I will suggest that the pressures on teachers-and studentsgenerated by the market operating in conjunction with an increased workload accentuates the need for organised teacher responses. I begin with a brief description of the three-year investigation into the operation of market forces in education2 from which the case study material used here is drawn. I then present a general discussion of the elements of the UK government’s market policies which have an impact on labour relations in schools and union activity. I go on to consider the impact of marketisation on teacher unionism in one local authority, which, I argue, can be seen as a critical case.
