ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines the game that teachers and administrators in Urbanville schools played over the terms and conditions of teachers' employment, and analyze teachers' strategic conduct and instrumental logic in pursuing their interests within the game. He divides the case study data and analysis into two major sections. Firstly, he examines the formal and informal contract negotiation process in Urbanville and discusses how teachers learned to play the game with administrators. Secondly, the author presents and analyzes the major categories of conflict between teachers and administrators which pertained to the enforcement of the wage-labor contract, as documented in the union files for the years 1968–69 through 1985–86. A final cluster of disputes that revealed much about "playing the game" involved resistance by teachers to unilateral changes in their workload through the assignment of new classes.
