More than a finger in the pie : organised teachers in Malta 1987-1998

Abstract

This study in policy sociology using a state-centred Marxist framework, focuses on organized teachers within the Malta Union of Teachers. Analysis of official documentation regarding the MUT, participant and non-participant observation at various union meetings and in-depth semistructured interviews with MUT officials, civil servants and policy makers was carried out over the years 1997 - 1998. Additional information was also sought through official statistics and press reports and other literature which shed light on the social, political and cultural milieu that mould organized teachers. This study begins by looking at the internal dynamics of the MUT in an attempt to analyse whose discourses make it to the official agenda. Analysis of the motions tabled at the Annual General Conferences together with the MUT' s organization of delegates, reveals that not all members have the same access to the union, with the consequence that policy is being influenced by the most organized members in the most advantaged schools. This study argues that this situation restricts the policy community within the MUT which legitimizes itself by supporting policies on issues such as deployment and seniority that make the policy even more exclusive, putting advantaged students and teachers in a bigger advantage. The issue of mixed ability teaching and comprehensivization is taken as a case study to demonstrate how the official policy of the council and the actual one of the members stands in contradiction and suggests strategies employed by the union leadership to bridge it. The study also suggests that the union is a case of men talking about women in men's tenns. The issue of professionalism, in particular the inherent definitions of expertise and career are indeed male definitions, keeping the female majority fimtly imprisoned under the 'glass ceiling', so that the concept of proletarianization is also gender based. The fight for recognition of instructors' grades is also taken up to show how the ideology of difference inherent in the claim for professional status is articulated and how the MUT used this with partial success to displace the GWU from the policy community. State tactics on the issue to secure legitimation with the help of the MUT on the control function of Trade Schools as perpetrators of class and gender based hierarchical power relations in the labour market is also analysed. It is argued that other MUT policies including deployment, seniority, and teacher shortage, also serve this legitimating function. It focuses also on the MUT's response to control by the state, and builds on the arguments made elsewhere that the MUT in/directly reinforced such control. This study also suggests that when 'indirect control' is not enough to guarantee the MUT's cooperation, the state resorts to corporatism, with the resulting conflicts experienced by the union. Finally, this study looks at the situation as it is unfolds today and suggests that current discourse of autonomy may indeed spell a difference in method of control rather than in degree, unless the MUT's monopoly on teachers' voice, is not counterbalanced by grass root teacher (among others) counter discourse.