Negotiating Labor Agreements

This seminar is offered in two locations: Cambridge, Massachusetts and Chicago, Illinois.

Negotiating Labor Agreements

“This is an outstanding program. I will recommend that every labor leader, human resources, corporate [executive] attend.”

“Best labor negotiations seminar I’ve ever attended.”

As a senior leader with union or management responsibility for the labor contract, how do you address complex issues in today’s bargaining environment without becoming embroiled in escalating adversarial battles? How do you negotiate fundamental changes in job security, work operations, pay and benefits, yet avoid making things worse? What can you do to get the most for your side and build strong relationships at the same time?

These are the issues we address for union and management leadership in Negotiating Labor Agreements: New Strategies for Achieving Better Collective Bargaining Outcomes, an innovative interactive program here in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This intensive two-day event has been designed to provide you with proven skills and techniques to:

• Prepare for bargaining and establish a negotiation strategy
• Educate and involve constituents
• Negotiate preliminary agreements and deliver opening statements
• Bargain under forcing and fostering change strategies
• Effectively explore issues and then focus toward durable agreements

We urge you to take advantage of this opportunity to invite members of your own negotiating team as well as those with whom you will be bargaining. The program offers a neutral low-risk environment for joint training and substantial discounts are available for team attendance. You will find it useful at any point in your contract cycle, especially in the year prior to contract expiration when critical preparation and groundwork need to be done.

Please review this website, then click above to find a convenient date to register, or by fax (choose get brochure ), or join our mailing list, or contact Monica Dane, conference registrar, at
(781) 239-1111 to reserve your place at the program.

We look forward to seeing you in Cambridge.

Sincerely,

Professor Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld Program Co-Chair
Professor Robert McKersie Program Co-Chair

It’s Hard To Try New Approaches When Tough Issues Are on the Table

Collective bargaining used to be simple. Everybody understood the process. You drafted a list of demands. You downplayed the demands of the other side. You asked for more than you really wanted, traded concessions for concessions, depended on informal back-channel conversations, waited for the other side to blink, went right down to the deadline . . . and hoped you could walk away with a deal.

Now, far-reaching changes involving mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, decentralization, new technologies, global competition and institutional instability have altered the way labor contracts are negotiated in workplaces across North America. It is hard to try new approaches to negotiation when tough issues are on the table.

As a senior leader with union or management responsibility for the labor contract, how do you address complex issues in today’s bargaining environment without becoming embroiled in escalating adversarial battles?

These are among the questions we will address in Negotiating Labor Agreements, an intensive, two-day, interactive conference designed to help both management and union leaders like you to:

1. Develop and improve bargaining processes that will meet your unique needs, whether or not you are in partnership with the other side; and

2. Acquire the skills to make these new approaches work.

Led by a senior faculty of labor experts who pioneered many of the mutual gains principles of interest-based bargaining being used in collective bargaining today, this program features skill-building exercises and practical simulations that will improve your ability to:

• Prepare effectively for negotiations
• Negotiate agreements on ground rules and bargaining schedules
• Develop and deliver pre-bargaining briefings for the union membership and management governing bodies
• Shape opening statements that set a constructive tone for difficult negotiations
• Establish and effectively utilize joint task forces
• Negotiate agreements on highly contentious issues

We’ll Explore Proven Strategies for Building Better Relationships and Getting Better Outcomes

In this intensive, two-day, training program, you’ll learn more effective collective bargaining strategies for negotiating when it’s not just business as usual. We focus on negotiations when:

• Fundamental changes in wages, hours and working conditions are on the agenda
• Unions and employees have deep concerns about security and institutional stability
• Technology change is being proposed that would replace existing technologies or introduce new technologies and new materials
• You’re bargaining in the context of organizational systems changes such as continuous quality improvement teams, knowledge-driven work systems and other systems change initiatives
• You’re trying to make a new bargaining process work, but:
• your constituents are skeptical about anything that deviates from tradition
• a lack of trust exists between the two sides – yet you need to jointly collect data for the negotiation
• both sides are unable to disagree constructively – yet neither wants to completely sink the bargaining process
• you don’t know how to build a robust cooperative relationship that can address tough issues
• you want to develop new strategies for “bargaining over how to bargain”– aligning the collective bargaining process with the demands of the new economy

In the past, preparing for collective bargaining followed a set routine. Today, preparing for bargaining is anything but routine. The issues are complex and the cost of failure is too high.

At the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, we have developed leadership training designed to help you construct the best collective bargaining process for your organization.

This program focuses on five major phases in the bargaining process – and on building the core skills required in each phase. Based on the mutual gains approach developed at the Program on Negotiation, this process has been used in numerous industries including construction, automotive, steel, trucking, education, healthcare, aerospace, utilities, communications and the arts, as well as in local, state and federal governments.

Both management and union leaders are encouraged to participate and to bring their counterparts.

This is a unique opportunity for joint training in a neutral, non-threatening environment. It is based on real-world examples and realistic simulations that raise the same issues you are likely to face in your own contract negotiations.

DAY ONE

I. Labor-Management Relationships in a Global Economy: Interest-Based
Bargaining (IBB) and Strategic Negotiations

The essential principles and concepts any bargainer needs to know about strategic negotiations and interest-based bargaining. Plus, challenges you’ll experience applying the principles to collective bargaining. Important data on national trends in collective
bargaining.

II. Five Core Phases – A New Road-Map for Collective Bargaining

Phase I: Preparation and Framing
A new way to prepare for collective bargaining that involves distinguishing interests from positions. Learn how to assess your interests as well as the interests of the other side. Avoid the traps of positional bargaining. Convert positional demands from constituents into interest-based mandates. Educate constituents on economic and workforce realities.

Phase II: Bargaining Over How to Bargain
Reach pre-agreement on the bargaining process, relevant groundrules, joint tasks forces or sub-committees and other key logistics. Bargaining over how to bargain increases your ability to achieve mutual gains outcomes.

Phase III: Opening and Exploring
Develop effective opening statements. Generate many options on key issues. Integrate brainstorming and problem-solving into the bargaining process. Address contentious issues without escalating battles.

Phase IV: Focusing and Agreeing
Find linkages, establish ranges, apply standards, explore “what ifs” and “supposals” – all to focus multiple options toward robust agreements. Draft contract language that will stand the test of time.

Phase V: Implementation and Administration
Ensure effective joint implementation through shared visions, strategic planning and negotiated change. Align systems for dispute resolution and joint action.

DAY TWO

III. In-Depth Simulation

Apply the five phases road-map in a challenging simulation where you first negotiate internally – bargaining teams with constituents – and then across the table between union and management. Address challenging issues such as health care, joint partnership, training and other matters. Focus on roles at the table, in caucuses, during brainstorming, and other dynamics.

IV. Living Under the Agreement – Strategic Partnerships

Bringing agreements to life and making them work over time. Examine the challenges of negotiating and sustaining one of the field’s benchmark partnership agreements. Appreciate what is and is not possible in labor relations today.

V. Next Steps: Designing and Implementing New Approaches to Collective Bargaining

Consider strategic choices in all phases of the bargaining process. Explore implications across a wide range of different sectors, including the most current available data on the extent of IBB practice in the U.S.