Walter H. Warfield is a scholar in residence at the University of Illinois-Springfield and former executive director of the Illinois Association of School Administrators.

In the modern world, differences need no longer be divisions but sources of a greater unity."
Laurence Freeman

Back in the 1970's and early '80's, efforts in the legislative arena by administrators and school board members focused on blocking the passage of collective bargaining legislation. Philosophically, school boards were opposed to the notion of mandated collective bargaining for a wide spectrum of reasons, all of them radiating from the position that teachers, as public employees, did not have the right to negotiate collectively with their employers, and that they went into teaching knowing there was no collective bargaining available.

School boards that recognized their teachers as collective bargaining units and engaged in bargaining did so benevolently. When issues between school boards and teacher unions were not resolved at the bargaining table, it was not uncommon for unions to resort to strikes, though illegal. When that happened, school boards frequently sought relief and resolution through the state courts.

Although philosophically unacceptable to many, the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act (IELRA), effective January 1, 1984, brought a number of clarifications to the process. It established the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board to monitor compliance with the new law. It also established general rules of engagement for the negotiation process and, under certain prescribed conditions, legalized strikes.

With the IELRA in place, strikes in Illinois declined. During the five years prior to the Act, Illinois public school districts averaged 25 strikes per year. In the next several years following 1984, the state's annual average fell to 15. This 40 percent drop in strikes occurred at the same time that the number of school districts negotiating doubled. Now, virtually all school districts in Illinois collectively bargain with unions.

Collective bargaining in the educational arena stems directly from the private sector model. The quickest and most accurate way to describe the model is that it is adversarial in nature and frequently confrontational. However, since 1984, it has become apparent that a more effective approach to the bargaining process is to engage in a close-contact exchange at an intellectual level that goes beyond a compromised contract agreement into the realm of meaningful dialogue, understanding and respect.

Effective dialogue goes beyond an exchange of positions. It is a collective experience among sincere individuals with different perspectives, reaching for mutual understanding and respect. Effective dialogue demands personal involvement and openness.

Effective dialogue reduces fears and suspicions, resulting in each group feeling better about the other, as well as themselves. But make no mistake, effective dialogue does not come without risk. It involves the risk of expressed opinions being rejected, not being accepted as valid, not being valued and perhaps not even being respected. Engaging in the collective bargaining process without this insight is a formula for a process that can go uncontrollably wrong

To avoid these negative aspects of collective bargaining, it is imperative to acquire the skill of artful listening. Effective dialogue is dependent on mutual listening and a spirit absent of judgments based on simplistic caricature. It is absent of the act of demonizing the other side. It is absent of misrepresentations and dismissive judgments. Participants must stay faithful to the principles of effective dialogue, rendering respect for and tolerance of the differences as much as similarities between the participants' beliefs and attitudes.

Care should also be taken to appreciate the power of silence in dialogue. Dialogue is meant to illuminate both parallels and the divergence of belief in order to dispel the dark forces of delusion, fear, anger and pride that can lurk in the spaces between the words exchanged. Seek to know the other group. The less that is known about others, the more likely it is to project negative feelings and prejudices onto them. The greater the familiarity among participants, the greater the possibility to understand different views and positions.

Successful collective bargaining is an exercise in the quest for modest achievements and requires the admission of a lack of knowledge. This is never easy to do. If knowledge is power, the lack of it can be perceived as weakness. Yet, in the practice of effective dialogue, this is not the case. To admit limitations is the beginning of a dialogue comprised of trust and spontaneity.

Take time during negotiations to reflect on the experience. Reflection should be on one's own experience directly, rather than on assumptions of the experiences of others. The reflection should strive to recognize the hindrances confronted along the way as remnants of previously held prejudices. Recognize that others involved in the process will have them as well. Recognize that a proud and principled member of the school board bargaining team is very much the same as a proud and principled member of the union bargaining team.

Accept the existence of differences. No amount of dialogue will ever eliminate all differences, nor should it. Differences need never be divisions. They can serve as the anvil on which future positions can be shaped into improvements on the relations between school boards and teachers to the benefit of the students.

Acceptance of differences strengthens tolerance and receptivity toward others and is a valuable insight to the collective bargaining process. The only way to achieve it is to work for it. It arrives spontaneously. It is surprising when it comes and yet obvious.

Ron Booth, Collective Bargaining and the School Board Member, Illinois Association of School Boards

Laurence Freeman, introduction to The Good Heart, Dalai Lama (Robert Kiely editor),Windom Publications, 1998

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