This document has been formatted for printing from your browser from the Web site of the Illinois Association of School Boards.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE -- This document is © copyrighted by the Illinois Association of School Boards. IASB hereby grants to school districts and other Internet users the right to download, print and reproduce this document provided that (a) the Illinois Association of School Boards is noted as publisher and copyright holder of the document and (b) any reproductions of this document are disseminated without charge and not used for any commercial purpose.
Illinois School Board Journal
January/February 2002
Collaborative bargaining:
Ready to play by new rules?
by Ronald R. Booth
Ronald R. Booth is an author, school labor relations consultant and a former member of the IASB staff. This article appears as a chapter in his book, Collective Bargaining and the Illinois School Board Member, and is reprinted here with permission. Copyright 1994, Illinois Association of School Boards.
Collective bargaining is traditionally a bilateral adversary process involving two different and conflicting sets of goals and aspirations. Through negotiations, the two parties attempt to accommodate their divergent goals, a process that works best in an atmosphere of mutual understanding and respect.
When the process degenerates into personal rancor, threats and work stoppages, both sides lose.
Dissatisfaction with the traditional adversary bargaining model has prompted a growing number of school boards and unions to experiment with other ways of reaching accord. Some non-traditional approaches are worthy of emulating, some are not. All depend on local circumstances for their success.
In today's public school environment, chances are good that the labor-management relationship in most school districts falls somewhere between the extremes of traditional and non-traditional bargaining. The school board member needs to be familiar with the full range of possibilities, because the bargaining relationship is usually in a constant state of moving toward one extreme or the other.
The traditional approach
The basic purpose of traditional bargaining is to remove power and authority from one party (management) and transfer it to the other party (the union). The vehicle is the contract, or negotiated agreement. Compromise and concession form the style in adversary bargaining, based on demands from the union and counterproposals from management.
The process works while lines of communication are open. But rancor between management and employees typically leads to bargaining through the news media and other forms of open and public dispute. The union strives to get public support on its side; the school board follows suit. Both sides lose, and the school district as an educational institution suffers the consequences.
Unfortunately, public sector unions have, with few exceptions, adopted this private sector model.
In early stages of a bargaining relationship, some educators find the traditional adversary model distasteful and attempt to circumvent its realities. While some have found success in avoidance strategies, others have courted disaster resulting in huge union gains.
It is essential to understand that if the end product is a contract, then the process is collective bargaining regardless of what you choose to call it. Describing the bargaining process as a "forum for communications and cooperative problem solving," for example, often disguises the fact that real conflict exists. Such a description appeals to many educators and school board members who place a high value on cooperation and communication. However, cooperative decision-making involves just one side -- a team. In bargaining, there are two sides. Consequently, the terms "cooperation" and "bargaining" are contradictory if not mutually exclusive.
In a few Illinois school districts, decisions are still made through cooperative non-bargaining processes. In most districts, however, decisions are made through bargaining. Once employees unionize and demand a contract, some form of bargaining is obligatory.
Traditional bargaining doesn't have to be adversary in its most negative connotation, however. All of us engage in adversarial bargaining in our everyday lives when we buy cars and other commodities. We negotiate daily with colleagues and family members. We accommodate, compromise and concede in many activities.
Many, if not most, collective bargaining agreements are hammered out without impasse, strike and hostility. Many bargaining issues can be resolved through integrative (problem solving) approaches. Other issues (such as wages) are usually resolved at the other end of the continuum -- the distributive or rigid offer-counteroffer approach. In between are packaging and trading approaches. If the objective of both parties is to reach an acceptable agreement with the least amount of conflict, then resolution of most issues can be accomplished in a non-distributive fashion. Experienced negotiators prefer to take a non-confrontational approach and avoid distributive behavior as much as possible -- at least to a point when final positions are too far apart for resolution and impasse procedures are required.
Skilled negotiators understand that one can disagree without being disagreeable and that agreements can be reached without resorting to antagonism, badgering and personal attacks. As bargaining relationships mature, negotiators on both sides find a greater degree of comfort with problem solving.
Non-traditional efforts
The usual outcome of traditional bargaining is that both sides lose a little. Negotiating from a board perspective is a gradual process of losing as little as possible. Unions also feel a sense of loss because they don't get as much as they want. Rarely do both sides feel like winners unless they both gain something very important that overshadows their losses.
Those are both acceptable results with long-range benefits to the institution. If one party wins and the other obviously loses, then there will probably be a "get even" mentality from the loser, creating strife and conflict in future negotiations. If union members feel that they didn't get a fair settlement or if their leadership wants greater support or recognition, then their leadership becomes aggressive and confrontational, creating hostility and impasse. If management feels they have been "had," then they become rigid, regressive and draw firm positions creating confrontation.
Most people want to avoid strife. Those in the political and public arena of education find that labor relations strife often conflicts with other goals, e.g., re-election, tax referenda, job security and educational improvement. As a result, educators have long sought ways to avoid the political pressures of impasse and conflict that come with collective bargaining.
Districts with a continuing history of conflict have been most active in seeking alternatives to public displays of power. In those districts, the survival of both individual careers and the educational mission of the schools depends on finding an alternative to restore credibility with the public.
Moreover, the movement toward teacher empowerment as part of educational reform has re-fueled interest in non-traditional bargaining. Participative management and/or shared governance has been recycled as site-based or building-level management and integrated into the labor-management mix. Advocates claim that involvement in building decisions (including economics) increases communication, provides a vehicle for collaboration on the real mission of the school and neutralizes the "we-them" concept of negotiations.
Skeptics argue that site-based management is a union ploy to gain control at the building level. As evidence, they cite the union's unwillingness to relax contractual limitations on management and its insistence on right of approval for any contract waivers or exceptions.
Whether site-based decision-making is either or neither of the above, it has gained popularity among reformers and school officials. Some states have mandated site-based models. If collaboration is working effectively in the site-based model, then that changing relationship and attitude should make collaborative labor relations at the district level more attractive to both management and the union.
There have been some encouraging trends toward collegial, non-adversary bargaining models. Some districts have been successful in finding processes that concentrate on integrative approaches while minimizing the distributive nature of the process. Success, if defined as an acceptable contract without conflict, has occurred when both parties agree that the old way wasn't successful and develop mutual ownership in a new process or procedure.
The importance of joint ownership in a new process can't be overstated because any process can succeed if all participants share the procedural and behavioral goals to succeed. If only the board or only the union desires change, then any process is doomed to failure.
(The fact the union supports the traditional model while management does not probably explains most failures of alternative models!)
Process is certainly important in the public sector, because how school officials are viewed by their constituents is often more important than what they do. Perceptions are often more important than truth or facts. Boards as political/public bodies n
eed to look good. They want to avoid confrontation. Likewise, farsighted unions have come to recognize that economic gains depend on public support and funding.
School managers also have other responsibilities and obligations. A collective bargaining contract has a great deal to do with the public's interest in good schools and the rights of students and parents. Therefore, in spite of the obvious advantages of non-traditional processes, school managers must approach such alternatives with caution. The product of any collective bargaining process is a contract. This product (contract) is the most important outcome of negotiating, because it affects the institution for a long time (maybe forever). Retrieving losses requires a long recovery period and is rarely collaborative.
Unions also share the goal of a good contract. But their time frame for recovering losses (or no gains) extends only to the expiration of the contract when they can again seek what they lost (or didn't get) in the last round of negotiating -- a very short recovery period.
Win-win negotiations
Attempts to find alternative processes began in earnest in the early 1980s. A number of processes emerged, but the most popular was developed by a sociologist, whose forte was conflict resolution and hostage intervention, not labor relations. Irving Goldaber created and promoted a model called "win-win," a program successfully marketed and copied throughout the nation. Win-win is a highly structured and elaborate set of ground rules that requires joint ownership and acceptance of certain restrictions (protocols). The win-win model in its most restrictive form involves:
Many variations of the win-win model have surfaced, some using portions of win-win as alterations to a more traditional approach. For example, the initial joint session where information, ideas and concerns are shared openly has been used to open lines of communications prior to more traditional bargaining. It serves as preliminary sensitivity training for the parties and puts participants in a positive frame of mind.
Expedited bargaining
The restricted time frame of win-win also has found favor with both traditional and non-traditional proponents. A process called "expedited bargaining" adopts the marathon bargaining sessions and predetermined closure time of win-win to replace the multitude of briefer sessions typical of traditional bargaining. Expedited bargaining may or may not involve other components of win-win.
Although the restricted time frame of win-win and expedited bargaining reduces the number of meetings, the total time spent may be equal to or greater than in traditional bargaining.
Other variations of the collaborative theme have been developed. Unfortunately some border on hucksterism and at best are commercializations created by entrepreneurs. The majority, however, are the offspring of win-win bargaining and are designed to provide a more collaborative environment. Some labels that have been used include: integrative bargaining, cooperative bargaining, dual concept bargaining, conceptual bargaining and process bargaining.
Common to most of these models are the following:
Evaluating the possibilities
Before embarking on a cooperative approach to negotiations, the school board and administration must be able to give a resounding "yes" to the following question:
Do we have the skill, ability and experience to exercise the same level of control over the outcome (contract) as we do in the current bargaining process?
If the answer is "no" or we don't know, then it would be wise to reject a non-traditional process -- or to first take steps to acquire the skills essential for success.
School managers and school boards should not agree to trade a more amiable relationship or procedure for contract gains. The public interest demands that they not trade a bad product for a good process. On the other hand, if a school board has a history of confrontation and finds a real desire by the union to share ownership in the new process, then a non-traditional approach may be advantageous.
Keep in mind that a union does not waive its rights under IELRA* by agreeing to an alternative bargaining procedure. If the alternative model does not produce an agreement, then the union can still seek resolution through the procedures established for impasse, including mediation and the right to strike.
Collaborative bargaining may be a possibility in your district. But do not jump at it because it sounds good, is in vogue or worked well somewhere else. The decision to alter your bargaining relationship should be considered carefully and cautiously. If both process and product can be improved, of course, the organization will be ahead. But if process replaces product, then one problem is converted to another, perhaps more serious problem.
* Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act requires school boards to recognize employee bargaining units and to bargain with them in good faith regarding wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment.