• Apply tested techniques to handle various situations
• Structure an outcome
• Recognize when to take a strike

What You Need to Know About the Law

• The duty to bargain in good faith
• Mandatory, permissive and illegal issues
• Notifications
• Strikes, lockouts and picketing
• Slow downs and other tactics
• Multi-employer, multi-union bargaining
• Injunctive remedies in labor disputes
• Enforcement of contracts
• Petitions for elections
• Union shop and the check-off
• Economic strikes, replacement of strikers
• Mediation and conciliation

Get Ready to Bargain

• U.S. concept of labor relations – Legislative restrictions
  – Collective bargaining trends
  – Labor policy
  – The collective bargaining process
  – Types of collective bargaining
  – Sites for collective bargaining
• Preparing for negotiations
  – Surveys, statistics, graphs, etc.
  – Selecting the bargaining team
  – Union bargaining team
  – Develop the company’s bargaining position
  – Marketing considerations
  – Financial considerations
  – Operating considerations
  – Aspects of public and community relations
  – General and economic conditions
• Developing proposals
  – Contract review by negotiator
  – Contract review by operating personnel
  – The need for proposals
  – Cost data
  – Structuring a proposal
  – Negotiating a first agreement
  – Communications
  – Strike preparations

Day Two: 12:30-3:30pm
Negotiating an Agreement: The Contractual Ingredients

• Contract considerations – Content of agreement
  – Structure of agreement
  – Long term vs short term contracts
  – Items to be avoided
  – Wage re-openers
  – Mutual consent clauses
  – Past practices
  – Side agreements
  – Memos of understanding
  – Work rules
• Cost matters
  – Analyze and pricing union demands
  – Wages vs fringes
  – Hidden cost factors
• Mediation
• Union pressure tactics
• When to take a strike
  – Settling a strike

Day Three: 8:30am-3pm
Negotiating an Agreement: Tactics, Techniques and Table Manners

• Strategy and tactics
• Important negotiating concepts
• Important negotiator traits
• Table manners
• Techniques:
  – First meeting
  – Getting movement
  – Impasse
  – How to say no
  – Value of caucuses
• Early settlement contract extensions, retroactivity, etc.
• Signaling
• Educating the union bargaining committee
• How to structure an offer
• Letters to the employees
• Ratification problems
• Communications
• Negotiating style
  – Summary
  – Red flags