The President’s Voice: Upcoming Contract Negotiations
The President’s Voice: Upcoming Contract Negotiations
As I mentioned in a message last month to the membership our union continues to move forward towards contract negotiations with the Command. A number of steps have been taken including allocating funds in our union budget for negotiations, arranging for collective bargaining training for union negotiators, forming a Union Negotiation Team and proposing a set of Ground Rules setting forth how the negotiations will be conducted. Any such Ground Rules have to be negotiated and agreed upon by both parties.
Once again, there is no firm answer as to when these negotiations will begin and how long they will last since it is very important to keep in mind that those events are dependent upon both parties (the union and management). Moreover, there are events that cannot always be controlled or predicted by either or both parties. While we all want to complete these negotiations as soon as possible we also want to end up with a good end product – a better contract.
These negotiations will take into account the results of the survey conducted with our bargaining unit (BU) members last year. That survey indicated a number of issues considered to be more important for our BU members including: Telework, Unsafe Work Conditions, Wellness/Fitness Programs, and Duty Hours/Flex Time. I strongly urge our members to contact the union on an ongoing basis on issues you want us to consider during these negotiations. Your input is very important.
After our union completes negotiating changes to our Negotiated Labor Management Agreement (NLMA) any such negotiated changes will need to be submitted to a vote of our dues-paying union members for ratification. No negotiated changes to the current NLMA can be approved without the approval of our dues-paying members.
The union will keep you posted as to the general progress of these negotiations such as when they begin.
Paul Veselenak
President, AFGE Local 1658
Traditional Negotiations
By Gregory Polcyn; Area Vice President, AFGE 1658
Traditional negotiations can often be thought of as a “zero-sum game”; what is one parties’ loss is the other’s gain. In this fixed pie, limited resource environment hardball tactics are often used to get to an agreement. Often times traditional negotiations lead to “win-lose” outcomes, because one side will always get more than the other side in this scenario.
In traditional negotiations both parties often begin with very similar strategies. In labor negotiations, there are opening positions and final positions. To illus-trate traditional negotiations, I’ll use the example of buying or selling a piece of real estate. For example, an 1100 sq ft. condominium with a 1 car detached gar-age. This is a scenario we all can relate to either as the buyer or the seller.
As the seller, my strategy is to ask more than what I expect to get for the condo. This would be my asking price; in this case $115,900. Remember, my asking price is not what I expect to get. What I expect to get is my target price, which will be lower than my asking price. In this case my target price is $109,500, $6,000 less than my asking price. However, I really want to sell this condo so I’ll take even less than my target price. In fact, I’ll take $102,900, but that’s it; that’s my lowest price. This lowest price ($102,900) is referred to as the seller’s reserve price or a bottom line price. The seller will walk away from the table if they don’t get this price.
On the other side of the table is the buyer. The buyer also has an asking, target and reserve price but they are opposite in value. As the buyer, I want to start low and go higher incre-mentally. One aspect of traditional negotia-tions is that parties do NOT normally share information such as the bottom line price. In this example, my initial offer on the condo was $101,500, lower than the seller’s reserve price, but I don’t know that. If the seller agrees too quickly to my price, I know I over-bid. My target price would be $104,900. My reserve price, the price I will not exceed, would be $108,900.
Somewhere between $102,900 and $108,900 is a zone of possible agreement (ZOPA). Eve-ry dollar the buyer pays goes directly in the sellers’ pocket, that is why these types of ne-gotiations are so confrontational. As the buy-er I don’t know what the seller’s reserve price is and he is not going to tell me, so I have to guess. If I guess high, then I lose. If my guess is close to or at $102,900 (seller’s reserve price), I win.
In traditional negotiations both sides tell only what they think the other side needs to know. As the seller, I don’t want to mention that I have “crazy” neighbors that throw parties every weekend during the summer. If one side tells too much, then that opens up the possibility of losing something, i.e. time or money.
In my next article I’ll discuss the use of a BATNA- Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement and how that plays into negotiations.
Negotiation: A Dinner Drama
By Gregory Polcyn; Area Vice President, AFGE 1658
As our Local heads into negotiations on the Negotiated Labor Management Agreement (NLMA), aka the union contract, I decided to write an article on everyday negotiations. If the feedback is positive, I’ll write more articles on this subject. If not, I’ll write about how we defend employees who steal toilet paper from Government bathrooms.
There are four possible out-comes regarding negotiations: win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose and the coveted win-win. Most negotiations result in a win-lose situation, which inevitably involves compromise. I’ll provide a little vignette that I’m sure everyone can relate to:
It’s Friday night and you and your spouse/significant other want to go to dinner. Well, here’s the problem. You want Chinese and they want Italian. What to do, what to do? You can stomach Italian, but you’ve been craving beef and broccoli all week! You know that it’s going to take a lot of begging and cajoling to convince her (sorry, I mean “them”) that Chinese is the way to go. Also, did I mention that you’re already in the car and both restaurants are about the same distance? How do you negotiate in this scenario? I’m sure we all have our methods, but I bet it might go some-thing like this:
“Ok, we’ll do Italian tonight if we can do Chinese next week”. In this scenario, one party gets what they want (Italian) and the other party doesn’t. This is the common “win-lose” scenario, and this is a great as long as you are the winner. However, what if you don’t want Chinese next Friday? What if you get sick and can’t go out? What if you have to work late! Well you should have thought about that before you compromised. This is one of the problems with “win-lose” scenarios in negotiation.
I’m sure we can all see the flip side of the coin where you win and get your beef and broccoli; but what would be a “lose-lose” in this dinner scenario? Well, it turns out that you and your spouse are both “blah” on Mexican food. The funny thing is, you both think the other person really likes Mexican food. You don’t want to hurt their feelings by saying you don’t, so you continue to go Mexican restaurants – hating every minute of it – all the while thinking you’re doing the other person a favor. Sound familiar? I hope not.
Here’s the real question on most people’s minds: What would be a win-win? That’s a little more difficult to define, but there is a Chinese-Italian fusion restaurant where you can have beef and broccoli, and your significant other can have whatever they want. However, it is 15 miles further out, it will cost 50% more and since you’re in the car already and didn’t make reservations, you’ll be waiting 45 minutes to be seated. Hey, I didn’t say it was easy, I just said it existed.
What is the take-away here? If you want the coveted win-win, you’ve got to prepare for it.
