When issues arise, they are often the subject of gossip, innuendo, and subterranean agitation within an enterprise. The obligation of union and management leadership is to identify issues and let constituents know, place them somewhere in the spectrum of other issues present in the relationship and set forth a process plan of action for dealing with issues.
Union and management leadership should come to explicit agreement over the following points.
·How do we identify issues?
·How do we disagree?
·How related to vision?
·How related to strategic plan?
·How to handle emergent issues and initiatives?
·How to handle changing interests?
·How to establish criteria?
Roger Fisher, WORKING TOGETHER
Unavailable for review.
Edward M. Marshall, TRANSFORMING THE WAY WE WORK: THE POWER OF THE COLLABORATIVE WORKPLACE, AMACOM American Management Association (1995) at 37-67, and Appendix 1.
Memorializing principles of collaborative culture through Operating Agreements. Includes sample Operating Agreement.
Using Standards and Criteria to Resolve Conflict
Ian Walker, Understanding Standards and Criteria, VIEWPOINTS (April 1994) at 4.
The operational nature of standards and criteria, why the critical question to ask is "how are standards and criteria used?" - i.e., "fair standards" or "objective criteria" are best understood by their function and intended use, and the ramifications of this understanding for the process.
William Ury, Jeanne Brett and Stephen Goldberg, GETTING DISPUTES RESOLVED: DESIGNING SYSTEMS TO CUT THE COST OF CONFLICT, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1988.
Relationship Compact
The relationship compact is a useful tool for memorializing agreed upon norms within a specific labor-management relationship. A good model of a relationship compact makes the purpose, nature, and means of enforcement of the compact explicit, and then sets forth principles that will guide the relationship. The articulation of the principle should be followed by time-specific and party-specific implementation strategies, with room to add more strategies as they become appropriate. The relationship compact should be created through consensus process involving all stakeholders, and signed if possible to memorialize commitment.
Sample Relationship Compacts
Bay Area Rapid Transit, JOINT LABOR MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE (JMLC) CHARTER (April 8, 1996).
Introduction sets forth historical overview, vision statement, code of trust, principles and values, goals, objectives, changes to charter, relationship with collective bargaining. Other sections include committee structure (selection, liaisons, logistics, interest approach and consensus, subcommittees), administration and budget, training and orientation, monitoring and evaluation, and appendices (signed commitment, meeting rules, responsibility chart, agenda guideline, suggested referral format, and glossary).
Walnut Valley Unified School District, RELATIONSHIP COMPACT (May 1995).
Statement of principles that stakeholders mutually agree upon to guide the labor- management relationship (this is the first page of the one I used to define compact).
San Mateo Fire Department, FIRE ACTION CONSENSUS TEAM (FACT) CHARTER (1994).
Includes FACT historical background, Declaration of Agreement, underlying principles, goals, structure, process, representation, commitment to decision making by consensus, guidance on how to refer issues to FACT, benefits of participation, definitions, common problems associated with transformation and how to handle them, explores and dismantles assumptions, reference list, meeting guidelines, Code of Trust, and a covenant setting forth individual and common principles of relationship that is signed by labor and management representatives (on file with Barber & Gonzales Consulting Group).
How To Create a Relationship Compact
William F. Kay, PRINCIPLED LABOR/MANAGEMENT RELATIONSHIP: THE RELATIONSHIP COMPACT, Kay & Stevens (1992).
A step-by-step guide to creating a relationship compact.