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Workshop:
Making Bargaining Work in
2009 – negotiating
skills with a difference
When:
25 March 2009
8.30am – 4.30pm
Where:
Sydney
Mechanics’ School of Arts, 280 Pitt St,
Sydney
Cost:
$550 (incl. GST)
Morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea included.
Workshop presenters:
Anna
Booth Director, CoSolve
Clive
Thompson Director, CoSolve
Registration:
For
registration please download and complete this
form. For further information please contact Clive Thompson
at cthompson@cosolve.com.au
or on 02 9401 5654
Training for management and union/employee negotiators
By the middle
of this year new national industrial relations laws will require that
employers bargain collectively whenever a majority of employees in a
workplace ask for this. When requested by employees who are union
members, the bargaining must be with their trade union. The parties,
say the new laws, must bargain “in good faith”. CoSolve
has designed a specialist workshop to assist parties to meet their new
statutory obligations, and more. The day's program offers an overview,
strategic insights, a methodology and the groundwork
for a fresh approach. (We also conduct a fuller program
running over two to three days – depending on the
parties' needs –
with a greater emphasis on
skills development and simulation.)
Most trade unions will be intent on protecting members' past gains and
ferreting out arguments to boost the next wage packet, notwithstanding
the swingeing times. Cost reductions and efficiency-seeking workplace
changes will probably be on the minds of most employers, especially
given the fall-out from the global financial crisis. Clearly, there
will be winners and losers. Appropriate preparations will involve
strategies to placate and outmanoeuvre, and negotiation skills - as
ever - will turn on bluff, bravado and timing.
Most stakeholders are not only conditioned to this approach - they are
comfortable with it. For them it reflects a realistic take on the
unsentimental world of industrial relations, and there is
a sort of robust honesty about it. Just a pity about the fall-out:
minimalist settlements and soured relations. Not much scope for
"employer of choice" results, but then what can you expect if you
operate in a unionised environment?
Quite a lot more, actually. But it takes some
discipline, investment and imagination. Our program Making
Bargaining Work equips management and union/employee
negotiators to work with the approach developed and refined at Harvard
and MIT over recent decades – "interest-based" or "mutual gains"
bargaining. It's a methodology that requires parties to undertake
negotiations with a careful analysis of their own and other
stakeholders' interests rather than just resorting to positions
(specific claims). This allows negotiators to canvass widely for
outcomes rather than concentrate the negotiation on the strengths and
weaknesses of opposing positions. Interest-based outcomes promote the
mutual gain of all parties and offer long-term advantage. Shared
interests, differing interests and conflicting interests raise
different opportunities and challenges, and need to be dealt with
differently. This goes beyond adherence to a formula required to
demonstrate “good faith”. It is an approach designed to ensure that the
parties get the best deal through an efficient process that maintains
good working relationships between all concerned.
Making Bargaining Work draws on the extensive practical experience of
the presenters and also, with permission, the learnings offered by
Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation and in
particular the highly acclaimed and workplace-oriented programs of
Harvard and MIT's Institute for Work and Employment Relations, Negotiating
Labor Agreements and After the Handshake:
Delivering the Results Labor and Management Expect. Lecture
style presentation is interspersed with practical exercises that
highlight and reinforce theory.
Program:
Training for the negotiation and implementation of enterprise agreements
1. Context for negotiating enterprise agreements
Examination
of recent changes to industrial relations legislation in Australia
impacting the scope and structure of enterprise bargaining.
2. Introduction to Interest-Based Negotiation
Positions
and interests, typical negotiating tactics contrasted with
interest-based negotiation, challenge of pure interest-based
negotiation and the concept of blended bargaining
3. Good faith bargaining under the new law
4. Stages of negotiation
Stage 1 Prepare
Steps
to be taken by parties in caucus preliminary to commencing negotiation.
Stage
2 Plan
Parties
negotiate over the process of negotiations.
Stage
3 Open and explore
The
commencement of negotiations where interest are identified and options
generated.
Stage
4 Focus and agree
The
stage that parties begin to narrow their options towards finally
reaching agreement on an outcome.
Stage
5 Implement and sustain
Post
negotiation the steps parties take to implement their agreement and
obtain the benefits promised within.
5. Scope for a new strategic direction?
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