Advanced Collective Bargaining and Contract Administration

Catalog description

This course examines, at an advanced level, the theory, practice, and impact of the major phases of union organizing, collective bargaining, and contract administration. Upon completion of this course students should be able describe, explain and participate, at an advanced level, in the major phases of labor relations: union organizing campaigns; collective bargaining (including its preparation phases); grievance processing; mediation; and arbitration, as practiced in industries in the U.S. private sector subject to the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, and the Railway Labor Act. Students will also develop concrete negotiation and grievance administration skills and have the opportunity to apply those skills, with the benefit of observations and feedback. Part I of the course reviews the structure of collective bargaining, the determination of bargaining units, and theories of effective labor negotiation. Further foundational study looks at the law applying to the determination, compositions and scope of bargaining units, as well as the law of collective bargaining, grievance handling, and arbitration. The main body of the course introduces students to different schools of effective technique in the negotiation of labor disputes. Part 2 of the course examines the subjects and processes of collective bargaining in detail. In this portion of the course, the course requires small teams of students to conduct out-of-class exercises. The first asks students to resolve a dispute over bargaining unit determination. In this phase of the course, teams of students negotiate a comprehensive new collective bargaining agreement in a hypothetical (simulated) case study. Similarly, students will conduct an exercise in the processing of grievances through a grievance procedure and, in some case, ultimate arbitration. In the latter procedure (arbitration), students will role-play in union representative, management representative, and arbitrator roles, assigned to writing either advocates' briefs or an arbitration award. The course will also include an exercise in the mediation/conciliation of a labor dispute