Instead of taking an adversarial approach to bargaining, a school district in Palmer, Alaska, now uses collaborative negotiation. Benefits from collaborative bargaining have included shorter contract negotiations and the filing of fewer grievances. Selecting and training the teams is a crucial element for success. (MLF)

A study of employment practices in unionized workplaces received 1,579 responses indicating that organizations tend to cut employees without considering the long-term costs and implications. Smaller workplaces were less likely to have had reductions in the workforce. (JOW)

Union and school board representatives studied basic negotiating techniques at a five-day workshop. Improved relations and cooperation were the result. (MLF)

Interest-bargaining involves focusing on the issues, segregating each issue, and assigning interests by each side to these issues until a mutually satisfactory option is reached. Cites effectiveness of interest-bargaining in 60 California school districts and an endorsement from the New York State School of industrial and Labor Relations at…

Most frequently made collective-bargaining errors include mistaking rhetoric for reality, negotiating every teacher demand, settling too soon, failing to resolve board conflict, allowing unions to define the comparison base, accepting ambiguous solutions, circumventing the bargaining team, not seeking counsel, waving "red flags," and trusting the…

A union perspective of major issues in higher education labor law in the 1990s includes the 11th Circuit Court cases on whether Congress abrogated states' 11th Amendment immunity for suits under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Analyzes contract issues of protection around age…

An Illinois district created a collaborative contract agreement that lays a foundation for future multiyear contracts. In the process, participants learned to build a participative district atmosphere benefitting all three leadership parties, seek compromise, avoid unnecessary contract language changes, allow minimal publicity about sessions, and…

Describes how a principal of an Australian parochial school tackled an onsite enterprise bargaining process. Indepth interviews suggested that to succeed, principals must be opportunists and reassurers, initiators and communicators, researchers and information providers, learners and responders, and standard-bearers and pragmatists. (Contains 25…

California's newly legislated Peer Assistance and Review Program will hopefully transform the state's teaching profession. PAR will serve as a catalyst for positive change in several areas: recognition of teaching as a lifelong developmental process; alignment of teacher development with standards; and creation of labor/management partnerships.…

In the Canadian pulp/paper industry, management is focused on worker flexibility for productivity. Unions view workplace learning as a threat to job control and security. Although learning new skills enhances individual workers' flexibility and employability, collectively it weakens the union through job losses. (Contains 56 references.) (SK)

In this article, an attitudinal perspective on organizational members' reactions to change is proposed and developed. By viewing change as an attitude object in this sense, a richer conceptualization of perceptions of change and reactions to change in terms of emotions, cognitions, and behaviors is achieved. The perspective also frames…

The question of European trade unions' approach towards vocational training is an interesting example of a broader issue, involving both the role played by non-governmental actors in shaping the social dimension of the integration process, and the need to develop a social dialogue in the Community. In this context, the establishment of Cedefop in…

In the US, graduate assistants are an integral part of a university's educational and operational climate. Graduate assistants provide teaching, research or administrative services to the educational enterprise in exchange for professional experience and a financial stipend. Recent strikes of graduate teaching assistants at New York University…

Housatonic Community College (HCC) in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is of the opinion that an answer to the theme of Re-creating America's Community Colleges lies in forming better alliances with all possible partners. HCC has found in leveraging funds to foster Bridgeport's Manufacturers Education and Training Alliance (METAL) that the college could…

Quality Circle (QC) and Quality of Working Life (QWL) in the United States are similar in that both stress participative decision making, preserve management's prerogative to have the final say, and are voluntary. QC and QWL programs differ, however, in that labor unions are more involved in QWLs; QCs deal only with technical problems related to…