Situation: You are a member of a Management Negotiations Team. Your team and the Union have been discussing a wage package. The Union has signaled to you that they want to keep the benefits package as intact as possible and will therefore entertain some more creative approaches to a wage package in a three-year deal.
Task: Develop proposed contract language that you will present to the Union on each of the following wage provisions. You should construct your own language, but Chapter 7 of Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining will be a great reference for you. The success of your proposal will be measured by the precision of your language.
1. COLA provision for a three-year contract. This provision should include the following: inflation index; when increases are to be provided; change in base pay, COLA maximums.
2. Profit-sharing. Consider that some obvious questions will be: 1) Is all of the profit distributed to employees or just some percentage; 2) Does the profit sharing substitute for COLA and other wage increases; 3) Will profits be distributed in stock as well as wages, or just cash; 4) When will pay-out occur?
3. A 0–3–3 deferred base wage increase. Some issues to consider in this proposal are: 1) Union member morale at both the start and the end of the contract (you want them to accept this proposal); 2) The effect on a member’s base wage and the advantage to management (it’s ok to articulate intent in a proposal); 3) Exactly when the base will be paid.
4. A lump-sum payment of $2,000 to all eligible bargaining unit employees. The proposal should anticipate the obvious: exactly who is eligible, when the bonus will be paid and what about partial payment for new employees?