Municipal labor-management partnering and improved community service

The graduate project poses the question, "Is labor-management partnering for local governments a better solution than positional bargaining in order to improve community service and avoid impacts such as privatization?" The project explores why and how local governments interact with labor unions and how partnering and collaborative management affect public employees and the community which they serve. The project will review the extensive literature published primarily in the last fifteen years in th~ United States. The literature is concentrated in the 2000's. Sources include academic journals, industry and trade publications, federal government studies, books by practitioners and theorists, and websites of labor unions and labor related publications. The project describes how the labor movement has been effective in creating and improving legislative and judicial acts that affect unions for over two hundred years. No major new labor laws have been passed over the past several decades implying that labormanagement relations are at a place where both sides can live with cun-ent policy. The current trend is a general movement away from labor-management conflict and towards collaboration and partnership. The project defines collective bargaining and the two main strategies used to reach an agreement between management and the union: positional bargaining and partnering. It compares and contrasts the two styles and argues that partnering is more beneficial to both labor and management than positional bargaining in most cases. Increased interest in privatization as an alternative for cost reduction or service improvement has created a variety of pressures and responses from labor and management alike. Labor and management have turned towards each other in collaboration in order to operate within their given budgets, avoid massive layoffs, protect benefits, retain training programs, and mitigate privatization within their municipalities. Two case studies on municipal labor-management paiinering are explored. The first addresses the transformation of public employees from traditional contract negotiation to partnering, and the steps taken to create a collaborative paiinership between the municipality and the residents it serves. The second case study focuses on the existing labor-management collaboration when staff ratio and service levels were evaluated with the goal to reduce the number of supervisors per employee in order to create a flatter organization utilizing labor-management teams versus the existing hierarchal organization. Trust and mutual respect are the cornerstones of any successful labor-management partnership. The long and well-documented history of adversarial labor-management relations can conspire to keep trust and mutual respect in short supply. One of the most effective strategies for building trust is open and honest communications. By taking the time to rethink and relearn how agencies and unions communicate, they can create a climate where trust and respect can grow and partnership succeed. The results of an effective paiinership between labor and management in public agencies continue after an agreement has been made and a new contract is signed. Labor-management committees and teams can also become an important mechanism for a city and its union to work collaboratively to bring about meaningful, long-term structural change and improvements, thus reducing the risk of privatization to both sides. A united and highly visible partnership is necessary for the information sharing and problem resolution a municipality has with its community and/or organization.