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Learning about labor, musing about management

Local students and community leaders gather at the Marquette Alger Regional Educational Service Agency Friday to take part in a High School Collective Bargaining Workshop. Students simulated roles in labor and management. (Photo courtesy of MARESA)

MARQUETTE — Give a $1,000 bonus or a raise? Promote an employee according to seniority? Provide five weeks of vacation after 25 years of service?

These are the types of questions management and employees face during collective bargaining, and it was that type of real-world experience local students gained during Friday’s Upper Peninsula Labor-Management Council Inc.’s High School Collective Bargaining Workshop.

Rayme M. Martineau, educational consultant for the Marquette-Alger Regional Educational Service Agency, said the event, sponsored by Career Technical Education, gave students the opportunity to learn about bargaining without reading a textbook or listening to a lecture.

“It’s a hands-on, active participation in collective bargaining and how it all works, so they’re negotiating a fictitious contract, and they have one day to do it instead of months and months,” Martineau said.

Each student has a role of a laborer or union member, or management, said Martineau, who noted the workshop would give them knowledge not only in the workplace but in life.

Michigan Education Association attorney Suzanne Clark led a group that focused on the labor end of things, giving them practical advice such as taking notes so that when a contract is drawn, there’s a written record a year later that would solve any perceived discrepancies.

“So your notes from bargaining then are really important when you have an arbitration and hearing on ‘What did you mean?'” Clark said.

A former bargaining tip was not to give a number first, she said. That’s not the case anymore.

Clark used as an example someone who wanted an iPhone 6 but was willing to pay only $50. That person would start out with a $40 offer.

“When you throw out that first dollar, the whole bargaining then goes around the $40,” Clark said. “So, it’s proven now that you’re more successful in bargaining when you make the first offer because then if the person says, ‘Oh, no, I wanted $100 for this iPhone,’ and you’re, like, ‘Well, there’s no one way I’m going to pay $100. I told you $40 is all I’m going to pay.’ So, if the person is really interested in bargaining with you, then they’re going to move towards the $40. All the bargaining will go around that first figure.”

Clark stressed that simple agreements usually aren’t how collective bargaining works.

In their fictitious bargaining session, she asked the students: “You had freezes the last three years, so what do you think we should suggest as a wage increase? A three-year proposal?”

People can attempt a three-year contract, but if the terms aren’t that good, that might not be the best course of action, she said.

“Another thing to consider if it’s a multi-year contract that the first year you want to try to get the biggest raise,” Clark said.

Once that’s on a salary schedule, the employees always have that amount, she pointed out. On a scale of 3 percent the first year, 2 percent the second and 1 percent the third, employees would have the biggest increase the initial year, which compounds.

The students were presented with options.

Tyler Blight, a student at Marquette Senior High School, said: “I think we should do a two-year with a 3 percent raise each year.”

That met with the other team members’ approval.

They also talked about how to promote people, specifically, how much seniority should be a factor. Clark said “senior, most qualified” often is used in bargaining.

“So we’re saying if it’s the same job classification, the most senior person should get the promotion?” Clark asked the team.

The concept became the team’s consensus.

The students also discussed vacation, holidays, overtime and benefits.

Of course, other students represented management.

One of the students on that side of the negotiating table was Wyatt Seaberg of Munising High School, who with the others talked about how managers would handle wage freezes in the event the company — in this case, a tractor supply company — added modern equipment.

Even free turkeys were included in the talks.

“We’ll do a two-year freeze and a 5 percent increase the third year, and all three years they get turkeys,” Seaberg said.

That was if labor agreed to a three-year plan.

The talk wasn’t always focused on money, though, as holiday shutdowns were discussed as well.

The teams, regardless of whether they represented labor or management, were enthusiastic in their lively — not contentious — discussions.

Blight said he learned quite a bit about negotiation tactics from the event.

“I never really negotiated like this before,” Blight said.

Those discussions most likely gave the students something to think about in their academic and post-academic years.

“It’s always good to think about what you really want and then what you can live with,” Clark said.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.

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