Negaunee High School students Chas Kumpula, right, and Maci Aho attend a collective bargaining workshop Friday for local high schoolers at the Marquette-Alger Regional Educational Service Agency. The students learned how labor and management develop agreements on various labor issues. (Journal photo by Christie Bleck)

MARQUETTE — People bargain all the time, but in a labor-management setting? Not so much.

Students from Marquette Senior and Negaunee high schools as well as local high schoolers learning skilled trades at Northern Michigan University’s Jacobetti Complex attended a collective bargaining workshop Friday to learn the give-and-take ideas used by both sides.

The event was put on by the Upper Peninsula Labor-Management Council Inc. at the Marquette-Alger Regional Educational Service Agency in Marquette.

Todd Flath, who’s on the staff of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25, helped spearhead the workshop, serving as a makeshift labor leader during mock negotiations.

“We teach them that, ‘Listen, we’re doing this every single day,'” Flath said.

However, students aren’t used to dealing with things like contracts and arbitration.

The council’s goal, he noted, is to teach the kids these basics so when they have to deal with future negotiations, they understand labor and management can get together and successfully develop a contract that benefits both sides.

“We both need to live here,” Flath said. “We need to work here.”

Even if the students won’t ever actively participate in negotiations, he acknowledged they can carry what they learned at the workshop throughout their lives.

“They’re negotiating already with their parents,” Flath said. “They’re negotiating with their friends. They’re negotiating all these things.”

Those things, he said, could involve talking with their mothers about staying out longer to go to the movies, with their household tasks being put off until the next day.

“It’s nothing new,” Flath said. “It’s just this is the way we do it in the workforce today.”

Rayme Martineau, who serves in a variety of capacities at MARESA, addressed the students before negotiations began and encouraged them to participate.

“It’s a pretty neat day,” Martineau said. “You get out of it what you put in.”

Leaders from NMU, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and the Upper Peninsula Power Co. acted as leaders for various student labor and management teams.

UPPCO also provided a lunchtime demonstration on how it deals with high-voltage lines.

Flath was in charge of overseeing a student labor team, asking members to designate a spokesperson, a person in charge of taking notes and another who was good at mathematics skills.

That team, composed of Negaunee High School students, discussed five areas — pension, insurance, vandalism, wages and holidays — with Flath going into more detail about these topics and certain terms such as arbitration clauses.

“That’s when we have a dispute between company and management, and we believe the contract says this and they’re telling us, ‘No, it doesn’t say this,'” Flath said. “So, now we have to file a grievance, and then we go and have a conversation with management.”

The students weren’t too young to be hearing about making contributions to a pension plan. Flath stressed it would be beneficial to put in money for living expenses later in life.

“I’m going to be better off when I’m done and retired,” Flath said.

An employee also wants a good set of teeth. However, to get that, dental insurance could cost the team’s management $130 a month per employee were it to fully fund it, he said, and at 470 production employees, that adds up to a bit of a sum.

“That’s how quick money can disappear,” Flath said.

The students learned about today’s typical wage increase, which Flath said is between 2 and 3 percent.

“It’s better than no increase,” he said.

However, he again pointed out increases for 470 employees comes at a cost to management.

In real life for the workers, though, it could come down to deciding between paying for cable television or diapers.

“Your argument is: This is what we need to live,” Flath said.

He touched on the reality of the workplace, including factors that weigh into absenteeism — if an employee continually calls in sick Fridays and Mondays to have extended weekends, being put on notice could be expected.

Flath also wouldn’t want to work with an employee who’s impaired by alcohol or drugs when operating a heavy, potentially dangerous machine.

Flath cautioned against labor teams being too aggressive when negotiating with management, noting it’s harder to go that route instead of being “cool, calm and collected.”

After all, money is not being made on a picket line.

“A strike is not good for anybody,” Flath said.

Labor and management teams met together several times during the day to elaborate on their individual discussions, with one management team having discussed absenteeism, management rights, insurance, new equipment and a wage freeze, and drug and alcohol testing.

Shelby Yesney of Negaunee High School said she was on the management side, which talked about what it could give employees and also balance the costs.

“We’re talking about how unions can form and how they agree with management,” Yesney said.

The workshop provided her with some insights.

One was the Golden Rule in action.

“It’s pretty much opened my eyes to see if you’re management, how you can work with your employees,” Yesney said. “You have to look at from your point of view for money reasons and from their point of view for how to treat them and how they want to be treated.”

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