Employers are pleasantly surprised when I tell them that bargaining for a collective bargaining agreement does not mean that every part of running their business must be negotiated. I then explain what a management rights clause is – a blog entry for a later day – and the difference between mandatory, permissive, and illegal subjects of bargaining.…

The surge in on-line shopping necessitates an increase in demand of packaged deliveries.  This is front and center in the UPS-Teamsters Labor negotiations.  It appears that the two sides have reached a tentative agreement to create a category of drivers to handle weekend shifts. This deal calls for the company to review technological changes like the deployment of…

A metal processing company and the United Steel Workers (USW) were engaged in protracted negotiations in an attempt to obtain their first contract. During bargaining, the Company stated that it had to retain a specific level of production to be profitable and to improve the employees’ wages and benefits. The Union then pressed management on…

Fox Television Stations sought a wage reduction and other concessions from the Communications Workers of America during recent labor negotiations. When no agreement was reached by an agreed-upon deadline, Fox lawfully implemented an older contract offer much to chagrin of the CWA. Fox and the Union had been negotiating a successor agreement for two years…

Thankfully employers are not required to negotiate until they collapse on the treadmill of collective bargaining. When irreconcilable differences exist between the union and the company – after full, good faith negotiations – the law recognizes that an impasse has been reached. The National Labor Relations Board has defined impasse “as the point in time…

While planning for renegotiating an expiring collective bargaining agreement should commence many months before the contract expires, the actual face-to-face bargaining usually begins about two months before the contract terminates. Renegotiations are sometimes a smoother process than negotiating the first contract because the parties are familiar with each other and their goals. However, if the…