EEA Show Explores Negotiating Labor Agreements in Era of Stakeholder Capitalism

This expert panel demonstrates that while there are significant opportunities for labor and management to collaborate to create value for organizations, the current frustration of workers and resistance by many in management has created a difficult atmosphere for more constructive approaches. Nonetheless, this new program at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University serves to help parties make progress and achieve mutual gains.

• Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Florence G. Heller Professor and Social Impact MBA Director.
• Dennis Dabney, Senior Vice President for National Labor Relations, Kaiser Permanente (retired) and Labor Relations Director, HR Policy Association.
• Kris Rondeau, Co-Lead Organizer of the Harvard Clerical and Technical Union, the SHARE union, and others; Director of AFSCME, New England.
• Søren Viemose, Advisor, Mediator, and Co-Founder of Denmark's Kalovig Center for negotiations and conflict resolution.

• Despite the many advantages of labor and management cooperation, only a relatively small group of US relationships have the level of trust necessary to achieve mutual gains. There are concrete case studies demonstrating what can be accomplished through increased partnerships, but training and support is needed for management and labor to achieve these more constructive approaches to collective bargaining.
• There are islands of success illustrating that stakeholder capitalism can be supported through collective bargaining, but they are too rare. In the current US atmosphere, enhancements will more likely be incremental gains through better labor and management negotiating practices and targeted value creating practices. Big progress in nation-wide labor-management cooperation is unlikely in the short term.  
• One organization mentioned – a health care system – brought in representatives from a key stakeholder group—patients (customers)—so that their voice would be taken into account during the bargaining process. The result was a new set of agreements advancing patient voice in front-line problem solving teams. 
• Kaiser Permanente and the respective union groups with whom it bargains used collective bargaining to launch unit-based teams a few decades ago. Today there are over 3,500 of these front-line teams addressing patient, workforce, and organizational issues.
• Scandinavia provides excellent examples of effective labor-management cooperation that dates back to the 18^th century. There is still conflict between labor and management in these countries, but what is termed “social dialogue” among labor, management, and government enables broader advances in training, recruitment, safety, new technology, and continuous improvement in operations. There is a foundation of mutual respect that makes it possible for labor and management to tackle tough problems in a collaborative way. This will be an important foundation for addressing AI and other technological advances, as well as social disruptions.
• Unfortunately, this level of mutual respect is too often lacking in the US. Managers too often see unions as a threat to their control in the workplace and union leaders who support cooperation face accusations that they are not being sufficiently adversarial.
• There is the potential for organizations on both sides to learn the skills that can lead to better outcomes for management, labor, and other key stakeholders.

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