FMCS National Conference a Virtual Success

Adapting to COVID-19, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service moved its 2020 National Labor-Management Conference from Chicago to on-line this week.

Participation at “The Collaborative Connected Workplace” neared 1,500, exceeding recent in-person conferences. While networking and sightseeing opportunities were missed, the conference retained the highly useful and interesting content of past years.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka opened the conference noting that the coronavirus affects everyone, and that labor and management are united in the desire to defeat it. He noted that the crisis’ impact highlights imbalances of power and inequality in U.S. society. That inequality, he contended, will lead to an economic and social meltdown if not addressed.

Trumka said that, especially for “essential” workers in industries like food, health care and public safety, are “demanding more because more is being demanded of us.” Collective bargaining leads to more production and more sales and is good for business, he noted. “There is a real desire for common ground” between labor and management, and when that is hard to find, FMCS plays the crucial role.

Basic labor law was last addressed in 1947 and needs to be modernized for today’s economy, Trumka said. Those changes were designed to tilt the balance of power back to management and succeeded in doing so but now he said the laws need to re-balance workplace power so collective bargaining can be an effective tool for ensuring a strong middle class.

Those safety issues are paramount for essential companies and workers, pointed out Dan Dosenbach, senior vice president for human resources and labor relations at Albertson’s (one of the nation’s largest grocery store chains) and Bob O’Toole, president of UFCW Local 546 in Chicago.

From the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, Dosenbach said his company and its unions opened continuous communications to address key issues. Not only did both sides communicate often, but both showed flexibility to change agreements when things didn’t work. “Albertson’s workers stepped up” to address the changes in demand from the crisis, including great ideas about how to address employee and customer safety, store efficiency and other issues generated by COVID-19.

Dosenbach noted that the labor-management collaboration to meet the crisis is hopefully something that can be built upon in future relationships. He said that Albertson’s hired 95,000 new employees, including many who had been laid off from other employers the unions were signatory with. “This shows real promise for a union hiring hall for the future” he noted.

O’Toole pointed out that Local 546, which represents food industry and health care workers, had very good relationships with some of its employers, and were quickly able to develop jointly ways to address the crisis. With others, though, there was resistance at first to the union’s proposals for safety, work assignments and pay. But that resistance fell off after the employers saw that the union’s ideas once adopted helped greatly with worker retention and production. Some units that did not have safety committees added them as well.

One benefit of the crisis, O’Toole said, is the greater public recognition of the crucial role workers play in the food supply chain and in health care.

Both agreed that future issues to be addressed included pension plans. Dosenbach said more flexibility Is needed for plans to meet their goals and keep union employers competitive; O’Toole agreed that particularly for struggling plans that more flexibility would be needed.

National Labor Relations Board General Counsel John Ring updated the conference on the NLRB’s activities and plans for the future. Ring noted the recent confirmation of two board members to continue—one from each party—so the board will be able to act for the next few years.

Key NLRB initiatives include addressing the backlog of cases. “It isn’t justice when a worker who stands up to an employer must wait five or more years” for his case to be concluded, Ring said. “Faster processing of cases is vital for the purpose of the Act.” The agency is also embracing rule making as a means of clarifying issues rather than just wait for some issues to be addressed through the resolution of cases. Ring also emphasized the board’s desire to return to long-standing precedents for some issues, reversing actions of the previous board majority.

Workplace safety issues are especially important. Trumka called for a general OSHA standard for coronavirus to help guide employers, noting its required in the HEROES Act passed by the House three months ago.

The conference also had a focus on skills for successful labor-management collaboration. During “Success and the 7 Ingredients of Collaborative Innovation” consultant Moira Lethbridge outlined the key elements for launching and executing any collaborative process. She listed normalize discomfort, create constraints and parameters, plan for collaboration, making a blame-free zone, define, reinforce and reward praiseworthy failure, develop options along the way and capture and apply lessons learned as the seven ingredients. She noted the importance of approaching a process with an open mind: “The brain cannot be judgmental and curious at the same time” and curiosity is necessary for creativity and collaboration.

Lethbridge encouraged support for the right kinds of “failure,” pointing out most successful efforts have several rounds of failure first. WD-40 and Formula 409 are named for the number of attempts it took to develop the successful product.

Each failure should be analyzed for the reasons, which in most cases involve factors other than the incompetence of the person(s) involved. There is a crucial distinction between accountability and blame, she said, and many leaders/managers do not understand the distinction. “Accountability is being responsible for and answerable for an activity; blame is about who is going to pay the price for problems” she said.

Ethical and legal obligations for negotiators is another critical skill the conference addressed. Management attorney Lisa Callaway and labor attorney Joseph Vitale used a simulated case to explain the legal and ethical bounds for union-management negotiators. In every case, they agreed, “lying is wrong.” However, a negotiator must be careful not to divulge certain information without the permission of the negotiating team either in negotiations or informal settings. There is also a distinction between “lying” and “puffery” and particular definitions in the National Labor Relations Act that make those distinctions and indicate when “puffery” is problematic. Certain statements can also trigger, often inadvertently, required information disclosure or unfair labor practices.

Both attorneys agreed that building trust between negotiators is vital for successful outcomes and another factor in addition to the ethical and legal obligations that must be considered before making statements.

The impact of technology was a key conference theme. Professor Jay Richards described the history of technological impacts on the workforce, noting that overall jobs increase as a result of innovation. However he agreed with Sam Loesche of the Teamsters that some individuals suffer from changes and that managing the transition is key. Attorney and HR Policy Association director Roger King called for more creativity in job training approaches to help workers address technology changes. He also suggested that successful union training programs consider providing services for companies outside of their bargaining agreements to generate income and grow the pools of skilled workers. Loesche added that for older workers, such skill transitions are more difficult and that new jobs often pay less with fewer benefits than the jobs they replace.

Richards said that the impact of technology will touch both blue and white collar workers, but that highly skilled workers will see a much slower impact on overall jobs because computers/robots have a difficult time with certain vital tasks. Loesche pointed out that there are many barriers to adopting driverless trucks especially for longer hauls but that for shorter routes they may soon be viable.

Technology is also affecting collective bargaining, mediation, arbitration and grievance resolution processes especially with COVID-19. FMCS is now doing nearly of its work remotely over the Internet, using software such as Ring Central, Zoom, Facilitate Pro, X Mind and others. FMCS has conducted nine million hours of such sessions since the start of COVID-19 restrictions.

FMCS has long promoted electronic means of brainstorming and bargaining processes. The LMC received a grant in 1998 to install a computer brainstorming lab at the Builders’ Association that was used for meetings, negotiations and training for several years before laptops became more widely used and, in recent years, remote capabilities grew. The same benefits to that work 20 years ago remain—the ability to get more complete, honest and representative feedback on key issues, as well as to record it accurately. FMCS gave an overview of the tools, benefits and problems in one session and offered training to those interested in improving their capabilities.

A key workshop focused on “What Bias Monsters are Lurking in Your Closet? How Understanding Implicit Bias Can Make You Better.” FMCS Commissioners Ligia Velazquez and Tom Melancon explained our natural tendencies to bias in all types of thinking. Unconcious bias is the most problematic as we don’t always recognize we have certain biases, which inhibits our creativity and ability to work with others. Implicit bias types include the Curse of Knowledge, Confirmation Bias, Anchoring, Sunk Cost and In-Group Biases.

Addressing our biases is possible, the presenters note: humility, assume that we have biases, slow down our reactions so we don’t fall into biases as easily, educating ourselves and working to remove stereotypes are among the methods. But most critical is empathy—the ability to see things from the other persons’ perspective. Not agreeing with them necessarily, but understanding why they think they way they do helps disarm biases and lead to more productive discussion.

The session also provided a list of resources.

Right before the conference, Rich Giacolone was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as FMCS director. He had been interim director.

For more details on the sessions, please contact the LMC or the FMCS website, www.fmcs.gov .