Phil Wilson: [00:03]
Doug Hessinger, welcome to the Left of Boom Show.

Doug Hessinger: [00:06]
Hey, thanks, Phil. Thanks for having me on.

Phil Wilson: [00:09]
Yeah, it’s great to see you. In today’s episode, we’re doing a series for companies that are unionized. And in today’s episode, we’re going to focus a lot on contract administration. But before we get started, Doug, you’ve got a really vast amount of experience on both the left-of-boom and right-of-boom sides of the shop. You’ve got a number of different experiences. Why don’t you tell folks a little bit about your background and experience?

Doug Hessinger: [00:36]
Sure, yeah, I’m happy to. So I’ve been in the employee relations and labor relations world in some form or fashion since about 2003. Primarily in the retail and distribution industries, with a number of big box retailers that the audience will be familiar with. And I made a foray into the financial tech service sector for a few years as well, which is where I got my union side experience. but before all that I also worked with the employee survey analytics group, as well as did retail store operations about twelve years and

Doug Hessinger: [01:00]
in all kind of roles of the store, including management. So I got that floor experience with HR, with the labor and employee relations, kind of rounded it out that way.

Phil Wilson: [01:20]
How did you get the nickname Data Doug?

Doug Hessinger: [01:35]

by nature, I’m an admitted information and data junkie and I bring that to my work. you know to some extent Exactly, you coined that if I’ve recall. And to some extent, you know, all labor professionals incorporate three mindsets in our work. You have the approach of the art of labor relations, the legal approach to labor relations and then the systems and science support side. And that’s kind of my forte is the science and systems what I bring to it. But again, we operate in all three realms. And you need all three in order to be effective.

Phil Wilson: [01:47]
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, why don’t we just kick off with so you’ve got this experience of dealing in a unionized environment. You also were kind of a labor relations department of one. And so there’s like a there’s a series of of additional kind of challenges there. Why don’t you just talk a little bit about you know sort of getting into that experience and working there and like what was that like?

Doug Hessinger: [02:14]
Yeah, so across the four major companies that I’ve worked for, I’ve either been a team of one, a team of two, or at one point a team of three, who are singularly dedicated to the labor relations function. and that differed a little bit based upon the size and scale of the company, what industry it happened to be in. three of them were non-union retailers, again, which the audience would know. the financial tech services was double breasted and had six represented units. Five were IBW, one was Teamster.

Doug Hessinger: [02:45]
and across that six, three were in the US and three were in Canada. and I’m really that one that’s the financial is the one I’m gonna be speaking to and drawing upon the most in our discussion. At that company I was executive director labor relations for all of North America, US and Canada, and a team of one. so again the nuances that differ in a company will based not only on size and spread dynamics of that company, but whether they have active organizing or existing represented units.

Doug Hessinger: [03:15]
No activity going on, some activity going on, all that really comes into play. But a key commonality is the establishment of effective and routine internal partnerships and drawing upon internal resources, be it HR, legal, internal comms, PR, finance, even government relations sometimes. And ideally creating these in advance of the need to have those relationships and support, you need to create them in advance so those partners understand.

Doug Hessinger: [03:35]
‘Cause when the heat of the battle. comes

Phil Wilson: [03:47]
Yeah. And a lot of times it’s too late, right? At that point.

Doug Hessinger: [03:51]
Yeah, exactly. and again I mentioned there are different dynamics which will galvanize your attention and focus, particularly as a team of one, but any size team. Whether you have no activity, whether you have some activity where you have contracts in place, what you focus on will differ. you can choose what you focus on and sometimes the choice is is made for ya. I kinda operate from the standpoint of there are four pillars of labor relation, two in the preventative wing and two under the traditional wing of labor. The preventative is

Doug Hessinger: [04:20]
Creating positive employee relations, doing that proactively, creating environments where unions are not needed. The other part is campaign preparedness, winning at the ballot box. The other side, traditional, is collective bargaining negotiations, where you want to win at the bargaining table, and contract administration, where you want to win on the shop floor, my characterizations of it. So focusing on what you need to do and also making sure that internal executives understand what’s being focused on, but what’s also not.

Doug Hessinger: [00:04:45]
been focused on at that moment.

Phil Wilson: [00:04:51]
Yeah. So there’s all kinds of you know, you’ve there’s a lot to unpack there, right? So you’ve got the, you know, win at the bargaining table and then win on the shop floor. those both of those ideas, which by the way, right, winning in both of those cases, like it’s not that you don’t care about also having a positive employee relations environment for those folks as well, but the constraints that you have in a labor agreement, for example, or in your relationships on the shop floor.

Phil Wilson [05:14]
Those all impact that employee relations environment and you want to create ideally the situation where you have the flexibility and just the ability to, you know, to create that that great workplace, right?

Doug Hessinger: [05:34]
absolutely. You know, ’cause at at the end of the day

Doug Hessinger: [05:38]
It comes down to the employee, how they’re being treated, how they feel they’re being treated, perceptions of priorities, and the ability of the company to treat them well while also taking care of business and being evolutionary. As we know, contracts, by their nature, lock things in stone ro largely. Whereas companies, especially today, have to be evolving evolutionary, change, keep up with technology, keep up with new ways of doing work. so those are natural conflicts that sometimes occur.
Building Relationships with Unions and Management

Phil Wilson: [06:05]
Yeah, yeah. And I think going back to sort of like the relation the relational aspect, you you mentioned right off the top that like you have to have good relationships, you know, both inside your own company but also with the union as well. Ideally you’re gonna have strong relationships. That that you know, obviously that’s a two way street and it takes two to tango as they say. but you’re you know, you’re g you wanna work on those

Phil Wilson: [06:30]
relationships as well and that you know that’s gonna impact your ability to bargain. That’s gonna impact the kind of resolutions that you have on the shop floor or if there’s grievances or disagreements about what the contract language means. So those relationships are going to be important as well. And ideally you want to have a kind of a relationship where the union isn’t sort of winning its political points by demonizing the company, right?

Phil Wilson: [06:55]
You want that relationship to be collaborative. Why don’t before we get into the sort of supervisor side of that, just real quick, how did you how did you look at building those relationships, you know, when you were sort of just getting into your role?

Doug Hessinger: [07:14]
It’s interesting you brought back a memory I’d forgotten. But you’re right, there’s different constituencies that I either served or worked with. The executives at the company, the regional managers who I spent a lot of time with, their respective frontline leaders and supervisors who are managing the day-to-day operations, and the union business agent as well. and one thing is going into the role, I thought, okay, you know, my perspective, build a template, have a standardized approach of things, template everything like that.

Doug Hessinger: [00:07:40]
Do it all the same the same across the six so we have consistency. Which we did. But the thing I didn’t really expect until I got in there is the i is every local, the six locals we had, each had a different personality, if you will. Not only the business a business agents demeanor and attitude, but the history they had, with the f true familiarity they had with the company on the in the day to day basis, what it’s really like to work on the floor or in the field in this case.

Doug Hessinger: [08:10]
And their personalities differed and their degree of understanding differed. So the example, the one in New York City, the the key business agent, the shop steward, the ki the key shop steward, was also an employee twenty-six years with a company. His father was a thirty year tech at the same company, who also helped found the union back in the mid nineteen seventies. So this individual I dealt with had

Doug Hessinger: [08:35]
professional and personal pride all wrapped up and he knew the job much better than the supervisors who unfortunately were kind of a a rotating door. So a new supervisor would come in and like they didn’t know what they didn’t know and they were just listening to the the union rep half the time. So g winning over and getting the frontline supervisors to know me, to trust me, to reach out to me. That was critical.

Doug Hessinger: [09:00]
Because, you know, the corporate guys, you know, they only come in when there’s trouble and then the people are fearing for their jobs or whatever else. It’s like, no, I want you to reach out proactively. Let me help you understand what the background is, what we’re doing here. Let’s teach you the contract. Nobody had done that. So they’re just operating based upon past practice, which could be bad. Their own assumptions. They come in here, I’m gonna change the world. And like, no, you can’t necessarily do that. Let’s talk about how you wanna make these changes. But winning them over

Doug Hessinger: [09:37]
little bit if you’re gonna be a good thing, but seeing me as a resource. That was critical. With the unions, it was interesting too. When I reached out, the Teamster guy, he was pragmatic. But there’s one in British Columbia, with the IBW. And when I called her the first meet, introduced myself for the first time, very positive intent, her first thing said to me was, you’re my next victim.

Phil Wilson: [09:41]
Yeah.

Doug Hessinger: [10:04]
It’s like, okay, this is gonna go a certain way, I see. And then she says, you know, I’m a mis mixed martial arts fan. That’s what I do for a hobby. I don’t like hurting people, but I’m really good at it. And she brought that attitude to work. Whereas other other stewards, they were just they were good. They would like they would actually support the company half the time when there’s issues. Like somebody was complaining about they were stuck on the north side of Boston at the end of their ship and had to drive home. And he’s like

Phil Wilson: [00:10:14]
Ha

Doug Hessinger: [10:32]
You’re getting paid for it. What’s the problem? Shut up and do your job. So it was a range of relationships that when things came up as they always do, grievances or whatnot, we could talk reasonably versus they’re gonna come out of the gate swinging when try to put a knife to your throat. It was very, very different in that approach and they had to learn how to manipulate or develop each one to to best effect.

Phil Wilson: [00:10:58]
What I mean you mentioned you know you had the one unit where like the father and then the son had sort of been there from the inception and then you have new like rotating supervisors. That you know, that’s a situation where it’s not uncommon that the manager listens to what the you know, the union rep that’s been there from the beginning, they’re like, Well, whatever they say is in the contract, that must be what it is. And

Phil Wilson: [11:20]
That and the and often the union, you know, the union rep, whatever their level is, they believe that too, right? It’s like, well, you know, if you came in and said, Well, that’s not what the contract says, they would be like, Yeah, it is like I you know, I know this contract inside and out. And then when you actually are like, Okay, well, here’s the words on the page and this is what it says and that and what you’re saying is not what this says.
Understanding Contract Language and Administration

Doug Hessinger: [11:52]
Yeah, exactly and you know, in this world the operations they had operations to run and metrics to meet.

Doug Hessinger: [12:00]
And that was your big focus. So the oftentimes they saw the labor stuff as an interruption of that. So I tried to work with them and get the mentality proactively. Look, you manage product, processes, and people. All three are important, not one at the expense of the others. So you’re viewing this people stuff as an interruption of your day? No, it’s part of your day. Now admittedly, it’s a lot harder here because you’ve got a union to deal with. So we’ve got that nuance to do to to factor into it. But let me help you with that. So when you have a situation or an issue, let’s talk about it.

Doug Hessinger: [12:30]
see what’s the applicable language, see what the applicable labor law might be, how you can approach this and what are the upsides and downsides of the nuances and options and actions you want to take. So I really focused more as a coach, or at least I tried the mentality, you know, give them training, practice, feedback, and scold when occasionally needed.

Phil Wilson: [12:49]
What maybe walk our listeners through, you know, when you went in and you were you were like in introducing yourself and then you’re kinda getting involved in the contract administration, especially to a supervisor that maybe isn’t really familiar enough with the labor agreement, like what what were the kinds of things that you would first of all that you would do to get them kind of up to speed on the contract, and then you know, what were what were some of the common kind of mistakes that people were making?

Doug Hessinger: [13:17]
So back to saying is at least in recent history prior to me

Doug Hessinger: [13:22]
They were kind of left on their own. They at least they felt they were. They didn’t have somebody explaining the contract to them. They didn’t have a partner that they felt they could reach out to comfortably without bringing down, you know, negativity upon themselves. So starting with the regional managers who I dealt with the most, I was like, let’s walk through this here. And got them to bring stuff to me so I can help them through it. And then as that worked out, and they learned labor relations that way. They’re saying, you know, I don’t learn from a PowerPoint, I learned from conversations with.

Doug Hessinger: [13:45]
you that are issue specific and we walk through all this stuff. Their senior leaders developed that and then they imparted it to their frontline leaders say hey reach out to Doug. He’s a good guy. When you call him make sure you have X, Y, and Z ready to go because he’s going to ask you for this. And again over time we just built that relationship on a multiple levels and it it paid dividends.

Doug Hessinger: [14:10]
But really going up I set a little ’cause you can’t get two hours of time and these were all remote people, so you weren’t doing face to face. We set up half hour lunch and learns. and we would go through clause one and two. And next week we go through clause three and four. And just kind of worked our way through it and said, Okay, that’s a language. Talk to me how this applies in your world or your operational goals and metrics. How can this

Doug Hessinger: [14:39]
get in the way and junk them up? How can they hurt your business? Or what can we do to make it work better? And then conversely from that we were finding some things that we’re trying to do to improve the business. We could take that to the business agent or even stewards and say, here, this is what we’re trying to do. Let’s work together on this and make sure we’re working on it. In the same way. To get their input on the front end, depending on what the issue was. So it became less of a fight later on.

Phil Wilson: [15:05]
Yeah, I think that’s a couple of really important things there for listeners. So the the one is, you know, walk and it’s not just like let’s you know, it’s story time, let’s read clause, you know, number one to each other and then clause two, but it’s like how does this apply? Where have you seen issues come up around this language? So really helping helping a supervisor or a you know a a local manager really

Phil Wilson: [15:30]
understand how does that agreement apply to them. And and also, you know, especially if you’ve bargained language, you already know what the union was sort of hoping or how they’re interpreting that clause and how possibly they’re interpreting it differently than you are. That also gives you an opportunity to explain to them that context, right? Like the union is likely to argue that this clause means something like this because that’s what they were arguing back in bargaining.

Phil Wilson: [15:52]
But we all agreed that’s not what this clause is. So what that means to that supervisor is to be on the lookout, you know, for them to push against that clause and to be and for them to be able to confident go confidently go, yeah, that’s not what this means, right? And I’ve already talked to the guy that bargained the contract. Like that’s not what this means.

Doug Hessinger: [16:26]
Yep. And that’s where the language could be problematic, particularly if it wasn’t if it was vague or unclear, the intention’s not known, or it made sense twenty years ago, but now we’re in our fifth iteration of that contract and what it meant back then nobody knows and they can’t find the the bargaining notes, right?

Phil Wilson: [16:43]
Yeah.

Doug Hessinger: [16:44]
but with the leaders too, I would involve in the bargaining prep, which I usually started eight to nine months ahead of time between when the bargaining would actually start. So we had a lot of time to ramp it up. But I got the frontline leaders. Just talk about and I actually actually throughout the year save up these problems that are driving you nuts. So when the time comes, we’ve got all a little a group of issues to work off of and built into our negotiations.

Doug Hessinger: [17:10]
But we’d walk through okay, what are the things that are getting in your way, what are the things you need, what’s a three year plan look like. Did that also with the regional manager level and the executive level. Because shockingly, right, they all had their own different view, their own interests and expectations of bargaining. So in that sense, I was serving three masters and we wanted to make sure that we got all the input. This is what we’re gonna do. And I took the senior manager with us to the table as well. So that I’m not just coming back saying, Here, you go, live with it. No.

Doug Hessinger: [17:38]
They were part of the process.

Phil Wilson: [17:38]
Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So let’s let’s get into the practicalities of you’ve got and look you know if you’re if you’re a company that doesn’t have a dug, you know, where where maybe it’s you know you’ve got a unionized location, but there’s not, you know, maybe your lawyer helped you bargain the contract, but but you’re you don’t have like a a day-to-day, you know, resource there, you still, I mean, you have to do these things. Like if you aren’t

Phil Wilson: [18:05]
If you don’t own the contract and know and understand it, you are at a high risk of creating either bad press past practice, eroding away things that got bargained at the bargaining table. Maybe just talk real quick about you know what some of those downsides are and then and then I’m interested in your opinion about what are some of the you know the watch out clauses that are the most important. But but let’s start with you know, what happens if you don’t understand the contract and you start engaging in some practice when there’s contract language that that is different.

Doug Hessinger: [18:41]
and we saw that and become past practice can become pr very, very problematic, especially if the language is vague and not clear. or where we had the rotating door of supervisors come in and each one wanted to come in and and be successful and prove themselves well. Some of them come out of hard charging, some of them are like even saying, I’m gonna get this union out of here. It’s like, Okay, let’s back off a little bit here. Let’s talk about how you approach this.

Doug Hessinger: [19:06]
But yeah, they could actually not knowing what the what a clause read and make an operational decision that seemed right, seemed appropriate for the business. And the one I remember was well, they’re gonna realign, this was up in the New York City area and just north of it, realign some of the re operational regions to move some stores, some customer stores from one region to another. Well, in doing that, you were taking work away from union techs.

Doug Hessinger: [19:32]
Even though it made a lot of sense from a financial and a travel time perspective and a lot of other stuff, certainly made sense for the customer to get better and quicker service. The union said, No, we’ve got this here. This is the operational geographical area is defined as X. Well, if when the contract was first created, X made sense.

Doug Hessinger: [19:50]
twenty years later it doesn’t. and technology comes into play and you don’t need people to drive all these places like that. Well, the job description that had been written, the geographical description of the units had been written, you know, it’s set in stone. So very, very frustrating for the leaders who wanted to make what you know been a two hundred thousand dollar win for the company. They were blocked from doing it and did not understand why.

Phil Wilson: [20:18]
And one other lesson there, and then we’ll get to the sort of the the you know these red flag clauses, but you know, that is a self-inflicted wound that you don’t necessarily have to have to have, right? Like if they talk to you, for example, and are like this is a move that we’re thinking about making, and then you’re able to go, Well, wait, I there’s contract language that’s for sure gonna be a problem there. You know, if if you approach the union

Phil Wilson: [20:45]
with some sort of solution that helps alleviate what some of theirs concerns might be, you know, you you can often negotiate some sort of a resolution. This case might not that might not have been possible, but you can often negotiate some sort of a of a resolution that that gets them past whatever their problem is. The the the challenge is if it’s presented to them as we’ve made this decision and we’re gonna do it.

Phil Wilson: [21:10]
They’re gonna have the MMA fighter is gonna be the response, right? And so so companies a lot of times make this mistake by just not thinking in advance about like how could this potentially impact this partner that we

Doug Hessinger: [21:35]
And that’s interesting you characterize it as partner we have. The way I explained it to people is look, you’re in a forced marriage. You didn’t want this relationship, but you’re in it. So now you can think of what kind of day to day existence do you want to have? Where you’re at each other’s throats all the time, where you’re giving each other a cold shoulder and only talking when you have to, or as a partner and saying, Okay, this is what we’re trying to achieve, let’s get your input from everybody. And again, the dynamics and issue dictate which way you approach that. but it’s critical. And again, when you have language that’s

Doug Hessinger: [22:05]
bad. An example I’ll think of is out British Columbia, where the techs don’t have like a a centralized location they report to every morning and pick up their vanilla tools. They have a vehicle, a work vehicle that they take home with them. And they leave from work and they go to their first job, their second job, their third job, their fourth job, and then they drive home. And then they have to park it somewhere. In their garage, in their front yard or the their driveway, in the street, and you know, it comes up with all kinds of issues. Where you can park in New York City

Doug Hessinger: [22:35]
versus Tallahassee, Florida versus Vancouver, Canada, differ. So the language that had been written in by somebody decades earlier said, okay, well, they had the vehicle. They agree, the company agreed to allow personal use of the vehicles, including for vacations. So now you had this issue, the vehicles had to be suitable, or at least the union contested, the unions had to be suitable for family use. Meaning

Doug Hessinger: [23:05]
seats in the back, second row of seats. And this kind of stuff. Well business said, Well, you gotta have cages to keep the product protected. So you had this amalgamation of vans that had to be customized. Well we tried to negotiate out that and they obviously understandably did not want anything to do with that. So we went to say, let’s get a new fleet of vehicles when the time came, which was a normal course of business. And the best vehicles for the business purposes had front seat back two front seats and that was it. No back seats.

Doug Hessinger: [23:25]
So that became a huge issue that went to arbitration of did the company have the right to determine which vehicles it would choose for work purposes? So can pick any

Phil Wilson: [23:41]
Like as long as you’ve got a kid that can sit in between on that front seat, you’re good. But otherwise, yeah, that’s I mean, wow. There’s a you know a lot to unpack there. But that’s yeah, that yeah, first of all, don’t negotiate that clause in the first place. But then, you know, that would be but that that would be a tough decision. And, you know, if the practice had been we’d all know for the 30 years that that clause had been on the

Phil Wilson: [24:05]
Books, we had bought two-row seat vehicles suitable for taking the family on vacation, the time that you change that, that could be a problem, right? what let’s talk about some of the other like sort of like red flag clauses. What are what are the ones that you kind of saw supervisors trip over the most?

Doug Hessinger: [00:24:24]
Quite a bit.

Doug Hessinger: [24:35]
one was it is more of a frustration than a trip over. this was in the New York City area. in the job there was job descriptions outlaid in the contract, at least to some extent. And it didn’t mirror what the company’s job descriptions currently were. And the language got in there, so we need to clean this up a little bit. So there’s basically a tech one, a tech two, and there used to be a tech three. Tech three had the highest skill level. Tech one was as basic.

Doug Hessinger: [00:25:05]
Well back in the day, kind of decades ago, tech threes, they were doing motherboard repair, soldering, all this kind of really technical work. Well, today it’s plug and play. You have a broken part, you just put it in one, you move forward. That high tech no longer exists. So somewhere along the line, that tech three position was eliminated. Spook the union. So somewhere after that they put in language that define what a tech one and a tech two were, at least in theory.

Doug Hessinger: [25:30]
What it said was some very basic verbiage and then the duties as discussed. What does that mean? So I’m asking look at what what is duties as discussed. Well, people understand what the job is and is not. No, I don’t. So let’s talk about that. And I and I pressed them and I filed a put in a a request for information. I want to see the bargaining unit notes from whenever that was decided, what was discussed. Yeah.

Phil Wilson: [00:26:00]
Notes of that discussion.

Doug Hessinger: [26:02]
And of course, they couldn’t find But they use that, and they still may actually be using that, to prevent those jobs from evolving. You know, the use of a of a diagnostic dongle, is that a technical skill or not technical skill? Arguably it’s not, but the union is holding to it as if it is. So other types of technological changes or you know, better ways of doing work, especially now in the age of digital, they fight it.

Phil Wilson: [26:33]
Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, as discussed is definitely in artful clause drafting there.

Doug Hessinger: [26:41]
Yeah. I don’t think a union a lawyer is involved in half particular session.

Phil Wilson: [26:45]
Yeah. Like yada yada yada or et cetera, et cetera. Like that’s yeah, those are not good contract clauses. what what are some other like common ones that you had to coach supervisors around or that were kind of gotchas?

Doug Hessinger: [27:04]
Attendance was a big one too. How attendance was tracked, what the the s the thresholds were for discipline, who would do the discipline, was it automatic step is automatic step regression in the discipline, or was it reviewed? and people and again that’s the s and not to be surprised, there are game players out there. People who knew how to play their their their sick time around holidays and around the attendance policy.

Doug Hessinger: [27:30]
And holiday policy, some of which the language conflicted. You know, the tennis policy would allow for X and Y, whereas the holiday policy would only allow for X. So those kind of things became problematic for the supervisors to manage and the game players took full advantage of it, which just frustrated the live in hell, the frontline supervisors who’s trying to take care of business and customers. When you got five people, you know, deciding they’re gonna take a four day weekend because they can play the game. So

Doug Hessinger: [27:59]
Having those written out, PTO, vacations, attendance, things that can work in combination with each other. It’s easy in negotiations to be looking just that sentence or clause. But you gotta remember, it’s chess, not checkers. You gotta look at all the other interrelationships between language.

Phil Wilson: [28:16]
Yeah, for sure. Maybe give me one more. What’s w what’s another clause that you had to counsel people on?

Doug Hessinger: [28:25]
We never really had issues with strikes and things that nature. What would come up from time to time is one of one of our retail customers was having labor issues. And whether our tax, union tax, would cross the picket line or not. So in our legacy contracts, that language was silent on that. They could, they could not. On the newer contracts we negotiated, and I don’t think I mentioned it, of the six contracts, two were legacy going back to the mid seventies.

Doug Hessinger: [28:53]
Two were under first contract negotiations while I was there, and two were at the end of their first contract are going to go to a success agreement. So again, the dynamics are different. The legacy contracts are the most problematic because what starts as a ten page document becomes a hundred pages of onerous language if you’re not careful. so in the newer contracts we’re able to say put a prohibition in the strike language that they will not cross I mean to me that they will not refuse to cross a picket line.

Doug Hessinger: [29:20]
impacting one of our retail customers. So that was a win for us on that. It never became a problem. except for once in one of the legacy groups that didn’t want to service a company that a s a grocery store that was on strike.

Phil Wilson: [29:35]
Yeah, right. I mean other common ones, yeah, we’ve got this this guide that anybody can request if you if you see the episode and you want to look at it. But we’ve got there you know other common ones that trip people up. You I mean you already talked a little bit about so job descriptions if you have if you have that kind of language. Subcontracting language is another really big one. obviously attendance, that that one comes up a lot, but there’s a lot of these, you know, clauses that deal with

Phil Wilson: [30:00]
In particular, how many people are in the unit. So if you just think about the interests of the union, right? They want to have as many members in that group as possible. And they want to be able to sort of, you know, prevent a lot of like movement of people, you know, in either in and out of the unit or f in from one job to another, because again, that would that would force the employer to have to hire more people, which is more union dues coming in. And so any of the clauses that sort of deal with those.

Phil Wilson: [30:30]
those sorts of issues, who can perform bargaining unit work, whether classifications can perform work outside of their classification, those become the types of provisions that can really sort of trip people up. Overtime is another big one, like that’s a what qualifies for overtime or, you know, time and a half versus double time and things like that. Though those are those are also commonly, you know, argued over provisions.

Doug Hessinger: [31:02]
Absolutely. And if you’re if if any of the listeners are involved or soon to be involved in first contract negotiations, by all means, your management rights clause. That’s critical. This is why you need an attorney with you. This is the foundation for what you can and can’t do. And I know there’s different competing schools of thought of having as little as possible and anything that’s not spoken to is it’s open to the company to do what they want. Versus others that want to be very, very exacting in particular.

Doug Hessinger: [31:25]
ones I walked to were basically a a paragraph, a short paragraph long. I’m proud to say in the first contract negotiation we did, we got a page and a quarter long manual rights clause. I wish I had it so I could frame it, but it was good.

Phil Wilson: [31:40]
Yeah. Yeah. Well the pro yeah, the problem with a short one is the you know, it leaves it leaves well way, way too much room for interpretation as to like what is or is not. So that page and a half clause is a lot better because you’re just delineating all these things that like we have the authority to make decisions on boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. that’s a lot more defensible.

Phil Wilson: [32:00]
when when there’s an issue in the future. Now, you know, some people will say the problem with that laundry list is if you do something and it’s not in the laundry list, then maybe it’s clearer that you don’t have the right to do it. Well, just make sure that laundry list is as long as possible.

Doug Hessinger: [32:26]
Yep, exactly. Make as long as possible. And kind of a a a a similar issue was with I guess the tennis policies. You know, I’ve seen groups that say, you know, just keep it simple that this is just the language is tennis policy as applied to non union locations also applies here. Short sweep.

Phil Wilson: [32:43]
Mm-hmm.

Doug Hessinger: [32:44]
And then whatever that attendance policy changes, it changes for everybody. Versus writing in exactly the attendance policy in all particulars. Well now you got stuff. If you go to change a dependence of policy somewhere else, you’ve got to negotiate those line items here with the union. And that can get very, very complicated. And if union doesn’t agree to it, you could end up in a situation where they may have a f more favorable attendance policy than the rest of the company that’s non union, which doesn’t help your cause.

Phil Wilson: [33:12]
Yeah, right. And ideally at the end of that clause where it says you can change it, whatever the company policy is, it automatically becomes the policy here. And it’s not subject to the grievance procedure. That would be another like good thing to add to the end of that clause. But yeah, that’s that’s a whole separate episode. So we’re so we’re getting close to the end of our time. Maybe just give our listeners if they’re dealing

Phil Wilson: [33:30]
Either with that situation of like a labor relations department of one or or just somebody that’s kind of coming into an operation, you know, new like you did. What what would be kind of your key takeaways for handling a situation like that?

Doug Hessinger: [33:53]
Yeah, it again not unsurprisingly, it’s about relationships. You’ve got to build strong, knowledgeable, effective working relationships with some degree of trust. You’re gonna be viewed

Doug Hessinger: [34:05]
perhaps skeptically or, you know, you’re the the pall bearer that you know only brings bad news, something like that. You gotta get past that. So people need to understand you and what you bring to the table and how you can understand their world, their needs, or they’re acronyms. I mean the more you understand their world the more vi viable you’ll be seen. that is absolutely hugely critical. And again, relationships with the people who are doing the work on the floor, then they need you. And they need good advice from you and they need not to be threatened by

Doug Hessinger: [34:30]
You are scared of you. And then again, to extent you can build relationships with the union reps. Those are critical. And then preparation and planning, not just for negotiations, but that’s very important, but also throughout the term of the contract. Make sure you’re following your processes, you’re following you’re not putting in past practices that shouldn’t exist or could be problematic later on. The sooner you know of issues or sooner you can prevent issues, the better off you’ll be.

Phil Wilson: [35:03]
Yeah. Great advice. Great advice. Well, Doug, great conversation. Thank you so much. Good good like practical examples too. I really, really appreciate that. thanks so much for joining the show and hope to see you soon.

Doug Hessinger: [35:18]
Great. Thanks, appreciate the opportunity.