The Art of Negotiation: How To Effectively Manage A Union Shop 

Host: Phil Wilson  Guest: Dave Sapenoff

Phil Wilson (00:00)

Dave Sapenoff, welcome back to the Left A Boom Show.

Dave Sapenoff (00:04)

Thanks for having me back, Phil. I appreciate it. Same here.

Phil Wilson (00:06)

Yeah, it’s great to see ya. ⁓

so I mean you’ve been on the show a number of times, but yeah,  there will for sure be some people that this will be the first time that they have seen you. So why don’t we just real quick, maybe give people a quick background who’s Dave Sapinoff and why are we talking to him about labor relations?

Dave Sapenoff (00:25)

I appreciate the opportunity. bottom line, I’ve been in labor relations for literally my entire adult life. After graduating from college in the mid-70s, I went to work for the Teamsters Union as an organizer with one of the larger industrial teamster locals in the New York City metropolitan area. After being with them for seven years, I went over to the management side, got my master’s degree in labor and industrial relations.

From New York Institute of Technology, and then went to work for at that time Sprint Communications. And through mergers and acquisitions, we picked up 12,000 bargaining unit employees, under 35 collective bargaining agreements in 18 states, and I was responsible basically for the care and feeding of all of those in bargaining unit employees, and also for 45,000 non-union employees in terms of maintaining a positive employee relations atmosphere for them as well. Retired from them in 2018 and basically went into consulting through LRI almost full-time since then. So mainly what I’m concentrating on

right now is collective bargaining, kind of with a real concentration in negotiating first-time labor agreements and also with consulting with employers in terms of effective contract administration. You know, how to work with the contract, how to administer it, how to handle grievances, things of that nature.

Phil Wilson (01:44)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right. And that’s of course, the topic of our episode today is just sort of dealing with the mechanics of a bargaining relationship and how that works. So why don’t we start, you know, like I. I like the left of boom you know, formulation, but when you’re a represented employer, you know, the big sort of boom events in the life of a represented employer is gonna be contract time, right? So strikes, you know.

big arbitration cases, like those are the sort of boom events for represented employers. Why don’t you walk us through and maybe maybe even some you know recent e examples, walk us through a little bit like what are the things that go wrong when you end up in a strike situation? Let’s just start with strikes.

What Causes Strikes and How to Prepare for Them

Dave Sapenoff (02:37)

You know, I’ll basically say that a strike is really the result of a failure to prepare. that’s you know, and in effect or the outcome of the strike.

If it’s negative, it’s a failure to prepare. Generally speaking, I will advise any employer, whether it’s a first-time agreement, whether it’s a renewal agreement, that literally the first thing they need to look at, aside from the economics and all language and all of that, is what and how would you handle a labor, you know, a job action at your facility? And are you capable of dealing with that job action? Because that has an effect, dictates a lot of how the employer will bargain at the table. If they are in a very precarious financial condition, or there are political ramifications of taking a strike or things of that nature, that’s going to dictate bargaining in one direction versus another, taking harder positions versus softer positions on certain issues. So it’s always in the preparation. What are you capable of taking a job action?

and then you prepare from there. It’s sort of like reverse engineering the whole scenario.

Phil Wilson (03:51)

Yeah, and I also think talk about this a little bit, but there’s also a component of this is not it’s like being prepared, you know, it always it always comes down to leverage, right? So if you are prepared and can take a strike, then a strike does not look like a good idea, you know, to the union. But then there’s also this additional component that I think you tell me, but I think is much more prevalent today, which is there’s sort of preparing the bargaining unit.

Dave Sapenoff (04:00)

Yes.

Phil Wilson (04:17)

for, you know, what’s realistic, what’s not, you know, so that orienting them in a way that they don’t get a a an offer that gets put in front of them and they’re just, you know, 100% voting it down because they have, you know, s they’ve dreamed up something that they want that is just not gonna happen.

Dave Sapenoff (04:39)

You know, I’ve seen the gamut on that. And you know, generally speaking, which is why sometimes in first contract negotiations, you are dealing with basically unit expectations. I’m an ex-organizer. The idea was that in terms of getting people to vote the union in, they are operating under what I would sometimes describe as wildly unrealistic expectations of what bargaining is going to result in.

Phil Wilson (04:52)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (05:07)

So as a result, you know, a lot of unions are in the position of having to temper that, those expectations. And again, if they’re not effective at controlling the bargaining unit, you know, I’ve seen it both ways where the union’s done an effective job in terms of tempering that. I’ve seen the unions build up those expectations and want to take the employees out on strike. I’ve also seen scenarios where the employees themselves, in effect, remove from the union.

you know, the union’s decision in that regard to take it upon themselves to do something. So the main thing is in a first agreement, you’re dealing with expectations, high levels of expectations.

Phil Wilson (05:48)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (05:48)

In subsequent agreements, again, it’s what in effect the union, how effective is the union in terms of tempering expectations of wage increases, benefit improvements, things of that nature. So a lot of it does go back to the union and how responsible the union is, and again, unions run the gamut. There are unions that are highly responsible. I mean, they understand the business.

There are other unions out there that pretty much, as far as they’re concerned, they could care less about the economic impact of the employer. 

Phil Wilson (06:24)

Yeah, they do. You’re right. Like they’re yeah, the and and personalities and like there’s a there’s all kinds of stuff that’s sort of like roll into this. I’d like to focus on the stuff that is controllable. So so the things that like the employer can do, and I think there’s a number of things an employer can do if you are being proactive, you know, with the relationship with the union, really kind of understanding because they’re they’re in a political situation themselves, right? Like if you temper expectations too much, then the bargaining unit’s like, well, who are you representing here? And like we’ll just get rid of you and vote in somebody who’s gonna, you know, do what we want. So there are things that an employer can do to help that union leadership be realistic, but at the same time also not look like, you know, you’re in the pocket of management.

Maybe talk a little bit about what are some of the things that you can do kind of in between negotiations to try to get that right, understanding that there’s this whole gamut of, you know, of talent and and pe responsibility and all that sort of stuff.

Managing Union Expectations Between Contracts

Dave Sapenoff (07:31)

I think it comes down to, you know, again, if we’re looking at an already organized unit heading into contract renewal, you know, one of the things we have is a course that we do through LRI called Managing the Union Shah. And one of the first things that we highlight is that in effect hostility towards the union is self-defeating. Now that doesn’t mean, you know, it’s kumbaya.

Phil Wilson (07:49)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (07:53)

What it does mean that you know just being in an adversarial position with the union serves no one’s purposes. The idea is is to be a firm

Phil Wilson (08:00)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (08:03)

responsible and predictable leadership team to the union to manage to the collective bargaining agreement, such that bargaining, in effect, one element you want to eliminate from this is sort of an emotional alpha dog element, which is you’ve been hostile towards the union. And in fact, what they use bargaining then for is to reassert themselves.

Phil Wilson (08:26)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (08:26)

versus this idea that it may be a very firm relationship between the company and the union, but as long as it’s predictable, then in a sense people come to the table, that’s the way they act. So, you know, again, there are certain elements here that you know, you know, that w we try and preach as far as, you know, be predictable, be firm, manage to the agreement. And

Phil Wilson (08:51)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (08:52)

Again, one of the tenets of that is, you know, do what the contract says, not what you think is fair. and and again, that engenders honest conversation at the bargaining table. 

Phil Wilson (08:57)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I’ve let yeah, I absolutely. And I also think, you know, that that’s a two-way street, right? Like on the management side, if if you gotta win every point, you know, with your union, you are creating a situation where either, you know, the employees no longer respect that union leadership and then are going to, you know, give you the devil you don’t know that that is is worse, right?

Or they’re they’re going to look like they are ineffective and and weak and the employees are gonna demand, you know, even if they don’t change out the leadership, like you you in some ways you put yourself in a position where, well, like if we don’t strike, you know, no one is going to think that we’re doing our job. And you don’t want to, you know, put yourself in that situation. And so then the reality becomes it’s important for the union to win.

Like they do, you know, it and and there are many, many times where there is a dispute over a contract issue or a dispute over a disciplinary issue or whatever where the employer screwed up or the employer or or or reasonable people can differ about what this clause means. And the right place to battle for that maybe isn’t right now. maybe we maybe we save this as something that we’re gonna bargain over the next time the contract’s up.

But like with every single issue, the employer’s like, we have to win no matter what, you’re going to have a really negative relationship with your union.

Dave Sapenoff (10:37)

And an expensive relationship.

the simple fact of the matter is that, you know, for argument’s sake, unions love arbitration in concept. They hate it in principle simply because of the expense associated with that. That’s not to say, however, that some unions, in effect, if they have to go to arbitration, they will. And, you know, for an employer to be spending $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 to, in effect, arbitrate what is a relatively simple issue that could have been solved through discussion really doesn’t serve any purpose.

Phil Wilson (10:50)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (11:11)

So, you know, again, I think the idea, one of the failures is to fail to recognize the political entity that the union is with the membership. The failure to recognize the fact that, you know, we really when you’re at the bargaining table, there are three parties at the table: the employees, the union, and management. And that very often the employees in the union may not be in sync. And it’s really, in a sense, up to management sometimes to recognize that political nature.

to sometimes help the union out when they need to be helped out, or sometimes to take a position in front of the employees such that the expectation level of the employees is lowered. So you know, again, going into this with a very, you know, hard and fast, you know, approach to things generally doesn’t have a good outcome. You know, there’s an old expression that the best way to retain power is to give forty nine percent of it away.

Phil Wilson (11:41)

Yeah. I mean, you know, your percentages might vary, but like that’s that I think that that’s that’s right. Like if you know, or and the more the more you take, the more you should plan on having an unproductive relationship, right? so let’s let’s switch gears a little bit into so the companies that do this well, right? Clients that are working with you that are, you know, doing this well, what are the what are the proactive things

Dave Sapenoff (12:12)

Yes. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Phil Wilson (12:36)

that they’re doing like in between negotiations, going into negotiations. Yeah, what are those proactive things that they’re doing to be successful?

Dave Sapenoff (12:45)

Yeah, it’s like anything else. And I think this is part of what LRI preaches, what I preach as an individual. It’s all about engagement with the employees.

It’s all about approachability. It’s all about the simple fact of the matter is that even though employees are union, some and some employers take the position, and you know, the you know, there’s an education piece to this, that there’s no reason to treat a union employee any different than any other employee. A positive relationship, at the end of the day, really, you know, I I don’t know if it’s Confucius or Chairman Mao, but the the expression, you know, what I tell employers is you don’t care what color.

The cat is as long as it catches mice. And to that extent, when it comes down to it, really what are you or the employer interested in? Getting product out the door efficiently, profitably, and that your employees are engaged in accomplishing that task.

And to the extent that that means maintaining a positive relationship, union or not, doing the right things, managing to the agreement. That’s what good employers do. And that’s why typically in a contract renegotiation, the conversations are going to be very productive. where that relationship starts and that starts at the supervisor level. That’s not just an open you know, a higher level management issue. We’re talking about the frontline supervisor engaging with their employees every day.

being approachable. So the employers that do that well, you know, that doesn’t mean things are given away at contract time, but it means that there’s a conversation that takes place about those things versus an adversarial conversation.

Phil Wilson (14:23)

Right. So a and like look, union or non-union, the employer should care about things like we want to have, we want our workplace to be safe. We want everyone to go home safely at the end of the day to their families. We want to pay well, we want to have good benefits, like we want yeah, we want to be a great place to work. And that doesn’t change when employees are represented or or not represented. And then going to the frontline supervisor.

You know, that also doesn’t change. I want to be a resource to you. I want to be able to help you solve any problems, remove obstacles, and reduce friction. Like that’s also true whether you’re in a union environment or not. One of the things that I think does change in the union environment, obviously, is you have like this third, this third entity. So the union is representing and and you know stands in the place of.

The individual employees in a lot of these discussions. And so the job of the supervisor changes to the extent that, like, you also need to make sure they’re included. You talked about this earlier. Don’t surprise them. Be predictable. And that doesn’t mean that you agree. In fact, it absolutely is not that you agree with everything that they say. It’s very common that they’re gonna have interpretations of contract language that are just wrong. but the way that you disagree makes a huge difference. Talk a little bit about how how do you help prepare s supervisors for these, you know, these these conversations with stewards that are like this point in time which you can either have a a conflict resolve without ever being a grievance filed, without it ever be being an issue at all, all the way up to that exact same conversation can lead to an arbitration case that lasts forever and costs tens of thousands of dollars, if not more.

walk us through like how do you train supervisors for that moment?

Training Supervisors to Handle Grievances and Steward Conversations

 Dave Sapenoff (16:22)

You know, one of the things again with frontline supervisors is really looking at your contract and and again looking at the language of the contract and how that’s constructed. What you know, we start with very basic and in managing union shops. Really, what’s the definition of a grievance? Okay? Where and when do you have a conversation with an employee? You know, a lot of supervisors, and this is really what we try and educate people, is that looking at the contract, I’m gonna say ninety percent of the time, the first conversation

Phil Wilson (16:38)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (16:52)

shouldn’t be between the supervisor and a shop steward. It should be between the supervisor and the employee that has an issue. And that comes down to recognizing what’s the difference between an actual grievance, a violation of the contract, and what potentially is just a gripe.

Phil Wilson (16:56)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (17:11)

You know, in other words, I have an issue that is not necessarily controlled by language in the agreement, and a supervisor taking that and resolving that. And we basically say, whether it’s a grievance where you typically have time frames that need to be you know, where something has to be resolved, or a gripe, approach each of them expeditiously.

Approach each one of them in the back of your mind with the concept that this could eventually go to arbitration. And again, the other thing is this,  the expression of violating their expectations in a positive way. But you know, we live in this day and age politically where if somebody makes a statement, then there’s doubling down and tripling down on a statement. One of the things we emphasize in training supervisors, middle management, upper management, if you violated the agreement, admit it.

Correct it, educate whythe violation took place, move on. And you know, to a large extent, then that really does convince the union that if a mistake was made, management acts in a responsible fashion.

If they take a position contrary to the union and you would live in that sort of environment, they will then also question their own actions. Because if management acts responsibly and they’re saying to the union, we don’t see a grievance here or we disagree with it, then in effect management is acting responsibly in their eyes, and it doesn’t become some blown out of proportion political issue with the membership.

Phil Wilson (18:40)

Yeah, I love that. And then going back to the original point that you just made, that you don’t the first conversation shouldn’t be like with the steward, you know, where the employee runs to the steward and like and now now it’s like now it’s potentially a grievance. At the same time, there are often situations where it’s like, you know what? You know, you start with that individual conversation with the employee and

You can tell that they’re upset. You can tell that they don’t really agree. You know, and even if it is an individual gripe, you know, that might be a time to go, look, we ought to get the steward over here and like let’s talk about this together. Like that, you know, maybe I’m not seeing this quite right. You know, you’re not trying to set some side deal. You’re not trying to usurp the authority of the steward. Like that, you know, being able to.

you know, show that you’re I recognize that this is your representative. I recognize what their role is here. I don’t want them to be surprised by some conversation that you and I have had. all of those show again, you’re responsible. You are mature about sort of how all of this works together. And I think that’s a really important part as well. What do you think?

Dave Sapenoff (19:53)

It is.

I mean I totally agree. You know, one of the other things too is that typically in a first time agreement that we negotiate

One of the pieces of language that we’ll insert in terms of a company proposal on a grievance process is basically the language from 9A of the National Labor Relations Act that says an employee, any employee in the bargaining unit shall have the right to approach management for the adjustment of a grievance so long as the union has been advised of the fact that the employees approach and has opportunity to be there and any settlement is not in conflict with the contract. And you’d be surprised as to how many.

Many unions object to that language. You know, and my approach is always like, this is what the law says. Why would you object to that? And it comes down to understanding again politically where the union sees themselves in this relationship. In other words, do they trust their own members to resolve things? You know, because a lot of unions don’t want that relationship.

Phil Wilson (20:31)

Yeah.

Dave Sapenoff (20:55)

And you know, again, it’s recognizing where the union may not want that relationship between a supervisor and a group of employees, where it makes I think it all the more important that that relationship get built.

So, you know, it’s sort of the one of the litmus tests in terms of understanding what the potential relationship may look like and level setting with the union very early on what your expectations are as far as approachability of a supervisor and an employee.

Phil Wilson (21:28)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I think at some level it’s sort of three-dimensional chess. Like there’s, you know, there there’s this politics and the personalities, there’s the agreement itself, there’s the just the day-to-day activities. You know, we haven’t even really gotten into this, but you know, supervisors in these one-on-one conversations can over time commit the company to things that basically rewrites the labor agreement, right?

Avoiding Past Practices Through Management Consistency

Dave Sapenoff (21:56)

Yes. I mean, you know, one of the things you guard against is the commission or creation of past practices.

Phil Wilson (21:57)

yeah, talk a little bit about that.

Dave Sapenoff (22:03)

and and again, I think past practices are generally misunderstood and in terms of how they’re created and what’s necessary to in effect develop a binding past practice and in effect rewrite pieces of the agreement. But nonetheless, it’s you know, again, looking at and this is something else that we advocate very heavily to management in a bargaining unit environment. You can’t have management operating in silos.

Phil Wilson (22:31)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (22:32)

you know, again, one of the things that we’ll advocate is that if, you know, management has staff meetings, devote a certain piece of that staff meeting to talking about what is coming up from the floor in the way of gripes, grievances, to make sure that across the organization there is consistency of response. Having two supervisors respond to the same situation in two different ways, in effect, is what we call creating a grievance machine.

Phil Wilson (23:01)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Sapenoff (23:01)

And the fact that a supervisor responded one way gives the union leverage to say, well, you responded that way, why not this way here? And so, and again, that’s for management is one of the ultimately very important things. Consistency of action, consistency of response. So we advocate that very heavily. Talk to each other.

Phil Wilson (23:15)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And be predictable. You’ve said yeah, we we both have said this word, but it’s like, you know, if if you’re predictable be because you they know you’re going to follow the agreement, they know you’re going to like go to the document, they know that you’re going to talk to each other, that that also reduces any incentive there is to try to game, you know, the past practice. system or to take advantage of the weak supervisor or the like. Those are the sorts of things that a union that understands like management doesn’t know what they’re doing. Like those are the things that they do to, you know, take advantage. And you know, you like you know, like it or not, my my you know, my when my dad was coming up, his best friend was also a guy that he negotiated against for, you know, years and years. 

And his name is Archie, but Archie’s saying was the negotiation doesn’t start until the contract’s signed, right? So there are definitely, you know, people on the union side that are, you know, looking to erode that agreement away. And the way that you do that is by taking advantage of supervisors that don’t know what they’re doing.

Dave Sapenoff (24:34)

Yes. Yes. And you know, and and again, it always comes down to well, you know, I worked for Sprint Communications for thirty-four years. through a whole series of events and everything, but you know, Sprint was an advocate of what we called quality management.

And this idea of again looking at equipping supervisors, proper training. Number one. I mean, num yeah, putting somebody out on a shop floor that has never managed in a union environment, handing them a 30 page agreement or a 60 or a 90 page agreement and saying, here it is, manage it, is a recipe for failure.

Phil Wilson (25:06)

Mm hmm. Right.

Dave Sapenoff (25:13)

And so the idea is starting and investing in the frontline and middle management teams, developing those lines of communication. And while we’re also talking about communication, do not, you know, I I’m a strong advocate, management should never stop communicating with employees simply because they’re union.

You know, again, going into bargaining where you the company has not communicated within the last year, two years on the status of the organization, whether revenue is increasing, sales are increasing, profitability, all of those things. And again, some companies will advocate that, well, if we tell them we’re profitable, then they’re just simply going to ask for more. I get it. But on the other hand, not sharing any information leaves people to fill in the blanks for themselves.

Phil Wilson (26:02)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (26:03)

And then, in a sense, they connect dots which may not be there, which makes discussions, especially about economic items, all the more difficult. I always advocate to management, senior management on down. A, don’t be a stranger. Don’t let negotiations be the first time somebody sees somebody at a table. communicate often, drive talking points right down to the frontline supervisors.

Phil Wilson (26:21)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (26:30)

They have to have a stake in this. Many times frontline supervisors kind of have one side in the bargain. They may have come out of the bargaining unit. They have one foot on that side, the other foot, and kind of don’t see themselves as wholly responsible for enforcing the agreement or taking a position on things. And that really is an education process. That is a developmental process for the management team.

Phil Wilson (26:57)

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s we’ll we’ll switch gears one last time before we close here. But yeah, it’s one thing that you know, the approach that you just talked about is great for like a f you sprint at that time was I don’t know, Fortune definitely five hundred, probably a way lower number than that. Yeah, right. Yeah, big organization. They had you full time, you have like a but you know, you you have like a department of people that

Dave Sapenoff (27:15)

Sixty sixty thousand total employees. Yeah, that’s a big organization. Yeah.

Phil Wilson (27:25)

deals with all this stuff, most employers out there don’t have that. So let’s talk a little bit about why a mid-market company doesn’t have a labor relations department, is not ever going to have enough labor issues to need one or to be able to afford one. Like what did they do to try to do the things that you were able to do at Sprint and to to be proactive and be to do this well?

Fractional Labor Relations for Mid-Market Employers

Dave Sapenoff (27:54)

Yeah, again, I think it comes down to recognizing what is the skill set of the individuals that are managing this bargaining unit group. I’ve seen some management be very effective at it. I’ve seen a lot of management, and when I say management, I’m not talking about HR or a labor relations group. I’m talking about direct line operations people not being very effective at managing the agreement. I’ve seen large numbers of organizations be very ineffective at it. So the concept here is what is the skill set?

Phil Wilson (28:14)

Mm.

Dave Sapenoff (28:23)

set, identifying where the skill set needs to be improved. If somebody picks up a labor agreement and doesn’t know the difference in terms of when they read language, what’s the difference between a clause that has may versus shall?

Phil Wilson (28:38)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (28:39)

And again, it becomes an educative scenario. And that’s where the organization ought to reach out for that level of expertise. So, you know, again, I mentioned the fact that LRI does managing the union shop. That’s where we actually take a group of supervisors, walk them through their agreement.

interpret the language, show them how to. There are rules to interpreting an agreement. It doesn’t change agreement to agreement. A contract is a contract. Okay? So when it says may, what do you do? When it says shall, what do you do? What happens when there’s a comma, etc. at the end of a sentence? Or a sentence starts off for example, in terms of the union saying, well, you ought to pay us for this or pay us for that, because and and again what we do is

Phil Wilson (29:15)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (29:26)

You educate the management team such that they are able to pick that agreement up, or we call its four corners, and be able to literally open it, interpret it, and formulate a response, and you start from the ground up.

Just skill set wise, approachability. You know, there are programs out there available through LRI, approachable leadership, that basically talks to how do I just maintain a day-to-day level of engagement with my employees? Okay. How to conduct effective performance appraisals would be something else. That again, how do you manage performance? How do you give direction?

Phil Wilson (29:44)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (30:06)

So all these things when you look at a skill set is and these are not expensive programs, but in terms of where could a frontline supervisor, mid-management, be strengthened in their skill set to be effective at what they do.

Phil Wilson (30:22)

Right. I mean, we call this fractional labor relations, right? It’s like you don’t have to hire a Fortune five hundred labor relations department, just rent, you know, Dave for however much that you need. And some clients, like you just said, some clients have internal talent where there’s really not that much, you know, you know, you don’t need a ton of support. And then other clients need a lot more support. And wherever you are on that spectrum, like that.

Dave Sapenoff (30:25)

Yes.

Phil Wilson (30:50)

That’s what you do. But the thing that’s not optional is like you need to be doing this proactively. You need to be doing it, not just waiting until it’s time to negotiate the next agreement, but like what are you doing through that? And then the one other point I wanted to make, you know, you talked about managing the union shop training, which is really valuable for supervisors. And it’s not something you just do one and done because the contract evolves. The issues that are risky evolve.

people can you know, you can just practice these steward conversations. And one of the best things that you can do, you know, you don’t need to, you don’t need to have a hundred-page contract memorized, right? There’s probably, you know, eight to ten clauses, maybe, that are like the key ones that we know that when we negotiated this last round, the union didn’t really want to agree to this.

This is one that they’re gonna definitely push the envelope on. Like, you know, after you’ve bargained the agreement, like these are the hot button type issues. And then you get the supervisors to role-play conversations with realistic scenarios using the contract language in that agreement. and knowing when is the time to go like, look, we’re probably just not gonna agree about this. There is a grievance procedure that’s in the agreement. I no hard feelings, but I think you’re probably gonna just need to do that.

Like there’s ways to have these conversations that could either be, you know, pound sand, we’re not gonna, you know, I I don’t agree, or I wanna be collaborative with you, but this is something that we can’t really resolve here. We’re gonna need to use the process. I encourage you to use the process. We want to use the process, that’s why we agreed to it. You know, there’s different ways to handle that conversation, but most supervisors are not gonna be

Dave Sapenoff (32:16)

Mm-hmm.

Phil Wilson (32:45)

highly skilled at that. Like they need practice.

Dave Sapenoff (32:50)

Again this is the scenario that I most often walk into when called in to provide this level of training is the typical scenario is the frontline supervisor has the contract being interpreted for them by the union steward. And I, you know, again, I from the get-go, I will say that is the wrong thing. That is a mistake. That

Phil Wilson (33:06)

Mm. Right.

Dave Sapenoff (33:17)

A supervisor or to be able to pick up a contract. In fact, that’s one of the first things we say. Somebody comes in, alleges a violation, and you know, you asked by show of hands, how many of you at that point reach for your own agreement? And you can pretty much tell that a lot of times somebody walks in and says, You did X, Y, and Z, that violated section this and then of the contract, and therefore there’s a problem. And a lot of supervisors take that on face value.

Phil Wilson (33:42)

Mm-hmm.

Dave Sapenoff (33:43)

And that’s one of the first things we tell people is pick up the agreement, go to the language, read it, and after you’ve learned how to interpret contract language, then you are in a position to say, I disagree, or no, you’re actually right, and proceed from there. So it’s again, it’s very, very important, you know, at all steps, anybody that’s liable to touch this, it’s very important. And again, from a fractional perspective, again, you know, in terms of the services that I do and provide to a multiple.

Phil Wilson (33:56)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dave Sapenoff (34:13)

Multitude of employers. Some are calling me on basic grievances. Some are calling me when a grievance has gone to like either a second or third step higher up on the chain. Others I’m involved with only in terms of the arbitration prep. From a bargaining perspective, it runs the gamut as well. I deal with a multitude of employers that are calling me in to basically look at grievance activities and things of that nature and help them suggest contract proposals. Others will ask me to perhaps be there at negotiations, maybe not necessarily at the table, so that they can come back and run through proposals with. And others will ask me to sit in the first chair. And it runs the absolute gamut based on what the organization feels its needs are. And obviously we’re you know we can accommodate that.

Phil Wilson (34:49)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think, you know, the thing that’s the thing that’s great about fractional labor relations is like it, you know, it is very flexible, right? It’s like what where where are you? What do you need? What talent do you have already internally? You know, what outside resources you’ve got you know, probably outside labor council, you’ve got you know, what what outside resources do you have? But then you match whatever that is, we can

Dave Sapenoff (35:12)

Yes.

Phil Wilson (35:28)

fill whatever those gaps are, right? And then as you get better and better at it, then you need less and less of it. But like that’s sort of the magic of it. And the and the problem is mo so lots of companies aren’t even aware that this even exists. Lots of companies don’t think about this proactively and they don’t invest in the in-between spaces where the small, you know, molehill problems become mountains later. So that

Dave Sapenoff (35:31)

Yes.

Phil Wilson (35:56)

I think the message really for anyone watching this show is like, hey, you know, Dave Sapanoff exists. He can help. it’s not a you know, you’re not on an island by yourself. and I think that’s me. I think that’s an important message for everyone. Well, Dave, great episode. Thanks so much for joining. I you are such a great resource to our clients that are in this kind of in-between space without, you know, a full time labor relations department and we appreciate you very much.

Dave Sapenoff (36:27)

I appreciate it as well. Thank you for having me.