It's unfortunately common for employers to violate worker and union rights. But an unfair labor practice can be a gift in disguise, providing a defense against the employer's most dangerous weapons. A union that plays its cards right can use ULPs to help win contract campaigns and strikes. Learn how.
Power inside our workplaces is critical to labor’s future. Management frequently restructures work, introduces new technologies, and promotes ideologies that undermine our collective voice and power. If your management has introduced new technologies or restructuring programs (e.g. lean, 5S, Six Sigma), downsizing, understaffing, speed-up, or “continuous improvement,” come learn a strategy developed by labor educator Charley Richardson. Though Charley died in 2013, his work continues to build worker solidarity and union power.
This workshop is designed to take participants (new or experienced in bargaining) through each stage of the process. We'll cover best practices for preparing your team and drafting proposals, tactics at the table and pacing during bargaining, ratification once you reach a tentative agreement, and implementation. You'll leave with notes, ideas, and a useful packet of materials.
When the boss cries poor, do we take them at their word? Hear how people have gotten creative, helped their co-workers overcome hopelessness, and won better deals, in the public and private sectors.
Unions can be powerful champions for the whole working class. Hear how some are fighting for creative contract demands to tackle the crises of student debt, incarceration, and housing, and even demanding a four-day work week.
This workshop will begin with a short song by Jayanni Webster, CWA Local 3866.
New technology and software can threaten your job security, working conditions, and union strength. How can you identify your power before management implements its plans? From robots to A.I. “spyware” to GPS, we'll explore how to prepare and organize co-workers to bargain and take action over tech changes, including using the "continuous bargaining" approach. We'll consider an example from longshore workers who fought the use of automated equipment, RFID, and logistics software.
Let the members and the power in! This workshop will dive into the tool of open bargaining, a way to increase democratic participation by members and the community in your contract negotiations. Let the boss organize the workers for you!
This workshop will explore the psychology of bargaining. Participants will learn techniques, then practice them in a brief session of simulated bargaining.
Power inside our workplaces is critical to labor’s future. Management frequently restructures work, introduces new technologies, and promotes ideologies that undermine our collective voice and power. If your management has introduced new technologies or restructuring programs (e.g. lean, 5S, Six Sigma), downsizing, understaffing, speed-up, or “continuous improvement,” come learn a strategy developed by labor educator Charley Richardson. Though Charley died in 2013, his work continues to build worker solidarity and union power.
Without preparation, bargaining teams can spend their caucus time reacting to the boss and lose track of their goals. Learn strategies to use that time to build consensus, make key decisions, and push your bargaining forward with a unified team.
The management's rights clause has found its way into almost all union contracts. For years it often consisted of a single sentence, but the longer this clause gets, the more it can undermine the whole rest of your contract. Learn why these clauses are so dangerous and how to narrow the language back down.
This session will feature a short song at the start by Joe Jencks, Musicians Local 1000.
Join us for a discussion of coordinated bargaining in various scenarios: within the same union with a common employer, across different unions with a common employer, and across different unions with different employers. Topics will include aligning contracts, coordinating actions and strikes, and negotiations strategy.
Learn how to skillfully navigate contract negotiations! This bargaining crash course will cover legal frameworks, common terminology, drafting proposals, opening up bargaining to members, and other tips and strategies.
Build practical skills for bargaining in this hands-on workshop. We'll examine how employers use technology and its effects on work, then work through a structured exercise to define a bargaining problem, draft targeted information requests, and develop enforceable demands and contract language. We'll draw on examples from the UC Berkeley Labor Center's Negotiating Tech inventory to highlight real-world provisions and bargaining strategies.
Open bargaining isn’t a particular template or set of boxes to check. It’s more like an attitude towards democratic inclusion and power for rank-and-file members. We’ll hear from unions that have increased transparency and democracy in negotiations, along the spectrum of open bargaining, and discuss pitfalls that may occur as you close in on a tentative agreement.
There's a backstory to the inspiring uprising in the Twin Cities. Trump picked the wrong place to pick on, because a coalition of unions and community organizations there had been planning and building together for many years. Those relationships yielded a coordinated bargaining plan in 2024, shared demands, and political power, and set the stage for mass action against Trump in 2025. Learn more about their education, organizing, and political coalition work.
You could have a great contract campaign and powerful strike... and lose all that leverage because your contract language was poorly drafted before you even got to the bargaining table. We'll identify the words that create ambiguity and expensive arbitrations, and management's favorite wiggle words and hedge words, which all seem perfectly reasonable. Reasonable is a hedge word. Zipper clauses waive bargaining rights; no-strike clauses waive member rights; your arbitration language could waive member rights.
If the right to strike is our most powerful weapon, why do we give it away in exchange for a union contract? Can we bargain loopholes that allow us to strike while the contract is in effect? What strategies can we use to water down no-strike clauses so we can use our collective power more effectively? If you and your co-workers ever wished you didn’t have to wait until your contract expired to strike, this workshop is for you.
