Thursday, October 16, 2014

Research Q of the Week: City & Union Relations (10/16)

Question: Where can I go to get information about actual collective bargaining agreements and union grievances that other cities have dealt with?

Answer: The League has a great resource for you when these labor disputes arise. Since December 2012, the League has provided an “Arbitration Award Summaries” database.  Currently, there are over 150 arbitration decisions in this database.

For those of you who are new to the labor relations world, there are two types of arbitrations: interest arbitrations and grievance arbitrations. Interest arbitrations are used when the city and union are unable to agree on all the terms of a collective bargaining agreement (also called a labor contract). Grievance arbitrations are used when the union alleges violations of a collective bargaining agreement. In both situations, arbitrators act as judges and decide the outcome.

League staff summarize these arbitration decisions and enter the summaries into a searchable database, which can be found here: http://www.lmc.org/arbitration.

How can you use the League’s database? Your city might want to know what the trends are in general wage increases or benefits when bargaining over a new collective bargaining agreement. Go to the database and search by arbitration decision type to only show the interest arbitration decisions.

Or let’s say that the city is about to go to arbitration and has received an arbitrator list. You can search by individual arbitrators to see recent arbitration decisions made by that person. Adding another wrinkle, let’s say that this is an interest arbitration (where there are still terms of the collective bargaining agreement that need to be ironed out)—you can limit your search in the League’s database to interest arbitration decisions by individual arbitrators.  Pretty cool, right?

The League also provides monthly updates on arbitration decisions on three different member forums, including the League’s HR/Personnel member forum. 

Written by Irene Kao, research attorney with the League of Minnesota Cities. Contact: ikao@lmc.org or (651) 281-1224.

This blog post conveys general information. It’s not legal advice. Please check with your city attorney before acting on this information.