Public Sector Collective Bargaining

Ideas shape institutions. The ideas undergirding public sector collective bargaining are borrowed from models previously designed for the private sector. Key concepts in labor-management relations drawn from the private sector are inappropriate when applied in government because of differences between the two sectors.
Concepts such as competition, market economy, and free contracts are defining characteristics in the private sector, whereas government is characterized by monopoly, politics, and sovereignty. The doctrine of hostility between parties is fundamental to traditional collective bargaining (adversarial, conflictual, confrontational). The doctrine of harmony, critics argue, offers a more appropriate set of ideas and behaviors to guide public sector LMRs (cooperation, service orientation, participation) and advance the public interest.
Cooperative problem solving is more likely to succeed when there is mutual trust, commitment, and leadership from all participants as well as from flexible, adaptive organizational structures. Among the improvements attributed to partnerships of this kind are better service, lower costs, improved quality of work life, fewer grievances, speedier dispute settlement, increased use of gainsharing, more effective discipline, and more flexible negotiated agreements.
Although it is important not to oversell win-win bargaining and harmony-based solutions or to undervalue the merits of traditional bargaining, these examples suggest that public unions and managers should explore diverse paths and think strategically about ways to improve LMRs and citizen services in the future.
One fundamental paradox in LMRs is that the doctrine of hostility from the private sector was adapted with only minor modifications by the public sector, thereby inhibiting emergence of a competing model built on the doctrine of harmony. The legal structures underlying public LMRs ensure the continued dominance of the adversarial approach of traditional bargaining. Recent experiments, however, point the way to promising experiences with cooperative problem solving.