My last post was about saying NO to your team. Saying No is never easy but sometimes you have to say it.
With proper preparation, it can be manageable.

What do you do when a team member wants something that’s so out there, you can’t believe it?
You’re just stunned?

Here’s what happened to me.

I’m negotiating a new contract with a labor union. The group of employees in this unit had just filed to organize as a bargaining unit. So the union’s list of proposals pretty much asked for things we had already agreed to in other contracts. Not uncommon.

One of their proposals they wanted was Shift Differential pay. Getting paid a higher rate if the employee worked the 3rd or late night shift. Again, not uncommon. This type of pay was usually given at Institutional (Correctional and Mental Health) facilities.

So my team discusses this and we decide we would not agree to Shift Diff pay at this particular stage of the negotiations.

Then one of our members speaks up and says, “I would rather give them Shift Diff pay when they work the regular (day) shift because that’s when most of the work gets done and not at night when the residents are sleeping.”

Thinking this member was joking, I laughed. We all laughed.
And I said that would never happen. Ever.
We would never agree to that.

Should be end of story.

It wasn’t. Turns out she wasn’t joking.

Then, that team member, went and committed the cardinal sin by going to the union and suggested they ask for DAY Shift Diff pay and the employer (us) would agree to it!

I’ve never had one of my team members go behind my back and have conversations with the other side without my knowledge. Not to mention my rules given at the beginning of negotiations – including the one about there being only ONE negotiator, ME. (The employee was new to labor relations but also an attorney who should have known better!)

I didn’t find out about this until after the contract was settled. The union told me.

They were shocked that a member of my team would go to them and ask them to make such a proposal.
And quickly getting over their “shock,” at the next session, the union then asked for shift diff pay for working the Day shift – even though they later told me it didn’t make sense to them at the time.

The result was they were given a bit of leverage over us by my team member. The union now knew our team was not united.

In the end, the contract was settled.
The union got some things they wanted and we got much of what we wanted.

They did not get shift differential pay for working the DAY shift. I had to pull some strings, my boss did too and the union finally backed off.

But, in exchange, they did get shift differential pay. “Normal” shift differential pay.
Which is what they wanted all along.

We were forced to change our original position and give it to them.

I can only imagine the uproar I would have created for my employer IF I had agreed to paying a premium rate (shift differential pay) for someone working the day shift and conversely paying less to employees working the “graveyard ” shift. It would have been my last contract I ever negotiated for that employer.

Moral to this story.
I didn’t take my team member seriously.
I had never (NOR HAD ANY ONE ELSE) heard of the concept of paying someone more to work the regular day shift. I had assumed she knew that too.

However, she thought it a great idea and shared it with the union behind our backs.
Why would she have done this?

As I had said, she was new to her job. She probably wanted to prove she belonged and could make things happen.
Maybe she was trying to be nice – to the union, to all the employees on the day shift, maybe in her mind even to us as we tried to settle the contract.

To this day, I still don’t know why.

But, ultimately, as the negotiator, it was all on me.

In hindsight, I should have been more emphatic in my NO to her.
And, I should have better explained the reasons to her.

And, maybe, if she still didn’t listen and I knew at that time what she did, I would have kicked her off the team.

Oh, well.
They say, all’s well that ends well, but

Really, she didn’t have to be so nice, we would have liked her anyway…

JT

Check the video link below..