Establishing Collaborative Labor Relations

The construction workplace is stressed with issues stemming from labor shortages, changing and intensifying employee expectations, and competitive pressures, among other issues. This session will teach you how to use the labor-management relationship to address these workplace problems. It focuses on the need to change the parties’ mindset and behavior to focus on solving problems and creating value. However, to do this you need to change certain labor relations processes.

Labor relations has longstanding rules and processes for dealing with problems and conflict, such as the strike and other workplace action and the grievance and arbitration process. These rely on the use of power and third-party adjudication of right and wrong to resolve disputes. While these are important, they are not optimal for solving problems, creating value, and building constructive relationships. While labor relations professionals must be effective with these “traditional” processes, they must also innovate and try alternative processes to promote collaborative decision-making and relationship-building.