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95 Monthly Lab. Rev. 60 (1972)
Factfinding in Public Employee Negotiations

handle is hein.journals/month95 and id is 188 raw text is: Factfinding in public employee negotiations FACTFINDING is a procedure designed to settle ne- gotiation impasses without the'need to resort to a strike or lockout. Many State and local governments now have laws that encourage collective bargaining in the public'sector; however, these laws do not recognize the right to strike as it exists in the private sector, but substitute instead factfinding or advisory arbitration to give the bargaining process the needed measure of finality. The question is whether fact- finding is an effective substitute for the strike. The experiences of Wisconsin and New York State with public sector factfinding are the basis for the analysis reported here. The selection of these two States provides a contrast between a State that has had public sector bargaining for several years (Wisconsin) and one with a fairly new law (New York). The States also differ in that Wisconsin requires the negotiating parties to share equally the costs of factfinding, while New York State provides the procedure at no cost to the parties. Extent of the survey The New York State experience was confined to 74 cases in which factfinding reports were written under the statutory provisions of the Taylor law in the first 6 months of 1969. For Wisconsin, the 42 cases decided under the direction of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) be- tween July 1, 1966, and June 30, 1969, were selected. Information for the study was obtained from re- plies gathered during late 1961 to two questionnaires. The -first, sent to public employers and employee William R. Word is a military economist with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), Deputy Chief of Staff for Economic Affairs. Research for this study was con- ducted at the University of- Tennessee in cooperation with its Center for Business and Economic Research. In both Wisconsin and New York State, parties tend to view factfinding as only one more step in bargaining; public opinion is not significant in bringing about settlement WILLIAM R. WORD organizations, sought specific information about a particular factfinding case, as well as the parties' opinions about impasse resolution in general. The second, sent to participating factfinders, asked for a summary of their experiences. While specific data are not available at this time, indications are that participants in more recent factfinding cases would respond in like manner. The overwhelming majority of New York State cases were between teacher organizations and boards of education..In only 6 of the 74 cases in this State was the employee group classified as nonteaching, and in 3 of these, the public employer was a school board. In Wisconsin, on the other hand, either a fire or police group was one of the bargaining parties in 40 percent .of the cases. Most of the other Wisconsin cases were between a municipal employee organization and the city administration. Only a few involved teacher organizations. The extent of the parties' prior bargaining experi- ence usually serves as an indicator of the maturity of negotiations and the factfinding procedure. Sixty- five percent of the Wisconsin parties indicated they had been bargaining for 3 years or more. In New York State, bargaining experience was significantly less: 78 percent of the parties had, at the most, only 2 years of negotiating experience. The situation preceding factfinding In answering the question, In your opinion, did the other party bargain in good or bad faith?, 59 percent of the employees indicated that their em- ployers had bargained in bad faith, and 26 percent of the employers made the same charge against their employees. (See table 1.) Specific examples of employer behavior characterized as bargaining in bad faith included using procedural technicalities to stall the bargaining process and unilaterally granting w age increases during negotiations. Undesirable employee

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