I work at a non profit and we just won union recognition and are slowly moving towards first contract negotiations and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. Would love to chat with some folks about their experiences, especially if you've negotiated around contracts/grants/etc.
Thank you for this response! I appreciate your thoughtfulness. Sorry that it's taken me a while to get back to you; I think I got kinda overwhelmed with the good feedback/autistic burnout so I have been avoiding pretty much everything lol.
Our union is super tiny, but we will have one or two union reps and the union lawyer there at the table to negotiate luckily. I cannot imagine going it without any representation. I think where our local is lacking is with folks who assist with organizing campaigns, but it sounds like it may be better that we have more control over tactics and such which I'm starting to appreciate.
In terms of management rights, those are permissive to bargain, no? So can management refuse to bargain those and therefore are not required? Or is it the type of thing where management will inevitably make mention of it therefore it will be up to negotiation in that case? That definitely sounds important to focus on that I hadn't considered before.
For the grievance procedure, is that something that you suggest we just try to make explicit in the contract, or is there a way to negotiate it? My thoughts were that there was already steps of escalation like you mentioned but I'm a fan of literally challenging/tweaking everything we can (including what seems like innocuous language!). Also those are good ideas for the discipline/dismissal piece. My agency has been SOOOO fucking shady with retaliatory firings, lawsuits against them, admin leave extending for months and months without a clear explanation of what the issues are....So that is a top concern from pretty much everyone in the BU. It's pretty wild what they would get away with; like literally pulling people out of the middle of their shift and putting them on leave. Fucked thing is that we HAVE performance plan/escalation steps in our P&P that have been completely cast aside.
I just had an informal party with a decent chunk of our BU; answered questions, had someone from a local union campaign talk about their experiences and just hung out. I think a lot more folks are more confident and/or stoked to participate so I'm feeling pretty good about it and ready to fight the bastards!