Featured Item - United Nations Contract Negotiations
The Final Day
You can never adequately prepare yourself for the feeling of possibly walking into work for the last time. Little procedural things that you take for granted take on hyperbolic significance. Is this the last time I'll ever put my briefcase through the security scanner? Will my pass ever open another door? Is this the last time I'll ever write my name on the sign-in sheet? Little things.
Then there's that surreal walk down the hallway as you shoulder past your coworkers. You know they are going through exactly the same kind of bizarre morning that you are. You would think that this empathic connection between us would be somehow calming but in reality it only makes the tension exponentially more palpable.
"Good luck!"
"Go get 'em!"
"Give 'em hell"
Are these words of encouragement meant for me? God help us all, I nervously thought to myself.
With the deadline of our existing contract only hours from expiring, the Negotiating Committee assembles in Studio H for the final time. We try to tell each other a joke or just say anything absurd as a way of lightening the weight of everyone's expectations. Each of us goes through our own ritual in order to get ready. Like a baseball player getting ready to get into the batter's box, our idiosyncratic movements feel more like the purely repetitive exercises of adjusting your batting gloves and cleaning out your spikes as opposed to the steady calm we desperately need to actually take a swing.
We were told the day before that the other side was going to make a proposal at 10:00am. Even though we had no idea what they would say, there was no shortage of speculation. Would they try to scare us? Would they try to appeal to our sense of duty? What would they say? We all became armchair experts of human nature as we took turns shooting down each other's suppositions.
As so many times before, the other side quietly entered the room.
But wait...something was different. What was going on? They never looked like that before. Once again we would try to read their faces and body language with the keen acuity genetically honed by thousands of years of human evolution. Yes, yes, yes....that's it....they are angry! Outwardly, emotionally, unabashedly angry!
It only took the briefest moment before we knew for sure what had sparked their ire. When our brothers and sisters had come into our workplace on
Sunday, the day before, we had foiled the company’s plans to use replacement workers to scare us. They had lost a major psychological weapon and in the process had been embarrassed by the ripple effect throughout the building our show of force caused. They didn't need to say a word about it. We knew. The game had changed and the momentum had clearly swung our way.We relied on our negotiating partners and the union leaders who had been through this all before to help us to try to feel like ourselves again.
"Final Offer"
What? What did he say? Their mouths were moving, saying other things, but it only got lost in the maddening echo of final offer, final offer, final offer. I'm not sure anyone expected that and if they did they were doing their best impressions of world class poker players. Final offer. Could they do that? I thought we were still going to talk. Final offer? But it isn't even noon yet! Final offer! But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait we haven't even had our turn to talk yet! There was still time! Would it all come down to this? Had we over played our hand? Had we made a critical, tactical, fatal miscalculation? Our heads spun.
We watched the other side leave the room through eyes that, had they been lasers, would have burned holes through their bodies. We relied on our negotiating partners and the union leaders who had been through this all before to help us to try to feel like ourselves again. Words of encouragement and exasperation were drowned out by the exegesis of contract law and debates over strategy. The cacophony of words and emotions, a psychological elixir for our shock and disbelief, put us right back into our game.
There would be no final offer until WE said so. This was OUR shop. These were OUR jobs. OUR families, OUR sons and daughters, OUR pension, OUR wages, OUR contract. OURS. The day would belong to US!
It would indeed. In the type of time-elapse that takes forever while going through it but feels like mere seconds in retrospect, we worked all day and
ultimately hammered out an agreement. Egos would be bruised and feeling hurt. Push would come to shove. We would attack each others vulnerabilities and pick on each others frailties. Who would blink first? Who would decide enough is enough? In the end, after weeks of negotiations, we stood our ground and turned their "final offer' into the best possible deal we could get for ourselves.In the end, after weeks of negotiations, we stood our ground and turned their "final offer' into the best possible deal we could get for ourselves.
We would get a fair wage increase. We would improve and strengthen the pension. We would preserve the benefits of our temporary workers. We would save many things and give back very little. We would not get everything we wanted but those things we knew deep down we couldn't get we hung on to so that we could trade them for other things more doable. We would have a better contract than the last one and live to fight another day to try to get other things the next time around.
Mostly, though, we preserved our jobs. There would be no lock-out. There would be no replacement workers. There would be no missed meetings.
We would not let the United Nations down.
By 6:30pm the committee knew that the shop had already been assembled in Conference Room 6 for half an hour. It made us feel bad to have to make everyone wait. We could only imagine the angst and strain that waiting for word about the contract caused everyone. As we entered the room we felt everyone's eyes on us. Soon it would be over, I thought to myself, as I tried to keep my gaze toward the floor and force my face not to betray my emotions. Keith, our union leader and Vinny our committee leader took the floor. I tried to read the faces of our coworkers to see whether they were getting it all or whether it was coming across all too technically. It was a weird moment or two because everyone knew that the real news was coming at the end. Even though I knew what was coming, I could barely sit still patiently and wait. What would everyone think? Would it be good enough? Would it exceed expectations? Did we miss anything?
Applause.
And then again, applause.
Finally, a standing ovation!
Then the committee rose and joined the standing ovation!
It is a moment I will never, ever forget.
Thank you, all of you, for your support. It sustained us. Thank you, all of you, for your excellence in your work. It was the backdrop of everything we accomplished.
Thank you, all of us.
