If Premier Christy Clark really wants 10 years of peace with teachers, she’s going about in the wrong way.
Getting to Yes is the title of a bestseller first published in 1981, and its approach to principled negotiation is as relevant today as it was when it was so widely acclaimed as a guide to successful negotiation — the kind where nobody gets everything they want.
The book made appearances for years on Business Week’s bestseller list. The authors suggested a method called “principled negotiation” or “negotiation of merits,” which recognizes among other things that there is going to be life after negotiation.
All good, but there is a hitch in practice — it’s about trust, or the absence of it, in any negotiation.
If there is the suspicion that one side’s winning philosophy comes at the expense of the other side, if there is any suspicion that “schadenfreude,” the “not only must I win but you must know you lost” mindset, enters into the negotiating relationship, all is lost.
That way of thinking is exactly the opposite of the mutual-gain approach that Getting to Yes preaches.
It’s safe to say that announcing a significant change to the teacher-bargaining process through the media and without any warning to the B.C. Teachers’ Federation is not a G2Y move.
The 10-year deal for teachers put back on the table by Clark via the media last week might well have been kited (again via the media) briefly in January, but was never a plank in the government’s election platform, perhaps because it was so roundly ridiculed by union leaders of every stripe when it was first mentioned.
Or perhaps because voters would have known it meant “school wars” would be back. Again.
Even Silas White, vice-chairman of the government’s own B.C. Public School Employers’ Association and a trustee representative at the bargaining table, is quoted as saying a 10-year deal by June 30, which is when the current teacher contract expires, “would be hard,” adding: “That’d be very difficult for us to pull off that kind of deal [because] the policy document, doesn’t seem to be solidly associated with 10 years, so there might be some flexibility there.”
Sounding disappointed, White said: “We’ve actually had an extremely positive bargaining experience with the BCTF this round. Really, we’re hopeful that the new mandate will include some opportunities for fulfilling some of the requests that the BCTF has and included some support through resources, and some creativity in order to reach a deal.”
In other words, the government’s own bargaining agents may have been blindsided by the media announcement, along with everyone else.
BCTF president Susan Lambert says she learned about all this from a reporter.
So now, instead of a potentially positive negotiation between the BCTF and government that was, for the first time in living memory, proceeding in an orderly manner out of the media spotlight, damage-control is now the first order of business for the new game and back on the front page.
“If teachers had agreed to that [deal] 10 years ago, they’d all be making more money today because they’ve lagged behind the average settlement for the public sector,” the premier said Thursday.
Whatever advantages there might or might not have been to a 10-year deal, that’s all irrelevant, at least for the time being. Positions have been taken and hackles are up.
Getting to Yes, which originally emerged from the Harvard Negotiation Project, focused on “principled negotiation” — finding acceptable solutions by determining which needs are fixed and which are flexible.
The G2Y method of principled negotiation is based on five propositions: Separate the people from the problem, focus on interests not positions, invent options for mutual gain, insist on using objective criteria and last, know your BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement).
Then there is the matter of mutual trust.
In the best interests of schools, kids, parents and teachers and confidence in public education, the question has to be asked: “If the 10-year idea ever had any hope of becoming part of this negotiation, was there a better way to handle it?”
Unfortunately for everyone involved, the answer to that question is yes.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
