Pick your side

[Jamo]

Personal post...you can search high and low and you will not find me taking sides on this particular dispute. I have some thoughts on the respective merits of each side's position, but they are my own and I choose to keep them to myself.

I do, however, have some opinions on how such disputes can be resolved if the parties truly want to resolve them. My world is labor relations...unions and employers. I live with breakups, threats, litigation, boycotts, subterfuge, nasty tactics, slings and arrows and resolving them every damn day. At some point, the antagonists realize that they have to get back together in order to preserve their respective interests. A good example is the entertainment industry's dispute between the writers and producers. It's been bloody...awards shows called off, movies and TV series being stopped or disrupted, innocent bystanders losing work, etc. They're in negotiations right now, and a resolution looks to be forthcoming...and hopefully everyone will be hugging and kissing in the near future.

So, how do we put parties back together in labor disputes?

Mediation and interest-based bargaining. This involves both sides working to gether to find ways to answer their respective needs, concerns, fears and desires and reach a win-win resolution, rather than fighting on with a position-based approach like the long lines of soldiers from the 18th century standing and shooting at each other until one army falters, leaving a field strewn with dead bodies from both sides.

A couple of things are necessary at the outset.

First, you need a strong-willed mediator...someone trained in the art who can draw the sides to work together while remaining neutral. Sometimes it is best to have someone who is completely foreign to the industry or issue. There are private companies who provide experienced mediators, so sourcing one is not that difficult.

Second, most mediators start off by getting the parties to agree to some form of "cooling off." In my world, that might mean extending an existing contract for a set period, calling off pickets, instituting a gag order to stop the influence of the media and to prevent aligned interests from throwing gas on the fire. My online persona might simply refer to it as: "Everyone STFU!" In this case, that would mean getting TS, SAAC, and every other interested site (including this one) to stop allowing folks from talking about the dispute. The concept in reaching a cooling off period agreement is two-fold: To prevent outside influences from disrupting the process and to get the parties used to working together.

Third...the interest-based bargaining itself. The mediator has the parties identify what their concerns, needs, desires and fears are...just identify them rather than state your position with regard to them. This is sometimes the most difficult process simply because parties who have staked their positions might feel they are giving up something by summarizing what one of their fears (for example) is rather than demanding particular protections to alleviate that particular fear. The former is necessary to identitify what needs to be reolved; the latter needs to be put aside to allow the process to resolve the issue by means of mutually reaching the resolution istead of trading one issue for another. By going through the process, the parties mutually "own" the concepts which resolve each piece of the puzzle, and end up with a mutual desire to make it work.

You can't just simply put everyone in a room at some private resort and hope to reach an agreement on such emotionally charged issues. That may have worked for SAI and HiTech...more a pure business dispute. This dispute, much like unions and employers, involves personalities and emotions (You think unions and employers only fight about wages and benefits?) that have to be nurtured with respect and returned to a place where folks can work together.

I truly cannot accept anyone (from either side) saying it can't done. I've been involved in some of the nastiest labor disputes over the past several decades where folks have been injured (killed in a few instances), businesses being destroyed and workers left out in the cold for extended periods where litigation had become nothing but a quagmire with its own life...and yet mediation with interest-based bargaining brought everything back together. It works...over and over again.

Some court will require mediation before these current suits are brought to trial, but if it does not involve interest-based bargaining, any mediated result stands a good chance of falling apart or won't be a resolution where the parties move forward together.

As with all mediation programs, it is non-binding, so only time and some legal bills will be expended if it fails, which will happen anyway.

It starts with both parties agreeing to something rather simple. Shelby and SAAC may not absolutely need each other to exist, but they both would benefit from working together.

Who looses? Folks who have personalized this dispute and who seek to gain self-empowerment by being the voices of either side. They can either become part of the solution or be left babbling on the street corner. The rest of us, if we care to, can make it happen by pressuring both sides to at least try it rather than take oaths of loyalty.