We’ve sort of had this trench warfare ongoing for maybe 30 plus years at this point, where each side was exactly dug in on a specific set of issues that everybody was fighting on. When you shift the axis of debate, that all gets scrambled. I think you’re seeing that certainly on an issue like industrial policy, where all of a sudden, you have people in both parties who are really interested and enthusiastic about it. And conversely, you see people in both parties who are less enthusiastic about it.
Coaston: You mentioned a little bit about in your writing and in our conversation about wanting less adversarial relationships between management and labor. But hypothetically, let’s say if a hospital only offers its nurses two weeks of paid parental leave and the nurses want more, isn’t that just going to be adversarial? I say black and you say white. That seems to me to inherently be adversarial.
Cass: Well, negotiations always have an adversarial element insofar as to your point, the two sides want different things. But negotiations can also be incredibly collaborative and productive when the two sides are communicating openly about their priorities and the reason for them, and when the two sides also both have room to maneuver and things that they’re able to offer each other.
I think a lot of the kind of union negotiating, certainly the picture that people have in their heads, and that does go on sometimes is, “OK, we each pass our set of demands across the table, and then we each come toward each other a little bit, and then we stare at each other and shout.” That’s not effective negotiation.
In the example you just gave, what you want to have happen is the nurses to explain, “Well, here’s why two weeks of paid leave isn’t enough and we’re looking for more, and what the underlying problems are that we hope that would solve.” And you want the hospital to say, “Well, here’s why that’s not really something we can concede on.” Or conversely, “Well, here’s why that’s especially expensive for us. And so if we were to concede on it, we would need to find a way to make that up somewhere else.” And through that sort of process, you can actually make an awful lot of progress.