The Public Sector Mediation Process

TLDR

The paper develops and tests a model of the labor mediation process using data from negotiations between municipal governments and police and firefighter unions in New York. The model analyzes how alternative impasse sources, situational factors, mediator strategies, and mediator personal characteristics influence settlement likelihood, issue resolution, bargaining behavior, and concession withholding, while also estimating the effect of statutory impasse procedure changes. The study finds that statutory impasse procedure changes marginally affect settlement probability in small to medium cities and have little impact in larger cities, whereas alternative impasse sources and mediator strategies and characteristics exert a stronger influence on mediation effectiveness.

Abstract

This paper develops and tests a model of the labor mediation process using data from a sample of negotiations involving municipal governments and police and firefighter unions in the State of New York. The test of the model also incorporates an estimate of the impact of a change in the statutory impasse procedures governing these groups. The model examines the impact of (1) alternative sources of impasse, (2) situational characteristics, (3) strategies of the mediators, and (4) personal characteristics of the mediators on the probability of settlement, percentage of issues resolved in mediation, movement or compromising behavior, and the tendency to hold back concessions in mediation. The results indicate that the change in the impasse procedure had a marginal affect on the probability of settlement in the small to medium cities in the sample but little or no effect on the larger cities. Furthermore, a number of other measures of the sources of impasse and mediator strategies and characteristics had a stronger impact on the effectiveness of the mediation process than the nature of the impasse procedure.