Publication record
- Original publication period
- January–June 2023
- Digitized / uploaded online
- August 10, 2026
The digitization/upload date records when this file was added to the website; it is not the article's original publication date.
Abstract
This study examined the collective-bargaining role-play embedded in Labor Relations and Negotiation and developed a more assessable negotiation laboratory for undergraduate labor-relations instruction. Structured qualitative document analysis focused on Chapter III, Labor Organizations, and Chapter VI, Conflict and Negotiation, while tracing objectives, role information, bargaining issues, decision points, outputs, and debrief questions. The source simulation assigns union and employer bargaining committees, union members, and nonunion bargaining-unit employees. The union seeks a five-percent wage increase and two additional vacation days; management authorizes no more than three percent but may offer four percent if one vacation day is surrendered. Teams prepare separately, bargain for five minutes, present a tentative deal for a union-member vote, and discuss representation and satisfaction. The exercise's strengths are recognizable stakeholder roles, asymmetrical mandates, package trade-offs, a ratification step, and reflection on voice. It creates a compact experience of distributive tension and demonstrates that negotiators are accountable to constituencies. Its instructional evidence is nevertheless weak. The scenario provides no costing data, bargaining history, contract language, ground rules, legal and ethical briefing, priorities, reservation points, alternatives to agreement, caucus protocol, impasse procedure, observer instrument, written memorandum, or analytic rubric. The two-variable design encourages splitting differences more than diagnosing interests or creating value, while the five-minute deadline compresses preparation, exploration, package bargaining, and documentation. The manuscript discusses active listening and conflict types elsewhere but does not deliberately integrate those skills into the bargaining exercise. It also supplies no baseline, post-simulation assessment, performance criteria, learner data, or field-test evidence; learning effectiveness cannot be claimed. Drawing on collective-bargaining standards and negotiation-simulation research, the article proposes a seven-phase laboratory: doctrine and context, role preparation, costing and mandate design, bargaining protocol, negotiation and caucus, tentative agreement and ratification, and structured debrief with individual transfer. The revised design preserves the source's accessible role-play while adding authenticity, process control, comparable evidence, feedback, and staged validation.