Marks Seeks Collaboration with Unions

A version of this story appears on TheDailyNorwalk.com

I sat down with Susan Marks earlier this week to discuss school issues.  When the topic of contract negotiations came up, Marks went immediately to her bookshelf and pulled out the classic book on negotiations. “Getting to Yes” Roger Fischer and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project.  “I support interest-based bargaining,” she said.  “I’m anxious to utilize this process here—it’s all about relationship building.”

Recently, the Norwalk Federation of Education Personnel, the union of the district’s support staff and the Norwalk Board of Education could not agree on terms of a new contract and went into arbitration, a process by which independent outside parties decide on the terms of the contract.

Marks explains that interest-based bargaining is about aligning interests and building trust. “The school district and the union have many similar interests,” says Marks.  “For example, we both want children to do well in school.  We both want teachers to be happy.  This is our outcome.”

“Getting to Yes”, a bestseller since it was published in 1981, focuses on four basic principals:  separating the people from the problems, focusing on interests not positions, generating options for mutual gain, insisting on using objective criteria.

This type of bargaining is collaborative and requires a team approach says Marks.  “Two parties do not sit across the table in an adversarial way.  They sit next to each other.” Marks calls the method a “mind shift” from the traditional adversarial approach.

Marks says that she is “passionate” about this method, which was used in Montgomery County, the Maryland school district where Marks worked for many years.

“It took a lot of training and time, but through blood, sweat and tears, we got to a point where now [in Maryland] the teachers' union and the district write the contract together,” says Marks. “There is no mediation needed.”

In the midst of talking about negotiations, Marks got up and pulled another book from her shelf, “Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct", by P.M. Forni of the Johns Hopkins Civility Project.  “I want to create a culture of civility here, where people are nice to each other.”

“You can be honest, without being disrespectful,” says Marks.  “The three things people can always expect from me are-- I am polite, I speak my mind and I tell the truth,” says Marks.