Volume 28, No. 5 Editor: Mark Langer October, 1997 NEGOTIATIONS UNDER WAY Last Thursday, October 23, CUASA's negotiating team met with management's representatives for the first in what is likely to be a long series of negotiation sessions. At this meeting the chair of our bargaining team Michael MacNeil put forward CUASA's offer to begin this round of talks with another try at "interest-based bargaining". As yet we have not received managements's response to our offer. CUASA was introduced to the process of interest-based bargaining(IBB) last spring, when management proposed that we give it a try. Last year it did not work well. Why then are we proposing IBB? This year we hope that IBB might have a chance of assisting the parties in achieving a collective agreement. IBB allows both sides to put forward ideas without having to lock those proposals into formal negotiating positions. It allows for a lot of informal "what if" discussions that can lead to alternative ways of viewing specific problems as well as sketching out the possibility of useful trade-offs. And, so long as there is good will on both sides, all of this can be accomplished without the services of an expensive "facilitator", which our team sees no need for this time. We think that the IBB process could diffuse some of the confrontational rhetoric. We have more time this year because of the early start to negotiations which may increase the possibility of success. It may be difficult to discuss monetary issues at this stage before the employer has full financial information available. IBB can be more useful in dealing with non-monetary issues as opposed to purely monetary issues. At the very least, it is a procedure we could use for the initial stages of bargaining. The Copyright Conundrum: Open on-line forum on Canadian Copyright From October 27 to November 8, 1997 an on-line forum will be held over the NODE website: http://node.on.ca/networking/forums/copyright.html Moderated by Ross Mutton, Chair of the Carleton University Copyright Committee, this forum is designed to discuss copyright issues including internet courses.