I am please to announce that Dr. Reeves has graciously invited me to participate in the May 6, 2011 collective bargaining seminar that he is coordinating, which I wrote about in an earlier blog.
He has also provided me with a Preliminary Agenda, and both the guest and topic line-ups look very intriguing, and timely. The seminar begins with the premise that NM has a long and relatively stable history of public sector collective bargaining, and that today's "changing economic times and financial constraints on employers, unions, and taxpayers" call for "dialogue and creativity, not acrimony and rhetoric."
Thus, the seminar is designed to be a functional, problem solving one, which is easily observed in the session descriptions and speaker line-ups. Specifically, Dr. Reeves has arranged for the following:
- opening remarks by Gene Henley, the Associate Director of the UNM School of Public Administration;
- a morning session titled "Lessons from past history: where have we been? When went well and what did not go so well?," which will include a union perspective (Tom Griego, Esq.), a management perspective (Robert Brown, a management consultant and also the CNM VP for Administrative Services), and a neutral perspective (yours truly, Pilar Vaile, former PELRB Deputy Director and Hearing Examiner);
- a late morning session titled "Where are we today? What is broken and what is not? What can we learn from Wisconsin?," which will include a variety of labor and management speakers including Dina Holcomb, Esq. with Management Associates; Fred Mower, Esq.; Joseph Escobedo with APS; Michelle Williams with CWA; and a representative of AFSCME Council 18.
- a luncheon with Keynote Speaker Linda Martinez, Director of Mediation Services, Southwestern Region, FMCS;
- an afternoon session titled "The Future of Interest-Based Bargaining for Public Collective Bargaining, including," including David Martinez with FMCS; and Sandy Martinez, Director of the State Labor Relations Bureau of the State Personnel Office.
The sessions shall run until 2:30 and thereafter Dr. Reeves and others will conduct a "wrap-up and summation," commenting on the themes, threads and tone observed during the course of the seminar.
I encourage all and sundry who are interested in collective bargaining in New Mexico to show up for what promises to be a lively discussion.
If you are interested in neutral services such as arbitration, mediation or contract ALJ services, in labor/employment or other areas of the law, please contact Pilar Vaile, P.C. at (505) 247-0802, or info@pilarvailepc.com.
