Labor Negotiation of Teacher's Contract through Mediation

Labor negotiations have long benefited from the use of mediation to help satisfy the needs of everyone involved and break an impasse.

This past week, school teachers and the public school district in Livingston, Missouri made use of mediation to reach an agreement on the terms of the teacher's employment. It is often amazing to me that a dispute that parties have been unable to solve on their own for a year or more (or ten months in this case) can often be resolved to everyone's satisfaction in one day in the hands of a skillful mediator.

The full two-paragraph article appears below in brown text and a link to the article is here.

"Mediation session results in contract for Howell teachers"

After a nine-hour mediation session on Tuesday, the Howell Education Association and Howell Public School district reached a tentative three-year agreement, covering the current school year through June 2009.

The parties resolved issues that spanned the past 10 months, agreeing upon working conditions, salary, and medical coverage for the duration of the contract. The two parties’ agreement expired June 30, 2006; the district’s teachers have been working without a contract since that time.