La négociation mixte : observation de la négociation d’une convention collective

In the field of industrial relations, we saw appearing, these last years, various changes in work relations, particularly in collective bargaining.  Indeed, new forms of negotiation were born in answer to the changes which occurred in the labor market.  In a more precise way, the theorists bent, on one hand, over less conflicting methods of negotiation and the actors concerned by the collective bargaining knew how to put them into practice, on the other hand.  However, although some tried to substitute these more cooperative methods for the traditional negotiation, the theorists and the practitioners noticed that it was rather difficult to adopt them in a pure state, in an alternative way to the traditional negotiation.  To optimize the mutual earnings during the negotiation of an agreement, the negotiators will rather opt for a combined use of the more traditional methods and the new cooperative forms; we speak then about mixed negotiation.  However, few studies concerning the mixed negotiation were driven.  We believe nevertheless that this kind of negotiation is more suited, in particular because of the nature of the stakes handled on the occasion of a collective bargaining.  Fitting into this context, the object of our research is thus the study, by the observation of a particular case, of mixed negotiation.  In a more precise way, we try to evaluate the method of negotiation adopted during the collective bargaining that took place between the Centre de la petite enfance Pomme Soleil (CPE) and the Syndicat des intervenantes en petite enfance de Montréal (SIPEM) – CSQ in 2005.  To reach there, we verified the propositions and the following hypotheses: (1) the nature of the climate of the previous negotiations has an influence on the method of mixed negotiation adopted by the parties during the negotiation of the collective agreement, (2) the nature of the climate of the industrial relations has an influence on the method of negotiation of mixed type adopted by the parties during the negotiation of the collective agreement, (3) the passage of time has an effect of transition on the method of mixed negotiation which shows an integrative dominant in the initial stages of the negotiation and a distributive dominant in the final stages, (4) the negotiators who have received a training in interest-based negotiation adopt a method of mixed negotiation with an integrative dominant, (5) the experience of the employer’s and labor-union’s negotiators has an influence on the method of mixed negotiation adopted by the parties during the negotiation of the collective agreement, (6) the initial strategy of negotiation adopted by the parties has an influence on the method of mixed negotiation during the negotiation of the collective agreement and (7) the negotiation of clauses with pecuniary incidence give place to a method of mixed negotiation with distributive dominant.  Thanks to the results which we collected by the intervention of the observation of the collective bargaining between the CPE Pomme Soleil and the SIPEM, but mainly by means of the interviews, we are capable of asserting that, according to our research question, the negotiation was mixed, with an integrative dominant.  However, the wage question, although it was not approached at the table of negotiation but with the provincial government, took a distributive tangent.  In this way, we can say that the negotiation was mixed in a sequential way.

Keyphrases: Collective bargaining, Method of negotiation, Distributive negotiation, Integrative negotiation, Mixed negotiation, Case study