Impasse Behavior and Tri-Offer Arbitration in Iowa

The past decade has seen a focus of interest in final offer arbitration (FOA) as the last step in resolving public sector bargaining disputes. Use of FOA generally requires submission of a final offer for unresolved items by the employer and labor representatives to an arbitrator, who must choose on...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Industrial relations (Berkeley) 1982-04, Vol.21 (2), p.129-148
Main Authors: GALLAGHER, DANIEL G., CHAUBEY, M. D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ARBITRATION
Arbitration, Industrial
Collective bargaining
Fact-finding boards
Government employees
Industrial relations
IOWA
Labor disputes
LABOR UNIONS (BUT NOT GUILDS)
LAW AND LEGAL SYSTEMS
Public sector
Studies
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Summary:The past decade has seen a focus of interest in final offer arbitration (FOA) as the last step in resolving public sector bargaining disputes. Use of FOA generally requires submission of a final offer for unresolved items by the employer and labor representatives to an arbitrator, who must choose one group's position in its entirety, either issue by issue or as a package. The state of Iowa has recently been using the tri-offer approach for all categories of public employees. This is a variation of FOA, with fact-finding as a mandated step between mediation and FOA. When mediation and fact-finding efforts fail, the dispute proceeds to FOA at the request of either party, but the fact finder's recommendations, as well as management and labor's, may be selected as the final result. This provides the opportunity to investigate the dynamics of impasse resolution alternatives. Using data supplied by the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board, the researchers studied 76 cases involving 257 separate issues, which had advanced to the tri-offer FOA point in arbitration. Analyses of these cases over 5 years tends to support 2 basic observations. In advancing their disputes from fact-finding to tri-offer arbitration, parties generally make only limited changes in their positions between the 2 steps. Second, final offer arbitrators generally accept the impasse solutions offered by the fact finders. Iowa's experience has shown that about 70% of all impasses brought to fact-finding were resolved voluntarily without tri-offer FOA.
ISSN:0019-8676
1468-232X
DOI:10.1111/j.1468-232X.1982.tb00224.x