The Newtown school negotiation was without a doubt the most difficult negotiation that I have participated in this course. There was a wide variety of issues that needed to be addressed, each of which had a different form of value. Another aspect that brought challenges to this negotiation is the team aspect. This is the first time that I have truly got to participate in a team atmosphere due to absences in the class. If there were two things that I can take away from this negotiation it is that things that initially seemed irrelevant in the planning process may end up being a turning point in the negotiation, and things may be escalate in the negotiation even if good intentions are the plan.
When my group and I planned out what we would discuss we all assumed that wages and downsizing would be the biggest talking points. This is typically a large issue in most negotiations. However, we seemed to hit a stoppage when we reached the arbitration aspect of the negotiation. Things got fairly heated with this topic as was evidenced in the tone of the discussion. I feel that this was the case due to the fact this was the third or fourth topic that we discussed. I think that the emotions began to bubble up from before the topic was reached. I could tell that both sides, myself included, were getting frustrated with the other side. This than led to my second thing that I took away from this negotiation is the fact that things became mildly ill tempered. I feel that both sides did not want to go into this to situation with difficulty. However, as mentioned previously this was not the case. The further we went into the negotiation the more angry both sides seemed to be. The best way we felt to calm the tension was to take a break in the discussion. We had planned a five minute caucus at around a half hour in, however we ended up taking this early in hopes to come back with level heads. This seemed to be the best strategy as both sides began to listen to the other sides more and didn't try to "beat" the other side. We started to listen to each side and a deal was struck as time ran out.
