For researchers, bargaining unit representatives, local bargainers, and members-at-large, Newbook’s Collective Bargaining System provides the necessary tools facilitating the collection, management, and distribution of collective bargaining information.

Newbook’s Collective Bargaining System enables users to:

• Research: Search through the Collective Agreements Archive based on keywords and other meta-data
• Share Knowledge: Add reference materials by posting any e-document to the Reference Library for public use
• Set Strategy: Display sample clauses in the Sample Clause Library to help define the language of the agreement and set strategy
• Automate Processes: Opening a new Bargaining Binder facilitates the automatic preparation of a new proposal based on the previous agreement archived for that bargaining unit
• Collaborative On-line Editing: Author new agreements with a built-in Editor feature
• Personalised Information: Append annotations to a specific clause or agreement through Public or Private Notes
• Facilitate Communication: Automatically generate a Report on Negotiations at any time through-out negotiations to inform the members-at-large
• Categorise and Classify: Librarian tools allow a topics specialist to apply metadata to appropriate data sections in order to ensure searching accuracy and data consistency
• Security With Flexibility: User Management can be performed at both server and local client levels in order to distribute workload without compromising security

These features and their benefits are explained in the following series of product illustrations.

The Collective Bargaining System provides a rich set of search parameters to retrieve comprehensive results efficiently and accurately. Organisations define and create a custom set of topics (taxonomy) and other meta-data types to ensure consis-tent and accurate search results. Users may narrow search results by adding additional parameters such as date, region, sector, agreement status, or bargaining unit, or they may use full text word searching in conjunction with these parameters or its own.

Members of all bargaining units can search, view and reuse in-formation found in general reports, case studies, articles, and other interest pieces that are posted to the reference library. Posting documents to the library is simple. Users may import a document from any location, in any file format, and then apply topical and key wording indexing the document in real-time.

An organisation can establish its position and recommended language in the Sample Clause Library. Members of the Bar-gaining team use the library during in-service meetings or annual conferences to define their strategies for upcoming ne-gotiations. Members may add, create, or edit the language of a clause, state its purpose or rationale, and then apply topical indexing online and in real-time. Local bargaining teams may search for a sample clause and then apply it directly to their proposal before entering negotiation.

The Bargaining Unit Directory lists all bargaining units sup-ported within the organisation, and organises them by bargaining unit name, economic sector, or region where they are found. The directory displays only those bargaining units to which the user belongs: local bargainers may see their own bargaining unit, representative negotiators or staff officers may see the units to which they are assigned, or co-ordinators or directors may see many more or all.

The local bargaining workspace provides the tools needed to manage and conduct effective negotiations. Users may view or even reuse current or expired agreements in preparation for negotiation. Or once negotiations have started, they may enter the bargaining binder, the central organising module that or-ganises activities and records the exchange of information between parties during negotiation. Users with appropriate rights or permissions can also Open or Close a Round of Nego-tiations as well as manage access rights of members within the bargaining team.

To prepare a proposal for submission to the employer/board, members of the bargaining unit can edit clauses or paragraphs found in the existing collective agreement, or create a new agreement from other agreements stored in the system or compiled from the sample clause library. The Collective Bar-gaining System provides an online editing tool to facilitate this process, without requiring additional proprietary software on the user’s computer. The editing tool provides only those fea-tures needed to edit the language of the agreement and how the clause may be categorised. Also, information may be cop-ied and pasted from another software tool, such as complex salary tables created within spreadsheet software.

Once editing of the agreement is completed, the Collective Bargaining System generates the proposal. As illustrated above, the two-column clause-by-clause proposal lists the ex-isting clauses of the current agreement and only those clauses with proposed changes. In turn, once the Board’s proposal is entered into the bargaining binder, members of the bargaining team may generate a three-column proposal as well.

Throughout negotiations, members of the bargaining team in-troduce language changes to each of the clauses under discussion. The Collective Bargaining System tracks and re-cords minute changes each time a clause is edited. This information is recorded in the binder and may be submitted as evidence if mediators or arbitrators are called to resolve out-standing issues.

Members of the bargaining team may also append notes to specific clauses or to the agreement itself. These notes may be viewed only by the author or made public for other members of the team.

Following each round of negotiation, members of the team may record the minutes of the meeting in a report on negotia-tions. Reports are stored in the bargaining binder for later review, and are also sent, via email, to other members of the organisation for internal use or public dissemination.

The bargaining binder is closed when a collective agreement is signed or when the bargaining team decides that negotiations have reached an impasse. Closing the binder after an agree-ment is signed, ensures that the binder is archived and that the new agreement can be reviewed by the organisation before it is published and distributed to the membership. Closing a binder also ensures that no other changes can be made, especially prior to arbitration hearings, when the binder is submitted as evidence.

Before an agreement document is published, the research team may perform a final review of the document, clause-by-clause, ensuring that all clauses are properly classified or ranked for later research or possible re-use in other agreements. Because the Collective Bargaining System automatically queues all signed agreements before they are published, in larger organi-sations different members of the research team can perform this process on separate signed agreements at the same time.

The Collective Bargaining System provides a secure, but flexi-ble, set of administrative tools that support user access. For instance, a system administrator for each bargaining unit can predefine users with an owner role, then that owner can add additional user accounts as appropriate. Many more roles can be defined for members at either the local bargaining unit level or the central organisation, and at any time these can be pulled in or out of the various bargaining workspaces. Passwords are automatically generated and emailed to the designated email address for new accounts and new password requests.