Unions bargain contracts, or at least they try to do so. As numerous studies of US unions have shown, many unions fail to ever reach a first contract. One year after unionizing, fewer than half of bargaining units have done so. Two years after unionizing, 37 percent are still without a contract. Even after three years of having a union, 30 percent lack a contract. Given how hard it is to unionize, it’s startling to realize that employer stalling and antics so frequently defeat workers in the next battle, that of reaching a contract (I’d be remiss not to note that the PRO Act addresses this problem, moving both sides to mediation if a contract isn’t reached after one year).

How a union approaches collective bargaining is thus an important decision — or, as a new report puts it, “a strategic choice.” “Turning the Tables: Participation and Power in Negotiations,” coauthored by union negotiator and labor writer Jane McAlevey and UC Berkeley Labor Center graduate student researcher Abby Lawlor, uses four case studies of collective bargaining to argue for an approach that brings as many workers into the bargaining process as possible.

The authors don’t just mean a few more workers. They argue for open bargaining, with the goal of “having every worker show up at negotiations at least once, even if only for one hour at shift change.” They recount comical scenes of management showing up to bargain only to be greeted by a room overflowing with workers, with people milling around in hallways and exceeding the fire code. In one of the cases, to get around restrictive bargaining ground rules, the entire workforce is designated as the negotiations team.