Issue 12

September, 1996

National Office News

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

by James Power

El Salvador

Commissioners Jim   (Boston) and Alan Langhor (Minneapolis) spent a week in El Salvador in May talking to government, labor and management officials about the FMCS program to improve labor-management relations in that country. The mediators met with the labor committee of the national legislature and the members of the Supreme Court on the one hand and representatives of labor and management including the leadership of the radical trade unions on the other. Commissioners Jack Bates (San Diego) and Jerry Gomez (Boston) will work with Jim and Alan on this project this fall.

During that week, the Salvadorean Labor Ministry announced the replacement of its labor inspectors. That will affect a second FMCS program planned for El Salvador. Planned to be a training program on facilitation skills, the mediators will also help the new inspectors understand labor management relationships and issues. Commissioners John Gabrick (Philadelphia), Herb Fetty (Louisville) and Jim Mahan (Denver) will spend two weeks in El Salvador later this year.

Ecuador

Commissioners Pete Cinquemani (Tuscon) and Walt Berdnarczyk (Philadelphia) spent a week in June in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The AID funded project will involve five trips to train a regional labor management committee, develop six local facilitators and introduce advanced labor management relations at three company union demonstration sites.

Accompanying Jim and Walt in the various stages of the program will be Commissioners Bill Lewis (Columbus), Steve Anderson (Dayton), John Knight (Albany) and Bob Ditillo (Pittsburgh). This group met for planning meetings in late July in Washington when they briefed USAID officials on the project. The success of this program, even in its early stages, is stirring interest in its expansion by USAID to cover other parts of Ecuador.

Poland

Planned changes in the labor law of Poland caused Andrej Baczkowski, Warsaw Ministry of Labor to assemble a number of international specialists to revise their mediation services. The FMCS team included Regional Director Maureen Labenski, General Counsel Eileen Hoffman and Commissioner Glenn Tarkowski (Green Bay) who joined several other U.S. representatives including former Commissioner Jerry Barrett in preparing an informal position paper. Many of the U.S. recommendations were well received during the two day meeting.

South Africa

Mr. Sipho Pityana, Director General of the Ministry of Labor of South Africa visited FMCS Director Wells in early June. In addition to updating the Director on current labor issues in that region, the Director General informed us that a new, Ministry-based mediation service was being created. The new Service, to be called the Commission on Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, will be trained by mediators of the Independent Mediation Service of South Africa which itself was developed with FMCS assistance in the early eighties. The Director General asked FMCS for its continuing assistance in labor dispute resolution development in South Africa.

Great Britain

FMCS welcomed Ms. Ellen Leiser, Director of Industrial Relations of the British Ministry of Trade and Industry to the Chicago Labor-Management Conference and later for a round of meetings in Washington D.C. Ms. Leiser is responsible for labor relations policy development for Britain.

Argentina

A follow-up AMPART trip to Argentina for FMCS was provided by the United States Information Agency, following last year's successful work there by Commissioner Mary Hosford (Milwaukee). Jim Power, FMCS International Affairs, was asked to meet with their Labor Ministry and a number of provincial government, labor and management officials to describe possible technical assistance there. Argentina, which passed its first ADR mediation law during the visit, is ablaze with interest in dispute resolution processes.

World Bank

As part of their new focus on social issues, the World Bank is conducting a series of labor-management relations conferences around the world. The first program for labor and management leaders from different countries, held in Washington in May, included a half day session with Chuck Evans, Human Resources Mgr., and Keith Lodahl, IAM committee chair at John Deere/Horicon on their relationship improvement experience with FMCS mediators. Comm. Mary Hosford, (Milwaukee) described FMCS' role in helping improve labor management relations at the farm implement company. FMCS mediators are expected to participate in World Bank programs in other countries.

U.S. Labor Attaché Training `96

FMCS continued its tradition of training U.S. labor attaches for overseas assignments when it with the current class of thirteen attaches on July 25, 1996. Five of the attaches are bound for Moscow, Copenhagen, Manila, Johannesburg and Canberra, locations where FMCS is currently involved. The attaches are assigned to missions such as: Helsinki, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Paris, Casablanca, Mexico City and Ankara.

FMCS - IRRA Program on Japan

FMCS and the International Committee of the Washington D.C. IRRA Chapter held a public briefing for William Clatanoff of the U.S. Department of Labor, now assigned as Labor Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, on July 25. In a meeting chaired by Jack Otero, Deputy Under Secretary for International Labor Affairs. A number of organizations addressed their labor-related information needs to Clatanoff. Speakers represented the U.S. Council of International Business, the AFL-CIO, the Japan Desk at the State Department, the Bureau of International Affair, of the Department of Labor, and others. The public briefing, a first of its kind, occurred before an audience of thirty-five people.

Training Program in Full Swing

Toni Riley Jones, Education and Training Coordinator and Sandy Taylor, Education and Training Assistant have kept FMCS employees busy by planning a wide variety of training programs this year based on the needs assessed in the skills inventory and individual development plans completed by every FMCS employee. The training activity includes, teamwork and problem solving workshops, training for the National Office staff on the FMCS Mission, various departments and computers, Regional Training Conferences and a few offsite programs. Approximately 30 training programs have been held or scheduled since April.

In April, the National Office kicked off its training and professional development activities with a visit by Professor John Murphy from Catholic University, who gave a presentation on the current state of the economy and its effects on industrial relations. Professor Murphy's presentation was well attended and gave employees insight into the importance of FMCS' mission.

The field administrative staff made a visit to the National Office this spring for a week of training. Director Wells, Deputy Directors Wood and Liebman met with the field administrative staff to discuss how the field restructuring affects them and any other issues of concern to the administrative staff. The training program included sessions on organizing work, travel vouchers, procurement, and the new payroll system. Approximately a day and a half was spent on computer training. The field staff was also treated to a potluck by the National Office staff.

This summer, mediators from across the country have come to Washington to participate in Curriculum Design Projects (CDPs). These groups have developed training curriculum in the areas of Relationship By Objectives, Interest Based Bargaining, and facilitation.

Finally, each Region has planned their own regional training programs. These programs were developed by the leadership of each region to focus on their specific training needs. The Midwestern region kicked off the Regional Training during the week of August 5 in Buffalo, NY. San Francisco was the location of the Western Regional training August 26-29 and the Northeastern Region held their training in the Poconos September 9-13. The remaining Regional Training sessions will be held on the following dates:

Southern Region, Orlando, FL -

September 30-October 3

Upper Midwestern Region, Lake Geneva, WI - October 28-31

The training program has been a great success. Look for further updates on training activity in future issues.

Labor-Management Conference Resounding Success

Nearly 1,800 members of the labor-management community from the United States and several foreign countries gathered in Chicago, IL this spring to participate in the Eighth National Labor-Management Conference. Since its inception in 1982, the Conference had been held in Washington, DC, but was moved to Chicago this year to accommodate the ever-increasing number of participants.

The Conference was sponsored by the FMCS, the Department of Labor, the National Labor-Management Association, and the State and Local Government Labor-Management Committee.

Highlights of the Conference included speeches by U.S. Senator Paul Simon (IL), United Airlines Chief Executive Officer Gerald Greenwald, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, and FMCS Director John Calhoun Wells.

Director Wells encouraged management and labor leaders to consider moving away from their traditional adversarial relationship and develop a new spirit of cooperation. He described the process as "conflictive partnership." This process requires both labor and management to broaden their view of the collective bargaining process and to recognize their "institutional differences and institutional shared interests." To make it, unions and managers need to recognize that their world has changed and requires more cooperative ways of doing business. By doing this, Wells asserted that collective bargaining will evolve as a process for improved economic performance and employers will begin to view unions as "competitive assets."

Wells recognized the difficulty in this process and the trust it requires of both sides. However, he explained, neither side can afford to continue doing business as usual.

John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO discussed his view that unions need to be brought into the decision-making process with management, and asked business to "use our (unions) brains as well as our backs." He asked workers to take an interest in the businesses in which they work and to reach out to management. "We can no longer afford the luxury of pretending that productivity, quality and competitiveness are not our business. They are our business, our jobs and our paychecks," Sweeney stated. Sweeney also encouraged business to invest in workers by offering all workers training opportunities.

The positive consequences of an employee buyout of United Airlines was discussed by Gerald Greenwald, the airline's chairman and chief executive officer. Since the buyout, Greenwald explained that grievances have dropped by 74 percent, absenteeism has been reduced by 17 percent, work-related injuries are down by 17 percent and workers compensation costs have fallen 30 percent. The company has hired 7,000 more people, and operating revenue per employee jumped 10 percent in one year. These figures were given as examples of Greenwald's position that companies and unions need to "take a fresh look" at their relationship and move away from an "us versus them" mentality.

The Conference also featured 50 workshop sessions examining a wide range of issues including interest-based bargaining, health care cost containment, outsourcing in the public and private sectors, and organizational restructuring. The sessions were well attended and in some cases, it was standing room only. Approximately 25 FMCS staff moderated or assisted in the workshop sessions.

National Office Reinvention Underway

The Mediator Task Force on the Future of FMCS looked at the agency, its future and made recommendations to lead FMCS into the 21st century. As a result of the Task Force Report and recommendations, a Strategic Action Plan was developed as a guide for FMCS' Reinvention.

The Strategic Plan first focused on the field organization--the service delivery point for FMCS' customers. The National Office began its Reinvention with a focus on skills assessment and training, work schedules and workforce diversity. Individual development plans for the National Office staff have been completed and training programs have begun.

This spring, the FMCS National Office began its work design Reinvention initiative. This initiative began with an all employees meeting in the Director's office followed by a half-day all employees' meeting with Mary Gail Biebel, the consultant assisting in the reinvention initiative. In this meeting, Biebel discussed the redesign process and taught all employees how to map their basic work processes.

Biebel then worked with Notice Processing Unit (NPU) and Arbitration employees for a day and half to assist them in learning and analyzing the work redesign process. Over the past three months, both NPU and Arbitration employees have met on a weekly basis to identify and map their basic work processes. The next step involves going on a "benchmarking" visit to another agency doing similar work and compare how the work is done and maybe learn from them. Following the visits, both departments will be ready to begin the reinvention stage of their reinvention efforts.

To keep FMCS competitive in today's workplace, which requires doing more with less, it is important that we evaluate our work processes and use technology to help improve efficiency and increase productivity. This is essential to FMCS' survival.

Legal and Legislative Affairs Congress Watch

ADRA and Reg Neg Acts of 1996

The House and Senate are close to a compromise that will result in the permanent reauthorization of the ADR and Reg-Neg Acts. Both have approved their own versions of the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act. There were four areas where the House and Senate versions differed: the extent of confidentiality protection, language permitting binding arbitration, jurisdiction of board of contract bid protest appeals, and incorporation of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act.

In June, Wilma Liebman and John Wagner testified before the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law of the House Judiciary Committee, recommending incorporating reauthorization of the Reg-Neg Act within the ADRA. Subsequently, the House and Senate members on the relevant committees and their staffers entered into negotiations to see if a compromise could be reached without the formality of a House-Senate Conference. Thus far the progress has been steady, and reauthorization of the conjoined ADR/Reg-Neg Act is expected.

Labor Legislation

Before adjourning for its summer recess, the 104th Congress passed and the President signed into law a variety of labor and employment measures. Two important measures signed into law were an increase in the federal minimum wage by 90 cents and portability of health benefits after leaving a particular employer. Other legislation up for consideration when Congress returns from recess in September is allowing compensatory time in lieu of overtime pay under certain circumstances as amendments to the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act streamlining the federal employees appeals processes.

The Working Families Flexibility Act

"The Working Families Flexibility Act," sponsored by Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-NC), would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act which now requires employers to pay time and a half for work exceeding 40-hours per week. The measure was approved by the House of Representatives, and would apply only to non-professional workers in the private sector, allowing their employers to offer workers the option of earning 1.5 hours of compensatory leave for every extra hour they worked. (Federal, state, and local employees have been allowed to claim comp time instead of extra pay for overtime work since 1985.) While the White House promised to veto this bill, the President has spoken in favor of allowing the "comp time" option provided it included sufficient safeguards against employer coercion. The President favors legislation that would allow workers to sue employers who forced them to take comp time instead of overtime pay and to receive double damages if they proved their case. The Senate must also approve the comp bill before it reaches the President's desk. Senator John Ashcroft (R-MO) has introduced legislation similar to the Ballenger proposal but the Senate did not take up the issue before it adjourned.

TEAM Act

As anticipated, the President vetoed the Teamwork for Employers and Management (TEAM) Act. This legislation had received widespread labor opposition. It passed the House last September and a nearly identical bill passed the Senate in July by a vote of 53-43. Since the legislation narrowly passed the Congress, there appears to be little chance that the President's veto could be overridden.

The Team Act proposes to modify the National Labor Relations Act, Section 8(a)(2,) to allow management and non-unionized employees to establish, assist, maintain or participate in teams to address labor issues such as quality, productivity, efficiency and other matters of mutual concern. The created teams cannot negotiate or enter into collective bargaining agreements. In vetoing the legislation, President Clinton said, "This legislation, rather than promoting genuine teamwork, would undermine the system of collective bargaining that has served this country so well for many decades." Also in his veto message, President Clinton said that current law provides for "a wide variety of cooperative workplace efforts."

Civil Service Reform

Legislation to reform the federal civil service system was approved by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. The Omnibus Civil Service Reform Act of 1996, introduced by Congressman John Mica (R-FL), would require FMCS to assist in developing guidelines for alternative dispute resolution procedures involving EEO, MSPB, and other complaints. The bill has gone to the House floor, but was not acted on before the Congressional recess. An amendment introduced by Rep. Constance Morella (R-MD) would require the Office of Personnel Management to write regulations dealing with agency RIFs that provide for a method to assure that employees who are in different evaluation systems are treated equitably.

Supreme Court Actions:

Football Bargaining and Anti-Trust

The Supreme Court, by a vote of eight to one, in Brown v. Pro-Football Inc., held that employers who bargain jointly with a union may agree among themselves to unilaterally implement their last bargaining offer without fear of anti-trust liability.

The National Football League (NFL) decided to implement a contract that allowed each team to create a developmental squad whose players would receive a fixed salary of $1,000 per week. The union agreed to allow the developmental squads, but wanted each developmental player to have the same negotiation rights as all other NFL players. After bargaining to impasse, the NFL implemented the fixed salary provisions and some 236 players signed developmental squad contracts.

In 1990, the players filed a class action suit against the NFL alleging that unilateral implementation of the fixed salary amounted to price-fixing in violation of the Sherman Act. The NFL argued that it was exempt from the Act under the "nonstatutory labor exemption." The district court ruled for the players, but was reversed by a split D.C. Circuit Court.

The Supreme Court ruled that the exemption applied to the NFL because: 1) the NFL's unilateral implementation took place "during and immediately after collective bargaining negotiation;" 2) "grew out of, and was directly related to, the lawful operation of the bargaining process;" 3) "involved a matter that the parties were required to negotiate collectively;" and 4) "concerned only the parties to the collective-bargaining relationship." The Court has not granted unlimited exemption, however, ruling that its holding "is not intended to insulate from antitrust review every joint imposition of terms by employers, for an employer agreement could be sufficiently distant in time and in circumstances from the bargaining process that a rule permitting antitrust intervention would not significantly interfere with the process."

NLRB Actions:

The NLRB continues to interpret the NLRA to prohibit employers from dealing with employees through a company-dominated organization. An administrative law judge has found that an employee participation group which Polaroid Corporation established in 1993 to address issues of pay, policy, benefits, and practice, is a labor organization as defined by the National Labor Relations Act. By dominating this group, the company violated Section (8)(a)(2) of the NLRA. See Polaroid Corp. and Charla Scivally, NLRB ALJ Case No. 1-CA-29966, 30063, 30211, June 14, 1996).

The company was ordered to disestablish its Employee Owners Influence Council and refrain from recognizing it or any successor employee organization. The company had disbanded an earlier employee group and created this organization in 1993 with 30-members to serve as a sounding board or focus group that can help sense how employees feel on important issues. This new group was to form a "partnership" with the Chief Executive Officer in addressing issues of pay, policy, benefits and practice but the CEO would have the final decision. The committee would filter employees' ideas but would not be the employees' direct representative and would not engage in grievance representation. Members were appointed rather than elected and the committee was administered by the company's Human Resources Director. The ALJ found that notwithstanding the company's views, it had repeatedly conveyed to committee members that the company expected the committee to represent or reflect the views of employees. The ALJ reasoned that by constant communication with the employees and by indicating to the committee members that management expected them to hear and report the views of non-member employees, the company was actually dominating a labor organization.

Federal Labor Relations Developments: Congress Covered

The Congressional Accountability Act established the Office of Compliance to extend major federal labor, employment, and civil rights laws to the legislative branch. This Office enforces the provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the WARN. October 1, 1996, is the effective date of the provision of the Congressional Accountability Act which will allow collective bargaining for the legislative branch. The Office of Compliance is busy developing procedures and forms to accept and process representation petitions and unfair labor practice charges. One major issue is a determination of who is in the bargaining unit. Many are arguing that Congressional staff are confidential employees.

Is the White House next? Legislation introduced by Congressman Mica would cover White House employees with the same battery of eleven civil rights, labor, and workplace laws that Congress has now applied to itself (HR 3452).

OGC ACTIVITIES

In July, the Office of the General Counsel hosted summer legal interns from other government agencies as part of a program started by the Department of Justice. The program allows law students from around the country to get acquainted with different government agencies by arranging tours of approximately fifty different federal agencies. FMCS has participated in the program for several years by sending its own legal interns to view the workings of other agencies as well as by hosting interested visiting interns in the NO. This year approximately fifteen interns attended the informational session provided by Eileen B. Hoffman and Deborah Laufer.

Also in July, FMCS was represented at the annual meeting of the Association of Labor Relations Agencies (ALRA) by Eileen B. Hoffman. This year's session was held in Ottawa, Canada and hosted by the Canadian mediation service. Next year's meeting will be held in Washington, D.C., July 25-30 with the NLRB, FMCS, FLRA, and other local labor relations agencies participating in arrangements.

FMCS and "The Vision Thing"

by Brian Flores, National Representative

One of the memorable events of the Presidential election of 1992 was a reference made by former President George Bush to "the vision thing." What the President referred to was a criticism that the leader of the Free World should have some sense of where the country was going and where he wanted to take the nation. The voters, if they paid attention to this dialogue, evidently found his vision wanting.

Vision has become a buzzword in discussing today's economy, particularly among organizational change wizards selling all kinds of books and programs which attempt to interest corporations and their workers in new ways of seeing how things work in a global economy. Admittedly it is difficult for those from Hailstone, Utah and even New York City to see themselves or their community in global terms. We are just too provincial. It must be a real stretch for someone in Rwanda to acquire the vision thing.

The first step in the visioning process for most of us is to reposition ourselves for the best possible view of our current situation. Economic realities of the past ten years have pushed most corporations and most workers to work as hard as they can just to stay even in an economy which truly ebbs and flows on a daily basis. Production and even economic cycles which once took years to evolve are now often complete in less than a year!

What has happened is that we have become leaf people! We don't see the forest, we don't even see the trees . . . all we can see are the leaves!

In order to get a true picture of what has happened we have to zoom out far enough to first see the trees, then the whole forest, and ultimately the country and world in which that forest hopes to grow. At FMCS our "forest" is under as heavy an assault as the great rain forests of Brazil with opportunistic inside and outside entrepreneurs hacking and burning away at its boundaries in an effort to advance their self interests. A current view of our once stately customer trees shows many ravaged and bare in the rapidly diminishing client forest in which they once thrived, demonstrating the clear reality that our environment is now heavily threatened.

How does that threaten us? Our government is evolving and changing as well. Things are not the same as they once were and they will never be the same again. FMCS cannot continue to go forward to the American people and make a case for our survival when simplistic logic can quickly point to 31 million dollar annual budgets to protect the nation from fewer than 400 strikes.

Does FMCS contribute more than just strike assistance to the American economy? Of course we do. The institution of collective bargaining is the democratic foundation of America's labor-management relations system. The tripartite partnership of labor, management and government is the tried and true method of managing the tensions which drive that process. In order to preserve these relationships, we must now look carefully at the whole view and not just pieces. Our vision can only be sharpened by seeing all the relationships as they now exist and by applying realistic solutions to the problems we discover.

Will these solutions be different from those we have used over the years? In many cases they will be very different and they will require more than passive attention to the collective bargaining process which for years has been as much ceremonial as situational. Where once we could react only as firefighters responding to the alarms of labor-management conflict, we must now also work as much or more on fire prevention, education and leadership to prevent our forest from suffering further death and destruction.

This will not be an easy process and it won't be done overnight. Old habits are hard to break but we must be sure that we break our old habits first, in order to be relevant and help those whom we serve toward a more productive, continuing and growing future.

Protecting one's environment is not an easy thing to do. We still take too many things for granted and trust nature to take care of our instant problems. The dramatic environmental lesson we should have learned in recent years is that nature, in any form including human, is finite and that it has limits and tolerances which, when exceeded, can cause it to surrender to extinction.

We have joined this Service to protect and advance collective bargaining as something which is vital to the national interest and is a national resource . . . we must not let our lack of the vision thing be the cause of its demise.

Searching for the Roots of Mediation

by Jerome T. Barrett

As a prelude to the FMCS history, I wrote a paper in January on the history of the United States Conciliation Service, the predecessor to FMCS. Researching that history got me thinking about mediation before the 20th century. While I haven't found anything written about it, I believe that mediation is probably as old as conflict--and conflict is as old as human existence. Once two humans existed, conflict was inevitable. Once three humans existed, mediation was possible. Since Adam and Eve did not have a third party to turn to for mediation, God arbitrated the issue on the forbidden fruit.

So who was the first mediator? How did he/she get started?

I imagine it might have started like this: A cave dwelling ancestor of ours finds him/her self in a disagreement over the ownership of a primitive tool. When the dispute persists, our ancestor turns to another member of the clan -- possibly an elder -- and asks him/her to talk to the other disputant about a resolution. Once that early cave dweller agreed to act as talker-between disputers, the first mediator was created.

I can imagine this ancient mediator --after making several round trips between the two disputants -- saying, or communicating is some fashion, with both conviction and hope: " I believe that the other party will agree to share the tool with you if you stop threatening his family and claiming exclusive ownership of the tool."

Some people -- lawyers most likely -- might argue that I have just described the first lawyer representing a client -- and, therefore, suggesting that the advocacy profession was created before the neutral peace-making profession. I think the perception of the go-between role is key to making a distinction here. If the parties and the go-between saw the role as representing one side, our ancestor was a lawyer. If everyone involved saw the role as seeking a resolution for both parties, our ancestor was one of us, a mediator.

It might be that the roots of mediation can be traced to family relationships. For example, I believe that it has always been an accepted practice in families for a child, of any age, to turn to mother and ask her to talk to dad about any issue between the child and the father. And, mothers, with few exceptions, have accepted the mediator role -- the go-between child and father.

If that is a sound assumption, it would suggest that women were the first mediators -- and collectively, have the most mediation experience. Mothers and motherly instincts were involved in an early recorded example of conflict resolution. Remember King Solomon's attempt to resolve a dispute between two women over which one was the real mother of a child. King Solomon's threat to arbitrate the issue by splitting the child moved the issue to a mediated resolution. (If Solomon was really a mediator just threatening the woman with arbitration, his was a bold tactic.)

Another biblical story telling of the lamb and the lion laying down together presents an unbelievably peaceful outcome -- one that only a very optimistic mediator would have anticipated. Isn't optimism one of the characteristics that early disputants might have looked for in selecting a mediator?

What other characteristics would our early ancestors use in selecting their mediators? Someone willing to play the role, someone with communications skills, someone acceptable to both sides, and someone with communications skills, someone acceptable to both sides, and someone with an understanding of both sides. I can imagine a dispute between two neighboring clans where there had been some cross-marriages. The leaders of one clan might look within their clan, for someone who has roots in the other clan, someone who was born in the other clan, who understands the customs and language of both clans.

I think that nominal authority and the wisdom of age have been other characteristics that disputants might look for when selecting a mediator. The leaders and elders of the clan might be candidate for the mediator role.

How did the mediator role evolve from our earliest

ancestor?

In record history, as occupations and professions developed favorable assumptions about their special expertise or wisdom -- physicians, lawyers and clergy were asked to mediate.

A somewhat related concept is "good offices." This concept suggests that the capacity to resolve disputes -- to mediate -- is not just based on the mediator's skills, but rather on the mediator's position or title within society or an organization. Such a mediator is well advised to have an assistant with mediator skills. Most FMCS Directors have followed that practice.

The role of the diplomat in the evolution of the mediator role is relevant. Typically, the diplomat is more like the lawyer representing a client. But certainly, a diplomat working a dispute between two nations is playing a role more like a traditional mediator.

The English courts further evolved the mediator role. These courts, with their origin in the monarch as peacemaker among his/her subjects, were labeled courts of equity since they approached issues on a working things- out basis rather than a decisional focus -- an interest base rather than a power base.

As mediators, you can take pride in this long history of mediation. Your fuller knowledge of that history can strengthen your appreciation of mediation, FMCS and the role you play.

Richard Barnes Selected as Deputy

Director for Field Operations

On September 6, 1996, National Director John Calhoun Wells announced the selection of C. Richard Barnes as Deputy Director for Field Operations. Barnes joins the leadership team of Director Wells and Wilma Liebman, Deputy Director for the National Office.

In announcing Barnes' selection, Wells said, "Richard is an effective and motivational leader and a skilled manager. He brings impressive experience and expertise to the position of Deputy Director."

"He is committed to FMCS, its mediators, its customers and its future," Wells continued.

Barnes was appointed as District Director in 1994 and following the agency's restructuring in 1995, was selected as Regional Director for the Southern Region. Prior to joining FMCS in August 1987, Barnes was Special International Representative of the Laborers' International Union of North America and was later elected Manager of the Laborers' District Council of Georgia and South Carolina.

"Richard clearly understands the concept and practice of a customer-driven, performance-oriented organization and I look forward to working with him as part of the leadership team in the National Office," Wells concluded.

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