Education Department holds third Collective Bargaining class to strengthen member contracts

For the third time in five months, the SMART Education Department brought local leaders together to strengthen the foundation of our union: collective bargaining. From February 2-6, 2026, union representatives gathered in Austin, Texas, to further build the teamwork skills needed to negotiate the contracts that members deserve.

The class, developed by the Education Department in conjunction with the Jurisdiction, Canadian Affairs and Production Departments, divided the class into fictional “locals,” with each participant in the group taking on the role of either chair, observer, recorder or numbers person. Attendees spent the week researching employers, developing proposals using member surveys to determine priorities and main issues, and learning their Myers-Briggs (core personality) and Thomas-Kilmann (core conflict mode) types and seeing how they applied to the bargaining process.

The course ended with groups bargaining against one another to get the best contract possible. Each group spent half the bargaining time as a fictional local union, and the other half as a fictional employer association.

“In the ‘employer association” role, they took on the role of a real-life employer with a fictional storyline, personality and ‘pet proposal’ to fight for at the table,” said SMART International Instructor Andre Mayes. “The research, proposals and final contracts were all peer-reviewed in a competition format.”

“Congratulations to the winner, ‘Local 1,’ comprised of Daniel Loftis (Local 2), Dustin Truitt (Local 2), Mike Thorne (Local 4), Dean Lee (Local 206) and Domingo Luyo (Local 206),” Mayes added.

The next iteration of the Collective Bargaining class will take place in 2027.