The Goal: Changing the mandatory break times – Unions perspective
B: Ensure that the negotiated contract is respected
D: Reject the change of policy requested by Bearington
A: Have a stable working environment for the union members in the company
| D-D': | Assumption(s) | Injection(s) |
| 1. The suggested change of policy is the only policy, which can fulfil the specific purpose. | 1. If there is another policy, which will also enable Bearington to utilize their bottleneck capacity without granting this specific change, such a policy would solve the problem (e.g. staggering the lunch breaks, instead of disallowing breaks when the machine is idle). |
C: Ensure satisfactory labor conditions for the company
D': Grant the change of policy requested by Bearington
In order to Have a stable working environment for the union members in the company I must Ensure that the negotiated contract is respected and in order to Ensure that the negotiated contract is respected I must Reject the change of policy requested by Bearington. But, in order to Have a stable working environment for the union members in the company I must also Ensure satisfactory labor conditions for the company and in order to Ensure satisfactory labor conditions for the company I must Grant the change of policy requested by Bearington. I can't both Reject the change of policy requested by Bearington and Grant the change of policy requested by Bearington.
| Relation | Assumption(s) | Injection(s) |
| D-D' | 1. The suggested change of policy is the only policy, which can fulfil the specific purpose. | 1. If there is another policy, which will also enable Bearington to utilize their bottleneck capacity without granting this specific change, such a policy would solve the problem (e.g. staggering the lunch breaks, instead of disallowing breaks when the machine is idle). |
| B-D | 1. When you grant a change to a contract, you also allow every other part of the contract to be questioned without negotations. | 1. Coming up with a formalized way of handling future proposed changes, could provide comfort that making one change, does not simultaneously allow a lot of other changes (Alex could not guarantee that this would be the only change, and he didn't come up with any answers to this concern) |
| C-D' | 1. The change of policy is important for the competitiveness of the company. | 1. The conflict can be solved if the union representative can convience Alex that the requested change will have no impact on their competitiveness (this is not the case). |
| A-B | 1. Workers rights are secured by companies following the agreements in the contract. | 1. Ideally contracts can be substituted by trust, however this seems like an unrealistic assumption in the company at that time. |
| A-C | 1. If the company doesn't have satisfactory labor conditions, they might choose to relocate the plant to another area that has or competition will ultimately force the plant to close. | 1. This assumption is hard to challenge when Bearington has a bad financial record. (Ultimately, this was the argument given to the union president) |