identify the five bargaining issues that should be proposed from the management point of view (beer company) 

• At present, the Employer is working at full capacity. The Employer is interested in expanding production (by possibly hiring more employees), but also needs to maintain or cut costs in order to remain relevant in a fiercely competitive industry. The Employer is considering several options, including the following:
  • The Employer staffs two custodians. There is an external cleaning contractor that provides cleaning staff at a lower cost than what County Beer pays its custodians. However, the current language in the template collective agreement does not permit contracting out if it will lead to layoffs. 
  • A new Bottle Sorting technology has been developed specifically for the growing micro-brewery market. The technology automatically detects and sorts bottles and can operate 24 hours a day, thereby significantly reducing the number of bottle sorters needed. The Employer estimates that with this technology it would need only 2 Bottle Sorters to operate the machinery. The cost savings from eliminating 8 Bottle Sorters would almost pay for the automated bottle sorter machinery in 2 years.
  • The Employer recently became aware of another micro-brewery that successfully negotiated for a tiered wage system. According to this contract term, the Employer could hire new workers at a lower wage rate than existing employees and experience cost savings.
• The beer industry is fiercely competitive not only for beer sales but for workers as well, particularly skilled Beer Makers. Lately, the Employer has lost several employees to big city competitors who offer better benefits and pay. Therefore, the company is willing to give a reasonable wage increase (2-3 percent), but it fears that the Union will seek to bargain a full wage catch up to the highest paying competitors (as high as 6-7 percent) immediately, rather than over time.
• The Employer would also like to bargain a merit pay system into the collective agreement of some sort in order to motivate employees, such as by giving a bonus based on profit levels. However, it has heard that unions often resist merit pay systems. 
• The Employer is aware that many collective agreements are multi-year, however, they are concerned about being locked into agreement terms that will hinder their ability to remain competitive in a volatile industry. Moreover, they are hoping that employees will change their mind about the value of a union, and later decertify the Union (see Chapter 37 of Law of Work, or Chapter 14 of Canadian Labour Relations). For these reasons, the Employer would like a one-year collective agreement.
• The Employer is concerned about the language in the template collective agreement (article 5.06) that permits individual 'grievors' to refer grievances to arbitration. It would prefer that the Union decide which grievances are meritorious in the hopes that that union will drop grievances without merit.
• The Employer is also concerned about the language in Article 5.01 of the template collective agreement that makes the timelines in the grievance procedure mandatory unless the union agrees to extend them. With so few managerial staff, the Employer is concerned that sometimes it may be difficult to meet the timelines and so it would like a more flexible procedure that permits the arbitrator to relieve against strict timelines if no injustice would be done to the Union or the Grievor.
• The Employer is concerned about the pension plan in the template collective agreement. Although it likes the idea of a pension plan in order to attract and retain good workers, the cost of a pension plan is a whopping 6% of payroll. The Employer believes it cannot afford that cost, as well as a raise and the new health and possibly dental benefits that the Union may also ask. If the Union pushes hard for a pension, the Employer could propose some sort of split in which the employees pay a share of the costs.
• The Employer notices that article 2.01-Union Security—of the template collective agreement requires the employer to collect union dues for the union. The employer believes that whether its employees pay union dues or not should be up to them and that it should not have to be the collector of those dues. Bill remembers that in some provinces there are laws regulating negotiations over union dues clauses, and he intends to look into this. The Employer would like a clause that requires union dues to be optional if that is permitted. The Employer also objects to article 2.02 which requires all employees to become union members, believing that decision should be up to each individual employee.