Scribblings

Don’t Reward Bad Behavior

I have been involved in labour relations negotiations for over 50 years. Now, I do not pretend that labour negotiations are anywhere near as important as the negotiations between sovereign states that often touch on life and death issues, especially if a war could be in prospect.

But I do think that the same broad principles apply when you have a negotiation between parties where their interests differ, maybe often widely, but they still also need to maintain a working relationship with one another for whatever reason into the future. That is the difference between a “deal” and negotiations. A deal is “one and done and walk away”. Negotiations assume a continuing relationship between the parties if the agreement is to be successfully implemented.

In any negotiation, there is one fundamental rule that needs to be observed at all times. Never reward bad behaviour. Rewarding bad behaviour only encourages more bad behaviour. If bad behaviour pays off once, the bad actor will try it again. Why not? It would be the rational thing to do. As I put it in last week’s Scribblings, feed a crocodile raw meat and it will surely come back for more.

Bad behaviour is best stopped the first time the bad actor behaves badly. You may have to take a hit and some pain, but standing firm is better than appeasement. In my world of labour relations, it could mean you are faced with a strike, but better a strike than to give in to unreasonable demands that will only encourage more unreasonable demands.

I should make it clear that the vast majority of labour relations negotiations are conducted in a reasonable manner and usually end with an agreement that both sides can be satisfied with. The world of labour relations is populated with decent people who disagree about some things but who know that it is better if they work together and find mutually acceptable solutions.

I use the phrase “mutually acceptable solutions” because I dislike the word “compromise”, the “meet in the middle” approach, with its suggestion that you should sacrifice some things that are important to you simply to get a deal. Good negotiators do not “compromise”. They search for solutions that offer benefits to both parties without having to give in on matters of principle.

Of course, with these remarks about negotiations, I am talking about Greenland and all that has happened in the past few weeks.

To recap, the US president, Donald Trump, said it was vital that the US take control of the island, which is an autonomous Danish territory. He said it was critical to the security needs of the US and that it was at risk from Russian and Chinese predations. He wanted the “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland”.

The US has a treaty with Denmark, going back to 1951, that allows it to put bases on the island. At times, during the Cold War, it had 17 bases there. Now, just one. But there is nothing to stop the US from ramping back up its presence on the icy waste.

If the island wasn’t given to him, Trump implied, he would take it by force and for good measure, he would impose further tariffs on those European countries he saw as supporting Denmark. 10% to start with, rising to 25% if he did not get what he wanted.

But if Trump did not need Greenland for genuine security reasons because of the 1951 treaty, why did he want it?

“I love maps. And I always said, ‘Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States.’ It’s not different from a real estate deal. It’s just a little bit larger, to put it mildly,” he told The New Yorker early last year.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Trump said that US ownership of Greenland was “what I feel is psychologically needed for success”. In other words, I want it because I want it and I need to own it.

Wanting something because you feel you are entitled to it and must have it is not what might be called a “strategic objective”. More like a tantrum that a toddler would throw. Bad behaviour. Give in, and the toddler will keep throwing tantrums. He or she will keep asking for more and more biscuits.

After having tried to appease Trump over the past year, no matter how irrational and counterproductive his behaviour, in the past few days, the Europeans said that enough was enough. They were supporting Denmark when it said that Greenland was not available, either by force or for a fistful of dollars. The good decided to stand up to the bad and the ugly. The stock market, sensing uncertainty, took a dip. Markets hate uncertainty.

At Davos this week, Trump walked back his Greenland demands. Maybe the markets spooked him, who knows? He said he wanted Denmark to give him Greenland, but he would not take it by force. Further, he would not impose extra tariffs on those European countries that had supported Denmark by sending a small detachment of soldiers to the island. He said of Denmark: “So, they have a choice. You can say ‘yes ‘and we will be very appreciative, or you can say ‘no’ and we will remember.”

To decode his words: If I do not get what I want, there will be retribution down the line.

Later in the day, it was announced that the US had agreed on the “framework of a future deal”. “We have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region”, Trump said after meeting Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte.

Now, for an old labour negotiator like me, two questions present themselves.

First, what right, if any, did Rutte have to negotiate anything with Trump? Was there a meeting of European stakeholders concerned with Greenland that discussed the matter in some detail and gave him a negotiating mandate? If there was, I do not recall seeing any reports of such a meeting.

Or was he just freelancing, taking it upon himself to speak for Europe? Rutte is the Nato Secretary General. He does not speak for the EU. Last time I looked, the US was still a member of Nato. So, Rutte was negotiating with Nato’s biggest member off his own bat about a piece of land that belonged to another Nato member. Or so it would appear. I am open to correction if I am wrong. But I do not think I am.

As the Irish Times reports:

Danish defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen, also in Davos, described his own meeting with the Nato head in diplomatic terms as “very useful for Rutte ... about the red lines of the kingdom”.

More outspoken was Greenland MP Aaja Chemnitz, who sits for the island in Denmark’s parliament: “In no way has Nato its own mandate to negotiate anything about us from outside. Nothing about us, without us.”

Which indeed suggests that Rutte was freelancing, negotiating without a mandate. Any “agreement” resulting from such talks has a high risk of falling apart once the parties get into the details of how things might work in practice. And who would be the parties to these talks in any event?

Which brings me to my second point.

How was it possible to negotiate even the “framework of a future deal” covering the entire Arctic in a matter of hours? As any serious negotiator knows, you do not go into discussions without detailed preparation. 90% of negotiations consist of preparation. We have seen how badly Brexit has gone for the UK because it took the decision to leave the EU without working out its options beforehand. Where and when was the preparation done for a framework agreement on the future of the Arctic region? Surely, there would have been newspaper reports of such discussions.

What appears to have happened is that Trump did what he likes to do: a quick deal that could easily fall apart when, later, the parties, whoever they are, get into the weeds of what needs to be done.

So, my negotiating takeaways from what has happened over Greenland are as follows:

• Do not reward bad behaviour. Rewarding bad behaviour does not work. It just encourages more bad behaviour.

• Do not freelance. Make sure you have fully consulted your stakeholders and have a negotiating mandate.

• You cannot negotiate “off the cuff”. You need to put in the hard yards of detailed preparation.

Want to know more about labour negotiations? Download the book written by Rick Warters and me, “RESPECT: Thoughts on Workplace Collective Bargaining”. It is free to download and can be found at this link: https://www.beerg.com/respect/