Play LaborForce Contract Negotiation Simulation by SimuZone!

LaborForce is the premier contract negotiation simulation on the internet. It was designed specifically for univerity Labor Relations coursework. It is a highly competitive student team vs student team event. It will be the talk of the campus.

The classroom is divided into companies. Each company has a management team and a labor team negotiating for specific provisions in a proposed labor contract. Labor and Management negotiate their contracts over a period of time set by the instructor.

The contracts of the labor teams from the several companies are scored against each other. Likewise the managment team contracts are scored against each other. One labor team and one management team will prevail and the base scores of the team members of the winning teams will be higher than the base scores of the members of the other teams.

Teams may threaten to strike against the company or lockout the workforce. They may actually schedule a stoppage with a deadline. They may even carry through on the stoppage.

The simulation provides for grading a student notebook. It provides for peer reviews of team members by their negotiating team as part of the simulation. Documentation is provided to the student, but it can be customized by the instructor. All scores in the simulation can be overridden by the instructor. Final grades from the simulaton are generated as reports in a pdf format, and as a spreadsheet in an excel spreadsheet. The results are accessable only by the instructor, but they are suitable for handing out in the classroom.

The LaborForce Story

It's been a good year for the company. We endured a few setbacks over the last few years, some of them major. The union did its part, sacrificing to help the company return to profitability. Now the shareholders expect some nice dividends; management expects some nice bonuses; the union members expect wages and benefits well above the projections from last year. Expectations run high but resources are still limited and... it is contract renegotiation time again!

The Simulation

The baseline contract proposal equates to the same terms as the current contract which is expiring. The current contract isn't going to fly. Each member of the team has a personal copy of the contract terms which he or she can manipulate in any way to reflect their own personal proposal. One team will ultimately post a contract proposal.

The opposing team negotiates among themselves through their team forum and over company email. They respond by posting a counter proposal. The deal is negotiated over a company forum which all members of both teams can see and use. In the end, both teams must agree to a single contract proposal. Threats of strikes and lockouts are allowed. Actual simulated union strikes and management lockouts are allowed, at great toll to the entire company -- but sometimes drastic measures are required against a hard-nosed negotiator.

The simulation is quite intense and exciting for the students involved. Students learn skills that they cannot glean from classroom notes and text books.

Instructors have a simulation web page separate from the students. The prof can set up the teams, provide custom documentation if desired, monitor activity, logon as a student, reset passwords of students, score notebooks, score simulation results, override computerized scores for any reason, and generate reports with the final results of the simulation for distribution to the students. The results are available in both printed form and excel spreadsheet.

Instructor registration is free. A small four-student demo simulation with a one day duration can be generated and accessed for free. The instructor can run the simulation as a demo participant, going through most of participant registration, posting to the team and company forums, sending email, posting contract proposals to the other team, threatening or going on strike, and accepting a contract. The instructor may rerun the demo as many times as he or she likes in order to see various aspects of the simulation in action.

Once an instructor has created and activated an actual simulation, students may register. The cost to the student is only $28.00.

We thank you for your interest in the SimuZone LaborForce Simulation!
SimuZone Team and Management.