In my April column, I focused on how fire-service leaders’ willingness and ability to create collaborative service relationships represent a potential answer to the pressure being placed on them to increase efficiency and improve service quality. However, in order to achieve long-term results, the collaborative service relationship must eventually extend beyond the current leadership to the larger departmental culture and the community in which it operates.

The recent calls for smaller government and privatization of public-sector jobs have created various responses and actions. For example, the entire nation witnessed the shutdown of the statehouse in Wisconsin when members of one party left the state to prevent the quorum needed to conduct business. While the events in Wisconsin may be an extreme example, they clearly demonstrate the connectivity of relationships, actions and consequences between public employees, elected officials and the public.

Once labor and management leadership create a collaborative service relationship, a change in leadership on either side can erase any gains that have been made. Consequently, efforts must be made to change the current culture and institutionalize the practice of labor-management cooperation.

Institutionalization ultimately depends on acceptance of the new approach by all stakeholders, which include rank-and-file union members, managers and elected officials. Formal initiatives must be made during transitions to show new leaders, on either side of the table, the benefits of a collaborative system. Communication strategies designed to keep everyone fully informed, along with training that demonstrates the benefits of this innovative practice, are valuable components of any effort to truly institutionalize this type of cooperation.

In order to make labor-management cooperation most successful, it is helpful for leading organizations at the national level to support this philosophy. For example, both the IAFF and the IAFC support labor-management cooperation through their Labor Management Initiative agreement. However, inroads still need to be made with public sector–management associations and those holding elected positions.

Stephen Goldsmith, a former mayor of Indianapolis, had great success with labor-management cooperation in his city back in the mid-1990s. He was elected on a platform to reduce the size of government and privatize services. However, after being elected he worked diligently with union leaders to develop a relationship in which both the city and its unions worked together to achieve mutually beneficial results. Better services were provided to the city at a reduced cost, while employees benefited from higher wages, better jobs and improved job security.

Goldsmith suggests that the path to a cooperative relationship depends on local circumstances. Union and management officials need to tailor the relationship to fit the environment in which they operate, in order to ensure that it serves all parties. Generally, successful collaboration requires the formation of better and broader forms of discussion, an ongoing commitment to training, a chief executive who has compassion for the welfare of the employees and union leaders who have a genuine interest in improving the quality and lowering the cost of the services its members provide.

In most cases, labor-management cooperation between local union and city officials occurs as the byproduct of some type of political or economic condition that forces them to come together. But substantial evidence exists that when public-sector officials and union leaders do enter into a cooperative relationship, then both the delivery of public services and the quality of work life for employees improve. It is incumbent upon us then — on both sides of the table — to lead a labor-management cooperation initiative that benefits both the community and those providing the services.

Jack Parow is the president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. The retired fire chief in Chelmsford, Mass., Parow is a 33-year veteran of the fire service.

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