Steve Goldberg: Dispute Systems Designer
William Ury
What the paper says
I have a juicy proposition for you," Steve Goldberg said to me one evening over dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club in March of 1980."I just got off the phone with a high-level officer at the national mineworkers union and an executive from the coal employers association.They have a really tough conflict on their hands at a coal mine in eastern Kentucky.""What's it about?"I asked, my curiosity piqued."Well, all I know is that the miners keep going out on wildcat strikes.Management reacted by firing a third of the workforce," Steve replied."It has gotten really ugly.Both officials are afraid that the strike will spread to other coal mines.They're worried it might even trigger a nationwide coal strike that could shut down the whole economy.""What do they want you to do?" "They're asking me to mediate," said Steve."Here's the rub.I'm an arbitrator.I listen to the facts and I make the decision.I haven't had any real experience mediating an agreement between the parties.Would you like to join me and help me figure out what to do?" Steve was a highly noted and respected arbitrator in the coal industry with many years of experience.A professor at Northwestern Law School, he had been invited to be a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School to work on an innovative proposal to introduce grievance mediation into the coal mines as a prior step to arbitration.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.