Then we looked at the contract. It was a stapled collection of pages whose cover read, “Last, Best and Final Offer.” “Final Offer” is a legal term used by negotiators to signal that, should the offer – the contract – be rejected, that rejection would qualify as an automatic strike vote. But this final offer was actually the first offer for us, our first glance at what the company was proposing, and it was terrible. The pay raise was negligible, the insurance costs would eat that increase and more. The contract wasn’t a typical three-year contract but a five-year contract, one extending through the period the company needed to craft that series of very profitable, ocean-going vessels. That extension would give the company a legally-guaranteed stable period with its “workforce.” Item by item the contract was junk but, to add to the insult, there was a clause in the contract granting the union the power to alter the contract in accordance with the company’s wishes without the consent of the union’s members!