Course list

This course establishes a foundation in collective bargaining, with a focus on identifying and analyzing key aspects of a contract and how they relate to your role. You will gain insights into the bargaining process and what happens when negotiations break down. Those insights will prepare you to assess contracts and determine the requirements for administering its key components.
  • Apr 8, 2026
  • May 6, 2026
  • Jun 3, 2026
  • Jul 1, 2026
  • Jul 29, 2026
  • Aug 26, 2026
  • Sep 23, 2026

This course will help build your skills in the “nuts and bolts” of effective labor negotiations. You will start by identifying the organizational goals central to your bargaining strategy, then see how to move from these business goals to negotiation goals. You'll take a look at the impact of external factors and share your analysis of these factors in a discussion with your peers. Your deep understanding of the collective bargaining agreement, the unit, and the employer will lay the groundwork for success. This course provides a combination of theory and practical applications, down to expert advice on how to manage the administrative aspects of negotiations. Finally, you will choose an appropriate collective bargaining strategy for your organization. Will you take a fostering approach or a forcing approach? And how do you determine which is best? How do you mix the two approaches effectively, and what are the pitfalls you need to avoid? And lastly, you'll evaluate behaviors and styles that make negotiating so challenging. This course includes a negotiation simulation with peers.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Collective Bargaining
  • Apr 22, 2026
  • May 20, 2026
  • Jun 17, 2026
  • Jul 15, 2026
  • Aug 12, 2026
  • Sep 9, 2026
  • Oct 7, 2026

The parties in any collective bargaining contract negotiation are seeking to balance costs and benefits in order to achieve mutual agreement. Developing proficiency in assessing relative value and costs of a benefit improves your ability to compare apples to oranges. Costing a contract entails a comfort with the fundamentals of workplace math and statistics, as well as the ability to effectively communicate this aspect of negotiation. Are you prepared to estimate numbers and explain them?

The importance of this foundation is often underestimated. This course fills gaps for both management and labor by developing a new mindset for costing a contract. You will use basic costing tools to calculate the value of a collective bargaining contract with a focus on calculating and communicating relative value and costs. You will explore the six key principles to estimate costs in order to create agreement proposals.

At the conclusion of the course, you will have applied the tools and principles to a sample proposal and counterproposal. You will have practiced the skills to assess the contract's impact to employees and developed strategies for educating stakeholders. Whether you‘re making a counterproposal or you're ready to get a contract ratified, you will be better able to explain your numbers with the confidence and experience gained from this course.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Collective Bargaining
  • Apr 8, 2026
  • May 6, 2026
  • Jun 3, 2026
  • Jul 1, 2026
  • Jul 29, 2026
  • Aug 26, 2026
  • Sep 23, 2026

When grievances occur, taking a strategic approach is the key to productive outcomes. It takes preparation and a solid grasp of the facts and context of a situation to conclude whether a complaint is a grievance that should be heard and resolved. A complaint becomes a grievance when the issue is specified in the contract language. By reading the grievance clause carefully, you can determine whether a complaint should be heard as a grievance and consider resolution possibilities from the perspective of both parties.

This course will advance your ability to read grievance clauses effectively. You will explore the specific language included in these clauses and recognize meaning provided by common rules of interpretation. With the tools needed for solving problems and the confidence to employ them, you can overcome potential obstacles in the grievance resolution process.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Collective Bargaining
  • Apr 22, 2026
  • May 20, 2026
  • Jun 17, 2026
  • Jul 15, 2026
  • Aug 12, 2026
  • Sep 9, 2026
  • Oct 7, 2026

For a variety of reasons, workplace grievances aren't always resolved through negotiation and require arbitration. The outcome of the arbitration hearing is determined by the arbitrator, but as a participant in an arbitration you have a critical role in the process and the results. In this course you will review the typical components of a hearing and, using proven processes and tools, practice the steps of arbitration.

You'll discover what a hearing looks like, how a hearing proceeds, and who participates. You'll analyze cases to identify facts critical to your argument and develop a theory that will lead to an issue statement. By becoming familiar with strategies for questioning witnesses, you will be prepared to present your opening and closing arguments.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

  • Collective Bargaining
  • Apr 8, 2026
  • May 6, 2026
  • Jun 3, 2026
  • Jul 1, 2026
  • Jul 29, 2026
  • Aug 26, 2026
  • Sep 23, 2026

Symposium sessions feature three days of live, highly interactive virtual Zoom sessions that will explore today’s most pressing topics. The HR Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with peers and experts from the Cornell community and beyond. Using the context of your own experiences, you will take part in reflections and small-group discussions to build on the skills and knowledge you have gained from your courses.

Join us for the next Symposium, in which we’ll share experiences from across the industry, inspiring real-time conversations about best practices, innovation, and the future of human resources work. You will support your coursework by applying your knowledge and experiences to some of the most pressing topics and trends in the HR field. By participating in relevant and engaging discussions, you will discover a variety of perspectives and build connections with your fellow participants from across the industry.

All sessions are held on Zoom.

Future dates are subject to change. You may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete any certificate program. Once enrolled in your courses, you will receive information about upcoming events. Accessibility accommodations will be available upon request.

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How It Works

“
I decided to invest in my future and work toward a career in HR. As a dad of two with a full time job, this online program gave me the chance to work when I could. It was a fantastic way for me to develop my skills and advance my career.
‐ John F.
John F.

Frequently Asked Questions

Cornell’s Labor Relations Certificate is designed to help you build practical, job-ready capability in two areas that define day-to-day labor relations work: negotiating an agreement and operating within an agreement. Across five focused courses, you’ll learn how to navigate collective bargaining statutes, prepare a bargaining strategy tied to organizational goals, cost proposals and counterproposals during fast-moving negotiations, and handle workplace conflict through the grievance process and arbitration. The learning is applied throughout, so you have repeated opportunities to use your own workplace context—your industry, bargaining unit dynamics, and real issues—to practice the tools and decision points you’ll face on the job. You’ll also earn a Cornell University certificate issued electronically by Cornell’s ILR School/eCornell collaboration, signaling focused professional development in labor relations fundamentals.
This certificate is built to move you from “knowing the concepts” to being able to perform the work. Instead of only reading about bargaining or dispute resolution, you’ll repeatedly practice structured methods and templates used in real labor relations settings—such as a forcing vs. fostering strategy framework, SWOT-based preparation, proposal scoring, and a practical costing approach (cents-per-hour, compounding, and rollup). In the contract administration portion, you’ll use rules of contract interpretation and the CoGaP preparation form to organize facts, contract language, strengths/weaknesses, and a clear theory of the case. You’ll also have facilitated discussions and live learning elements built into courses (including a peer negotiation simulation), so you can pressure-test your thinking, compare approaches, and learn from how others handle the same kinds of labor-management challenges.
This program is designed for professionals who work in or alongside unionized environments and need a clear, practical foundation in labor relations. It’s a strong fit if you are: * A union steward, union staff member, or union official * An HR, operations, or labor relations professional supporting a unionized workforce * A manager or supervisor who needs to administer a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and handle issues appropriately * An attorney or general counsel working with contract interpretation, enforcement, grievances, or arbitration * An international professional working with U.S.-based, unionized organizations who needs a grounded understanding of the U.S. labor relations context
You’ll work through hands-on, scenario-based assignments that mirror what labor relations professionals do: classify which bargaining laws apply, prepare for negotiations, interpret contract language, cost proposals, and build a defensible approach to grievances and arbitration. Examples of what you’ll do include: * Identify which collective bargaining statutes apply to your situation and use that analysis to clarify rights, obligations, and next steps. * Prepare for bargaining by gathering and organizing data, setting negotiation objectives, and selecting a strategy that fits your context. * Participate in a real-time negotiation simulation with a peer to practice preparation, targets, walk-away points, and post-negotiation reflection. * Estimate the cost and relative value of wage and benefit changes using repeatable costing techniques and then craft a counterproposal. * Use structured preparation tools (including the CoGaP form) to analyze whether a complaint is truly a grievance, decide on a strategy, and prepare to present at a hearing or arbitration.
You’ll build a practical toolkit for labor relations work—so you can operate with more structure and confidence in situations that often move quickly and carry high stakes. By the end of the program, you’ll be better prepared to: * Translate organizational or member priorities into clear bargaining objectives and an actionable negotiation strategy. * Participate more effectively at the bargaining table by understanding phases, roles, and common points of breakdown (and what typically happens next). * Make and explain credible “ballpark” cost estimates during negotiations, including how time, compounding, and rollup can change the true cost of a proposal. * Interpret contract and grievance language using established rules of interpretation and prepare your case in a disciplined way. * Present a persuasive, well-organized arbitration approach—from case theory and evidence selection through openings and closings.
Each course includes a multi-part project that builds toward an output you can reuse in your work. You can expect applied work such as: * Statute identification and role clarification: determining whether employees fall under the NLRA, public-sector bargaining rules, or other relevant statutes. * Bargaining preparation deliverables: articulating bargaining goals, ranking objectives, and selecting a forcing/fostering strategy grounded in internal and external realities. * Negotiation practice: completing a live peer negotiation simulation and analyzing what happened against your plan. * Costing deliverables: converting wage/benefit changes into comparable units (such as cents per hour), factoring in compounding and rollup, and presenting a counterproposal. * Grievance and arbitration preparation: using the CoGaP form to distill facts and contract language, then drafting a clear issue statement and persuasive opening/closing framework supported by evidence and witness planning.
The program is designed for working professionals, with each course estimated at about 3–5 hours of effort per week. Most of your work is asynchronous, so you can complete readings, videos, discussions, and project work on your own schedule within each course’s weekly deadlines. You’ll also see optional live sessions offered within courses to reinforce learning through discussion. Across eCornell certificates, programs are typically completed over a few months with a steady weekly cadence, rather than requiring full-time study.
You don’t need deep prior labor relations experience to begin—this certificate is built as a fundamentals program for professionals who are new to labor relations responsibilities. That said, it helps if you have exposure to a unionized environment or anticipate working with a collective bargaining agreement. You’ll be asked to analyze contract language, weigh trade-offs, and apply tools to workplace scenarios, so bringing a real role, organization, or case context will make the work more immediately relevant.
Yes. You’ll learn how to prepare for and participate in negotiations, and you’ll also build the skills needed after a contract is signed—when contract interpretation, grievances, and dispute resolution drive much of the real work. On the negotiation side, you’ll connect organizational goals to bargaining objectives, consider external context, evaluate power and BATNAs, and select strategies that fit your situation. On the administration side, you’ll practice reading CBAs for critical clauses, applying interpretation rules, determining whether an issue is grievable, and preparing for arbitration when disputes are not resolved earlier.
Yes. A dedicated course focuses on the practical costing skills that help you estimate (not obsessively calculate) the cost impact of wages and benefits and explain those numbers clearly. You’ll refresh the core math and statistics used in costing (including weighted averages), then apply a repeatable approach to comparing proposals “apples to apples.” You’ll work with concepts such as cents-per-hour costing, compounding across contract years, and rollup impacts on overtime and wage-linked benefits. You’ll also practice communicating the difference between employer cost and employee value so stakeholders understand the trade-offs in a proposal or counterproposal.

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