Schoolchildren in Birmingham (UK) are embracing the idea of resolving disputes through mediation. The revolution's definitely coming...see below from the Birmingham Mail.

YOUNGSTERS at Warren Farm Primary School know the best way to stop bullying – speak out!

And to make sure that all children have the chance to do just that, the Kingstanding school has trained up teams of little playground pals and mediators to ensure peace at playtime.

Roaming the playgrounds, the team ensure youngsters have someone to call on should an argument begin or should they be feeling vulnerable.

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Former playground pal who has now graduated to mediator, Vicky Smart, aged ten, explains: “If someone is feeling lonely at playtime they can go to the playground pal and they will play games with them.

“If someone says they don’t want to play with you and starts an argument then you go to the mediator. They listen to both of you and then they help you to become friends again.”

And the children know if this does not work they can speak out to staff.

“If you know something is happening then you should tell a teacher,” says fellow mediator, ten-year-old Craig Tracey, who is also chair of the school council.

“If you tell a teacher, they can do something to make it stop.”

With anti-bullying assemblies, anti-bullying weeks and friendship and care built into the weekly curriculum and circle time, all the children at Warren Farm have learnt the message.

“Bullying is being nasty and hurting each other inside and outside,” says seven-year-old Terri Bryan. “If I saw something I would tell a teacher or I would get a mediator to find out what was the matter.”

And the youngsters have learned the distinction between an isolated incident and persistent targeting.

“If someone picks on you and then it carries on and carries on that is bullying,” says nine-year-old Shyanne Bryant, who is hoping to become a mediator this year.

“Bullying isn’t nice. If I knew it was happening I would tell a teacher so they could tell them off.”

Bullying can also take many forms.

“Bullying is when someone hits you one day and then the next or when they keep calling you names,” says nine-year-old Lauryn Peace.

“You have to tell someone because then it will stop.”

And seven-year-old Joseph Stanley says bullying has no place in their playground.

“If something happens you talk to the mediators or the playground pals.” says Joseph. “It is better to be nice to people than to hurt their feelings because then they will be nice to you.”

Govt appointing qazis ahead of shariah law enforcement

* NWFP law minister says qazi court will allow 15 days to mediate with litigating parties’ consent to find an ‘out-of-court settlement’

By Daud Khattak

PESHAWAR: The NWFP government on Saturday formed a committee to appoint new qazis (judges) ahead of enforcing the Sharai Nizam-e-Adl Regulations, 1999 in Malakand division, officials said.

A meeting was held to review the number of new qazis, financing for the proposed law and the role of musalleh (mediator) in the new system. The meeting was attended by NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti, senior ministers Bashir Bilour and Rahim Dad Khan, Law Minister Barrister Arshad Abdullah, Minister for Environment Wajid Ali Khan, Finance Minister Humayun Khan and secretaries and officers of various government departments.

Talking to Daily Times, Law Minister Barrister Arshad Abdullah said that the meeting proposed minor amendments to the law, which would be worked out in the next few days.

Qazi court: He said a qazi court would allow 15 days to the mediator, with the consent of the petitioner and respondent, to find an ‘out-of-court settlement’ to a dispute whenever a case is brought before it.

If the mediator succeeds to decide the case in the given time, the decision would have the legal status, otherwise, the case would return to the court and would be decided through normal court proceedings, he added.

An official of the law department said that the government was planning to increase the number of qazis to ensure that the number of under-trial cases with a judge did not exceed 150.

The official said that the law and finance ministries would decide on how to arrange finances for the new law. He said the draft would be sent to the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, from where it would be forwarded to the Law Ministry and then to the president for approval.

Last updated September 13, 2008 11:21 p.m. PT

By JAMES WALLACE
P-I REPORTER

As a strike by the Machinists union against The Boeing Co. entered its second week Saturday, the head of the company's jetliner-making business said he hopes the two sides can be talking in a couple of weeks and that a settlement can be reached within a month.

"It takes time for people to calm down and to be ready to talk again," said Scott Carson, president and chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

"I would hope that within a couple of weeks we would be in a place where we are talking. I would certainly hope that within a month we would find a resolution, but it is important that it be resolved in a way that allows the company to remain successful and allows us to preserve the important thing to us, which is the right to manage the business."

James Bell, Boeing's chief financial officer, told a Morgan Stanley analysts' conference recently that he would be "pleased" if the strike only lasted a month.

On other matters, Carson said he does not know if the strike will delay the first flight of the 787 Dreamliner into next year. Boeing had been saying before the strike that first flight would take place before the end of the fourth quarter.

	Carson

"If the strike were over tomorrow, I think I would tell you we have a really good shot at making it (by the end of the year). If it drags on another week, the odds are not as good but there is still a shot. So the next question is when would we absolutely miss our target, and I'm not smart enough to answer that right now."

Carson spoke with the Seattle P-I Saturday evening, shortly before he was to give the keynote address at a "Captains of Industry" gala put on by the Tabor 100, a Pacific Northwest association of African-American businesspeople and entrepreneurs. The event was held at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.

In the interview on the sidelines of the event, Carson addressed a wide range of strike-related issues, from how far apart the sides are to an initiative the company has undertaken at the Everett plant to speed up work on the Dreamliner once Machinists have returned to work.

He also spoke about the strike on a personal level.

"The most down day"

This is Carson's first strike as head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. In September 2006 he replaced Alan Mulally, who left to run Ford Motor Co. By training, Carson is not an engineer. Among the jobs he has held at Boeing was chief financial officer for the commercial airplanes unit. He later headed the jetliner sales team before being named president and chief executive of the commercial business.

Carson, who joined Boeing in 1973 as a financial analyst on the B-1 bomber program, often talks about his affection for the company that his dad worked for as a test pilot.

Carson said that Monday was one of the worst days ever for him at Boeing. The strike had started at 12:01 a.m. Sept. 6. Two days later, about 25,000 of the striking Machinists would normally have been going to work at Boeing's factories and facilities in the Puget Sound area -- many of them making airplanes.

Boeing has stopped making commercial jetliners because of the strike, which industry analysts have said is probably costing the company about $100 million a day in revenue. It will try to deliver jets that were completed before the strike.

"You go through huge cycles," Carson said. "Monday was probably the most down day I've had at Boeing in some 35 years."

He spent part of the day sending letters to Boeing's many customers that have placed a record backlog of orders for its jets, including the 787. That backlog totals about $275 billion.

Carson said the letters explained that "we are working very hard to deliver product that we can deliver and to mitigate schedule impacts of those aircraft that can't be delivered."

He said he has heard back from about two dozen customers and expects to hear back from many more this coming week.

Most of the customers have had two reactions, Carson said. They say they understand and want Boeing to resolve the strike as soon as possible. "But they say it's important to resolve this on economic terms that do not adversely affect the industry."

Their other reaction, Carson said, is to tell him to "do everything you can not to affect my deliveries."

So far apart

This is the fourth strike in two decades against Boeing by the

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, arguably the most powerful manufacturing union left in the U.S.

In 2005, the last time the union struck and Boeing's airplane factories were idled for almost a month, the company agreed to most of the union's demands that prompted the strike. The company said at the time it had mainly "moved the value around to where the union said they wanted to go."

Back then, the parties reached a new accord after secret negotiations in Washington, D.C., that involved IAM leaders as well as Mulally. Boeing agreed to raise the pension multiplier to $70 a month for each year of service, up from its top offer before the strike of $66. That was short of the $80 a month sought by the union.

On this strike, Boeing and the union have not had direct talks since a few hours before the strike began. But Carson said the company has been in contact, as has the union, with a federal mediator who helped bring the two sides together in a last-ditch effort to avert the strike. Those talks were held in Orlando, Fla., on Sept. 4, the day after the union voted 80 percent to reject Boeing's final offer on a new three-year contract. The vote to strike was even higher - 87 percent. That was well above the 66.7 percent required by union rules for a walkout.

Carson flew to Orlando, along with Boeing's chief labor negotiator, Doug Kight, to take part in those talks with union leaders and the federal mediator. The union had agreed to a 48-hour contract extension, but the talks ended without a new agreement.

Carson said he can't discuss specifics of what happened in Orlando. But he did say the federal mediator continues to look for ways to bring the sides together again.

"He has been in touch with both sides, looking for opportunities that suggest there is some reason to meet," Carson said.

"As we continue to have those discussions perhaps he will find reasons for us to do it (talk directly). But right now, as we said when we came back from Florida, we have worked very, very hard -- both parties -- to try and find an avenue but we were so far apart it just didn't make sense to continue."

Outsourcing at issue

Although the union has said that Boeing's final offer presented before the strike on wages, pensions and medical all must be improved before the dispute can be settled, the biggest roadblock to an agreement is likely to be job security and outsourcing.

The union wants language in the new contract that would give it more authority over outsourcing work and more job security for Machinists.

Over the past several years, Boeing has outsourced much of the airplane manufacturing work that it once did. It is now focused more on design and final assembly. The 787 Dreamliner program took outsourcing to a new level. The composite wings and fuselage of the 787 are made in Italy and Japan and by non-Boeing companies in Wichita, Kan., and South Carolina. Boeing workers perform final assembly of the large sections at the Everett plant. The union knows it's too late to turn back the clock on this new production method, but it wants more say closer to home.

In 2002, during talks on a new contract, Boeing inserted language that has allowed it to use outside vendors to deliver airplane parts directly to the factory floor - work previously handled by the union. This has been a festering thorn in the union's side ever since. Its members voted down the 2002 contract but came up short of the two-thirds vote needed for a strike.

This time, the union wants changes in that language. The union does have the right to bid for work that might be shipped out, but only for programs that were around in 2002. It wants to bid on work for new and future programs.

Tom Wroblewski, the union's president, said the union also seeks

language in the contract that preserves jobs. Keeping the union's head count at current levels for the three years of the contract would be job security, especially since Boeing has a record backlog with enough planes on order for seven years of production.

Carson said it's impossible to know if outsourcing and job security will be the main roadblock in reaching an agreement. He said the union has not narrowed its issues to a few critical ones.

"We have repeatedly asked the union what the most critical issues are to them," he said. "And repeatedly what we have gotten back is two or three pages worth of items and every one of them is as important as any other. And that really stymies you in terms of being able to address the issues that are truly important to them. We continue to ask the union, 'Tell us what are your two or three really critical items' to see if there is some way to adjust the package (final offer). But unless they help us by limiting what they are asking for it really becomes very challenging."

On the issue of outsourcing and job security, Carson said the company is "delighted" to keep work inside the factory rather than going outside, but only if the union can show it can do the same work just as economically.

"But what gets missed in this whole discussion about jobs is that we have added about 8,000 jobs (with the Machinists union) during this three-year contact and another 4,000 jobs for SPEEA (the union representing Boeing's engineers and technical workers.)"

"This concern that somehow all the jobs are going away is not borne out by all the facts," Carson said.

Carson said the company can't guarantee jobs as the union wants.

"What we are most interested in is maintaining our ability to manage the place," Carson said. "To provide job guarantees, if you will -- and I have heard those kinds of words from them -- in an uncertain marketplace � Just look around the world today. We just saw Alaska Airlines announce big cuts (about 1,000 job cuts)."

He said job guarantees "ties your hands in the long term to manage this business and make it profitable."

"World-class offer"

In addition to improvements in the contract on outsourcing and job security, the union has said it wants much more in the economic package.

On average, a Machinist makes a base wage of about $27 an hour, or $56,000 a year without overtime. The union says more than 4,000 members make less than $30,000 a year. Many new hires start at just over $12 an hour, the union points out.

The union had made it clear that it wanted much more this time, after what it considered subpar contracts in 2002 and again in 2005.

Boeing has said its final offer would add about $34,000 in compensation for the average Machinist over three years.

In addition to an 11 percent wage increase over three years, Machinists would have received a $2,500 bonus if a majority had approved the contact. They also would have received a lump sum of either $2,500 or 6 percent of their annual wage, with overtime. On average, that would have amounted to $3,900, according to Boeing.

The union was seeking a wage raise of about 13 percent.

Boeing's final offer would also have raised the pension multiplier to $80 a month for each year of service.

The union members would also have received anincentive pay plan. They could earn up to 20 extra days of pay a year. And the minimum pay rate for Machinists would be raised $2.28 an hour.

Carson called it a "world class" offer.

"This was a best-in-the industry package," he said.

"We really did put our best and final offer on the table, in terms of those economics. We thought long and hard about it. We continue to believe that this was the right approach for us to take. By any measure. The wage offer was better than anything offered in the industry this year. The medical package was far better than anything that has been offered in the industry. The retirement package was significantly better than the industry's last best settlement, which was Lockheed Martin."

Asked if Boeing is inclined to make that economic package better than what was left on the table when the union struck, Carson said:

"We don't see tremendous motivation to go much higher."

He said it is important for Boeing to balance "affordability and competiveness."

"We offered a world class package but a package that still allows us to be competitive in the markets that we have to address, and by being competitive, we can create the jobs, which is the other thing they are interested in."

The union has been highly critical of Boeing's final offer on medical.

Carson said he was "flabbergasted" by the union's response to the offer Boeing made on medical, which he said was significantly improved and still offered a no-cost option.

Overall, he said, the average Machinist would be paying no more than an additional $6 or $7 per month for a better medical plan.

"We did our very best to share the increase and limit the size of the increase that our employees would have to shoulder."

Ripple effects

The ripple effects of the strike have been felt as far away as Europe, where low-cost carrier RyanAir has delayed opening a major new hub because it won't be getting 737s ordered from Boeing.

In Wichita, Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage for the 737 and the nose section for the 787 and other Boeing models, went to a three-day work week because of the strike. In Spokane, Triumph Composite Systems, which makes air ducts and composite floors for Boeing jets, said it will lay off nearly half of its 550 workers because of the strike and could further reduce its work force by 20 percent if the strike goes past Sept. 21.

But some 787 suppliers may be using the strike to catch up with the backlog of work.

"It's nice to actually get caught up a bit, but it will be a different story if this things stretches more than a month," one unnamed Boeing supplier told the Wall Street Journal in a story Friday.

Carson said there is no upside to the strike regarding the 787.

"I've been asked if that was really our plan -- did we really want a strike (so 787 partners could catch up). "Absolutely not."

"We went through about 15 monthswhere we have disappointed our customers with delays in the 787. The last thing I want, or wanted, was anything that might potentially further delay the airplane."

He said Boeing's global 787 suppliers have been making steady progress.

Boeing had hoped to fly the 787 before the end of the year. If the strike delays that until 2009, it's not clear what that slippage will mean for the planned delivery of 25 787s by the end of 2009.

The program has experienced a series of delays, mainly because of a new production system in which Boeing's global partners supply the wings and fuselage of the plane, with Boeing workers in Everett only responsible for final assembly. Airlines have ordered 900 of the fuel-efficient jets, but some won't get their first planes for up to two or more years from the promised delivery dates.

Carson said it is too soon to know the strike's impact on the delivery of those first 25 planes.

"What we do know isthat if first flight slips it will put pressure on the flight test program until we get the plane certified. We are going to do our very best to not let it (the strike) adversely impact our customers. But there are a lot of variables in play right now and the biggest one is getting the strike resolved."

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