The Zinnia and Service Workers Local H-56

A Collective Bargaining Simulation © John W. Budd, 2026

This is a collective bargaining simulation I created for use in labor relations courses. Student teams need to renegotiate the collective bargaining agreement (contract, for short) between The Zinnia, a 300-room hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Local H-56 of the International Union of Service Workers and Allied Employees. Participants must explore the hotel and union websites in order to learn about the environment and determine their priorities and constraints. Bargaining can take place in person or if the instructor allows, via an online meeting platform (e.g., Zoom, Teams) or other communication method.

In addition to traditional in-person courses, The Zinnia can work well with online or remote classes because all of the materials are online, and negotiations can be conducted using various online meeting platforms and supplemented as needed by online chat rooms for caucusing, shared Google Docs for proposal refinement, etc.

Here is the current version:

Zinnia-Generic Date 26: All dates are generic but the environment is circa 2026. The K-shaped economy generally, and the hospitality industry specifically, face many uncertainties and challenges.

This simulation accompanies my textbook, Labor Relations: Striking a Balance (McGraw Hill), but can also be used by other interested instructors.
 

This page was last modified on December 19, 2025.

John Budd Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies 3-300 Carlson School of Management University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455-0438 jbudd -at- umn.edu website | LinkedIn