EXPOSED
A large share of the job is document work AI already handles well: parsing collective bargaining agreements, drafting grievance responses, summarizing arbitration precedent, tracking wage and benefit comparables, and writing policy language. What does not automate is sitting across a table from a union bargaining committee, reading the room during a strike threat, and owning the concession you just made. The modal worker splits time between contract administration (exposed) and live negotiation and grievance handling (durable), and headcount pressure will land on the administration half.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. At 9, the split is real: the contract-interpretation memos, Article-by-Article redlines, grievance logs, and NLRB filing prep that fill most weeks are text-in/text-out work a model does competently, while the actual table sessions, caucus strategy, and Weingarten-rights investigatory interviews stay human — which is why this sits at 9 rather than the 4 of a pure document analyst or the 15 of a chief negotiator who does nothing but bargain.
Some physical or field component. The 5 reflects that you are not on a screen exclusively — you are in plant break rooms for grievance step meetings, walking the floor to see the disputed job assignment, and in hotel conference rooms for multi-day bargaining — but nothing you touch requires manual skill or exposes you to an uncontrolled site, so it lands just above desk-only rather than in the field band.
No licence, no signature requirement. A 3 is correct because nothing in the LMRA or NLRA requires you to hold a licence: SHRM-CP or the LRP credential is resume decoration, unfair labor practice charges are filed against the employer as a legal entity, and when a settlement goes wrong it is the company's outside labor counsel — a member of the bar — who carries the professional exposure, not you.
The human relationship is the product. 13 recognizes that your value to management is largely the standing relationship with a specific union business agent — the off-the-record call that kills a grievance before Step 3, the credibility that lets you say "this is my last number" and be believed — but it is capped there because that relationship is with a counterparty who is institutionally adversarial and rotates with union elections, unlike a therapist's or a wealth advisor's book.
Meaningful discretion. 13 fits because you decide unilaterally whether to settle a discharge grievance or take it to arbitration, what the employer's opening economic package is, and whether conduct crosses into a Section 8(a)(5) refusal to bargain — genuinely consequential ambiguous calls — but the final ratification, the strike authorization, and the litigate-or-settle decision go up to a VP or general counsel, keeping you below the band reserved for people whose signature is the last one.
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