The 2024 Labor Relations Institute (LRI) is in the books. Here we give you a few highlights from the engaging and wide-ranging conference.

For starters, 513 attendees made their way to Yakima for LRI, a new AWC record! Many of those were first-time attendees. LRI is typically one of AWC’s most popular conferences, and we’re happy that so many of our members continue to find it so valuable year after year. Thank you to the many state and local government HR professionals who were able to make the trip. We hope you had a great conference, and we hope to see you again next year!

Please let us know if you have ideas for topics for next year’s Labor Relations Institute, scheduled for May 7-9, 2025. You can send those ideas to us here.

And now, on to the top things we learned this year at LRI:

1. Keynote – It’s not about me, it’s not about now! LRI featured speaker Ron Holifield inspired us all with his take on why servant leadership is the right value system for local government leadership to adopt. Ron also gave us all a mantra to keep us grounded during challenging and volatile times: “It’s not about me, it’s not about now!” It’s a concept about being a better leader and enduring uncertainty and change.
2. Another year, another sellout crowd looking to understand leave laws. Our session on state and federal leave laws proved (once again) to be one of the most popular at LRI. Everyone from grizzled HR veterans to those new to the game wants to understand the variety of popular and complex leave programs, learn how they interact with each other, and find out how they impact their organization’s own leave programs.
3. Bargaining is top of mind for HR professionals.This year, we had several sessions dealing with the ins and outs of bargaining and collective bargaining agreements, including Basics of Bargaining, How to address common issues in bargaining, and Making sense of compensation analysis. All these sessions were well attended, which we suspect has to do with the large number of new government labor relations staff and the expansion of public sector unions in recent years.
4. Getting discipline right is important. Several well-attended sessions had to do with employee discipline, including: Navigating stressful interactions with challenging people, A litigator’s playbook to arbitration and ULP hearing preparation, Best practices for managing grievances and arbitrations, and Life after the investigation. As the titles suggest, each session dealt with a different aspect of the disciplinary process and emphasized the right way to carry it out for public employers.
5. Artificial intelligence is here to stay and presents important questions for employers. Although it’s been in the news, it’s not always understood how AI impacts the work of local governments, especially in their HR departments. Speakers Rachel See and Matt Scherer walked attendees thorough how AI is already being used by local governments, especially in the recruitment process and employee management, and what they should consider in deploying this new technology, especially in regard to potential discrimination. Our speakers also looked at the cutting edge of regulation for AI in Washington and other states.

You can check out our photos of the 2024 LRI conference here.

Thanks to all those that made the 2024 LRI a success, including our speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors. We’d also like to offer a special thanks to the staff at the Yakima Convention Center and staff at our hotel vendors that made LRI run so smoothly. Finally, a big thanks to the City of Yakima for continuing to host us. See you next year!