Why my head hurts

I thought about writing a long, bitter, angry, frustrated, entry about my dealings with management, but instead I'll just give one story that should be constructive. We meet with Labor Relations and to discuss one of the Union's Demands regarding employee movement (transfers, shift preference rights, etc.) and Management states that one of our stipulations is completely unreasonable and that they could not live with the repercussions of the language we wanted, at which point we were kind enough to inform them that we submitted the Demand just so we could make the language reflect the way we have been operating for 3 years. Now Labor Relations seemed to find less humor in the fact that they they couldn't live with the repercussions of our Demand, yet hadn't noticed these repercussions any of the dozens of times the situation had actually arisen and been handled in the manner we were demanding. I am not even in the actual negotiations, I've just had some interaction with the management bargainers as a resource for the Union Bargaining committee and my head hurts. I can't imagine what my Union superiors feel like.