"management has been more receptive" - that's a corpspeak for "nothing has changed", i.e. a bunch of vague statements with no substance that lazily nudge the reader to attribute something (severance pay) to someone, without saying that explicitly because that would be a lie (with potential legal troubles). If there were meaningful changes, they would be attributed to the union explicitly: "thanks to our union representative, we've come up with a revised agreement that gives all employees 8 weeks of vacation, 40% higher pay and eliminates the non-compete clause."