meaning of "want a baseline" [closed]

Solution 1:

A little background first—

This baseline is a metaphor that comes from surveying. Everything was done by highly redundant triangulation and a good sense of geodesy. But since all you had was azimuth angles and elevations, you needed one really good length measurement to get started. That is the baseline. During the survey of India, the baseline took several years and hundreds of people to construct. There's even a book about it. (The survey took 69 years to complete.)

Great Trigonometrical Survey measurement of the Calcutta baseline in 1832 by George Everest. The engraving is based on a sketch by James Prinsep. It shows a Ramsden chain being set on coffers supported by pickets. The tent is to avoid expansion due to heat. The boning telescope is used to align the links of the chain.

Date 1832

Source Reprint in Historical records of the survey of India. Volume 4. 1830-1843 by R.H. Phillimore. (1954)

Author Sketch by James Prinsep

The above image and description are from Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calcutta_Baseline_1832.jpg

So Baselines were a big deal. Setting one up today in the boonies would be a million dollar project.

There is a second use of the term as well. When drawing the lines and construction drawings of a ship, the draftsman includes a baseline in the profile view. Historically, the baseline represented the slipway the boat was to be built on, so it was often sloped relative to the ship's waterline. Measurements of the station heights could be pulled right from the slipway during construction.

The idea of a baseline retains this general idea today. It is a necessary reference in order for what follows to make sense or be of use.

I read the example sentence as you want to find circumstances where there is agreement on what constitutes fairness and decent terms and conditions—where the expectations of both sides are not in conflict. From there, the room for flexibility can be assessed by both sides and hopefully, will also not be in conflict.

Solution 2:

Setting aside its use in the context of some sports, which doesn't seem to be relevant here, baseline is a word that is normally used in the contexts that involve measurements of some kind. A baseline is, by definition, a basis for comparisons. The baseline is the magnitude of something under the normal, usual, typical conditions; knowing the baseline enables us to say that, on a particular occasion, the magnitude is unusually high or unusually low.

Normally, it makes no sense to say that one wants a baseline, except as an informal way of saying that one wants it to be ascertained what the baseline is. A baseline is, by definition, given; it is what it is regardless of anybody's wants. What one can want is for the magnitude in question to move above, or below the baseline, or to remain at the baseline.

The quoted sentence thus uses the word in way that, at a minimum, requires clarification.