Approaches to the Management Labour Conflict

Jul 23, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – In dealing with dispute settlement machinery, approaches to conflict management must be considered by the involved tripartite parties of Government, Trade Unions and Employers representatives in dealing with labour disputes and their resolution. These approaches, as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) generally tend to fall into one of four possible categories, and are often resorted to in the following order:
i) Avoidance Approach – failure to deal with conflict.
ii) Power Approach – coercion to force another to do what it wants.
iii) Rights Approach– independent standard of right or fairness to resolve the conflict.
iv) Consensus Approach – endeavours to reconcile, compromise or accommodate positions or underling needs.

Ideally, the approaches to managing conflict effectively should be considered in the order of priority as:
i) CONSENSUS –settlement by the Parties through negotiations, conciliation/mediation.
ii) RIGHTS – settlement by an outside party; tribunal; arbitration.
iii) POWER – settlement by force; industrial actions; strikes; lockouts.
iv) AVOIDANCE – settlement by chance.

While working at the ILO, these were the principles I used for the conduct of seminars and workshops across the English and Dutch Speaking Caribbean, recognising that effective conflict management involves making a strategic choice of which approach to conflict management will be adopted – consensus, rights, or power. The conciliation/mediation is a dispute resolution process that reflects a consensus-based approach to conflict resolution. It is a voluntary process, with acceptable third party helping the parties to arrive at an agreed solution.
Arbitration is another type of third-party intervention. It is the stage which, in the context of the usual grievance representation procedure, is expected to follow closely upon an impasse or failure at conciliation to resolve a dispute.
However, arbitration need not await the failure of the conciliation process in situations where a dispute can have a severe social and economic impact, or where a prolonged dispute in a major industry/service could severely affect community life or where the ongoing operation of an industry is necessary to sustain the national economy. In such cases, states are empowered by law to refer the dispute to compulsory machinery such as arbitration, industrial tribunal, or the labour court as a means of resolving the disputes.
Arbitration, industrial tribunal, and labour court, like conciliation, involves third party intervention in the collective bargaining process. In conciliation, however, the conciliator is expected to use his powers of persuasion to enable the parties to narrow the areas of differences between them with a view to reaching acceptable solutions.
In arbitration, industrial tribunal and labour court proceedings, the arbitrator, or the adjudicator/judge is required to decide the issue on the merits of a case presented by the parties and make an award (tribunal) or judgment (court). Such an award or judgment is final and binding on the parties involved in the dispute, and they are required by law to give effect to that award or judgment.
In general, when an employer recognises a trade union as the sole bargaining agent of the workers in any undertaking, the parties usually sign a collective agreement for recognition and avoidance and settlement of disputes. Embodied in that recognition agreement is the grievance procedure in which the various stages through which a grievance/dispute can be processed are outlined. In most cases, if not all, it provides for arbitration as the final stage for the resolution of disputes. But there are, within industrial relations practice, several means by which the stage of arbitration could be reached.
In some agreements, either party may request that the matter under dispute should be taken to arbitration; if this happens, the other party has no option but to comply. In others, arbitration can only take place with the mutual consent of parties; and once one of the parties refuses to consent to arbitration, no arbitration proceedings can take place. The labour laws, with reference to essential industries or services, provide for arbitration or reference to an industrial tribunal, or a labour court with which the parties must comply. (Reference -Labour Administration Services in the Caribbean – A Guide by Samuel J. Goolsarran and published by the ILO.)

With thanks,
Samuel J. Goolsarran

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Approaches to the Management Labour Conflict

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