Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

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Are the skills of the labor-management mediator transferable to racial and community disputes? In the last issue of The Arbitration Journal, if was suggested that community dispute mediators, unlike labor mediators, must be concerned primarily with settling matters "right," not lust with avoiding conflict, and that a key factor in determining "right" was the mediator's view of the settlement firms. Because of these differences, it was concluded that labor-management mediation experience has limited transferability to community disputes. The authors of this article take issue. While they agree that statutory rights should not be compromised, they point out that most community disputes do not involve legal rights." in most cases, it is not the mediator who should determine either goals or success, but the parties themselves. This, however, does not make the mediator a neutral in the classic sense. As an advocate of negotiations and shared decision- making, he, like the labor mediators of the I930's. is involved in a radical challenge to the status quo.