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Implications of North American Conciliation and Arbitration for the Developing World - WAMR 2006 Vol. 17, No. 9

Author(s): 
Arnold M. Zack
Page Count: 
10 pages
Media Description: 
PDF from World Arbitration and Mediation Report (WAMR) 2006 Vol. 17, No. 9
Published: 
September, 2006
Jurisdictions: 
North America,
United States
Practice Areas: 
Employment,
Dispute Resolution & Litigation
Author Detail: 

Arnold Zack, Professor, Harvard School of Law, Worklife Program

PDF149.46 KB

$40.00
Description: 

 

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Perspectives
Implications of North American Conciliation and Arbitration for the Developing
World *
By Arnold Zack +
For those coming from the world of Works Councils, Industry Councils, Labor
Courts, and CCMAs, the system of worker protection in effect in the United States lags
far behind.
The U.S. System of Resolving Workplace Disputes
The United States is often hailed for development of tranquil dispute resolution
machinery negotiated between employers and unions as the model for avoiding
workplace stoppages and wildcat strikes.
Under United States and Canadian labor law, employees have the right to engage
in collective bargaining when a majority of employees vote to be represented by a union.
The employer is then required to negotiate in good faith with that government certified
union over wages, hours, and working conditions. If they are unable to reach agreement
on the terms of those contracts, the federal and state or provincial governments offer the
services of government-employed mediators to help them reach agreement through
mediation/conciliation. The parties also provide in their collective bargaining agreements
for a grievance system at which ever-higher levels of union and management discuss
allegations of contract violation, including improper discipline and termination. They
contract to submit unresolved disputes to mutually selected private arbitrators for final
and binding resolution, decisions which are endorsed and enforced by the courts.
Employees retain their individual rights to sue employers for violation of statutory
protections in courts of law.
There are some industries, such as newspaper publishing and rapid transit, in
which the parties have historically turned to private rather than government arbitrators to
resolve their interest disputes. And there are occasions in which the parties use mediation
to help resolve rights disputes either as a routine procedure or when grievances back up
and the parties introduce grievance mediation of rights disputes to reduce pending
grievance backlogs. A somewhat different procedure has been in place for the United
States airline and railroad industries. Since 1925, the federal government has provided a
parallel system of mediation and arbitration of both interest and rights disputes.