Disseminating cutting edge theories and empirical research in the field of industrial relations and conflict management, from an interdisciplinary approach, and firmly based in theories on human behaviour in relation to work and organizations. Formally the series will publish monographs and contributed or edited volumes from leading psychology and other social sciences scholars. Specifically, the series integrates theories and research from industrial relations (sociology, business, law and psychology), with those on conflict management, mediation and more generally well-being and productive behaviour in the workplace. Volumes in this series respond to the demands of policymakers and the public, remaining relevant and applicable for science, industry and society. Delivering relevant research and conclusions from local, regional, national and international perspectives. The aim of the series is to contribute to cooperative and constructive relations in organizations at three levels: organizational level, team level and interpersonal level. The series will contribute to the existing academic research and literature by providing an advanced publication platform for improving the science of understanding industrial relations and conflict management. Publishing volumes which deliver valuable contributions from the range of developing perspectives on this subject.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13458
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Conflict is an inevitable part of working life in all its relations. Conflicts appear between individual colleagues, as well as between teams, departments, or between professional units. Of old, conflicts in the relation between employers and employees have received extensive attention and are at the basis of what is called ‘industrial relations’ or ‘labor relations’. Particularly, with the rise of large-scale industrialization in the nineteenth century, conflict between ‘capital’ and ‘labor’ has been a central theme, and according to many is of a fundamental nature. Others argue that not conflict, however, cooperation is at the core of industrial relations. Employers and employees negotiate freely an agreement, meeting each other’s interests. Negotiations can be made between individual workers and the employer (the so-called i-deals) and between collectives of workers (collective labor agreements). The negotiations can, however, get stuck and the conflicts of interest between employer and employees—or their representatives—can escalate. Power relations, more than mutual interests, might determine the conflict dynamics, resulting in deadlock, strikes, or layoffs. The tough negotiations, for example, in the case of Ryanair for several years, illustrate this. Strikes at different locations are countered by transferring airplanes and flights to other European countries. Collective conflicts also can occur when parties do not feel the agreement which is made, is kept. Such conflicts of rights (the perceived violation of one parties’ rights) have also received considerable attention, and many cases are brought to the labor courts, or to alternative forms of dispute resolution, such as mediation, arbitration, or conciliation. Here we are at the central topic of this volume. In academic literature mediation, or other forms of third-party intervention in collective labor conflicts have received surprisingly little attention. Surprising, for at least two reasons. First, the societal impact of escalating collective labor conflicts is large, with often serious ‘collateral damage’ for others than the primary parties. Second, the field of mediation and third-party intervention is developing rapidly in many domains, and receives more and more also academic attention. Mediation in collective labor conflicts, however, has been neglected mostly and has many different features compared to mediation in other domains, such as divorce mediation or mediation in individual labor conflicts. Mediation in collective labor conflict has a long and also institutionalized tradition. In most societies, the terminology is different, and is referred to this process as conciliation in labor disputes, as a relative informal process of facilitated negotiation. Alternatively, most societies have long traditions in forms of mediation/arbitration, where a committee of ‘wise persons’ organizes a hearing, investigates the case, and comes with recommendations to the conflicting parties on the content of the case. Such recommendations can, however not need to be, be binding for the parties. A large variety of third-party regulations and practices have emerged all around the globe. The ILO has done a great job in providing information on many such arrangements.
This handbook aims to provide an up to date and insight view of global regulations, practices, and recommendations for the further development of third-party assistance in collective labor conflicts.
The handbook consists of four parts.
Part I. Chapters 1 and 2 give an extensive introduction of the concepts and current literature. To this aim Chap. 1 offers a new model for the structural analysis of mediation in collective labor conflicts, while Chap. 2 offers a new model for the process analysis of the conflict and related third-party interventions.
Part II. In this part, the procedures and practices in 12 EC member states are presented. This part is the result of an EU-sponsored project investigating the state of the art in the EC. For that purpose, multi-method studies were conducted in each of these 12 countries, and the results condensate in the present volume. The cross-country comparison for these 12 chapters is presented in Chap. 15 .
Part III. In this part, five societies are presented with a rich tradition in mediation in labor relations and a highly dynamic and different tradition in industrial relations. With new studies from Australia, China, India, South-Africa, and the USA, this book covers most of the industrialized world.
Part IV consists of an integrative chapter, taking stock of the wide variety of practices and noting good practices and global trends. The chapter makes clear that mediation in collective labor conflicts is a widely used practice, with a need for further professionalization in many societies, to meet the needs of a changing labor force, changing organizations, and changing industrial relations.
We wish this book contributes to that professionalization, and thereby to the cooperative and innovative management of collective labor conflicts.