Labor Disputes: Types, Measures, and Resolution Procedures
Labor Disputes and Conflict Resolution
Types of Labor Disputes
Labor disputes can be collective, plural, or individual. Conflicts of interest arise when legal disputes cannot be resolved through the courts and are based on the interpretation or approval of a norm. These must be resolved before a judge.
Measures of Conflict
Workers’ mobilizations begin to demand what they believe is best. These instruments of pressure can include meetings, assemblies, and demonstrations, allowing the conflict to escalate.
Classes of Measures:
- Snakes: Demonstrations and strikes in the workplace by workers who are not trying to strike a value.
- Stitches: Attempts to convince workers who want to exercise their right to work to join the strike.
- Boycott: Blocking products or contractual workers.
- Sabotage: Willful destruction of labor resources.
- Property Occupation: Stopping the flow of raw materials into or products out of the company, essentially a takeover of the company by production workers.
- Strike: Interruption of work carried out by common agreement among workers in protest.
Employer Responses to These Measures:
- Forward Production: Supplementing the work not done by bringing the work to other subcontracted centers, which requires significant expenses.
- Power Management and Control: In principle, non-striking workers must accept the job and the employer assigns them based on need.
- Power of Police: Ensuring that non-striking workers can do their work without interference.
- Penalties: Penalizing workers who illegally strike.
- Economic Bonuses: Anti-strike bonuses may be raw, but it is difficult to prove their legitimacy.
Other situations may prevent workers from deciding whether to exercise a fundamental right. For example, a worker whose contract expires in a month may not strike for fear of not being rehired.
Collective Action and Prohibited Practices
- Blacklisting: Reporting workers to prevent their future hiring, which is prohibited.
- Insurance-Strike: Insurance for entrepreneurs to remake losses resulting from conflicts, also prohibited.
- No Collaboration: Employers are required to participate in certain trade union activities, as required by law.
- Esquirrolaje (Strikebreaking): Recruitment from outside the company to replace striking workers, which is prohibited.
- Lockout: Closing the company. The law allows closing when a strike endangers property or people. Maintaining an open enterprise costs much more than the losses caused by the strike.
Conflict Resolution Procedures
Self-Resolution:
A mechanism created by parties involved in a conflict.
Heteronomous Resolution:
A third party resolves the conflict.
*Autonomous procedures can only be used in legal conflicts, not conflicts of interest. Autonomous procedures can solve both types of conflicts cheaply.
- Conflict of Interest: Opposing sets of interests where parties want to change the rules, but neither party is in breach of the law.
- Legal Conflict: Disagreement on the interpretation of a rule of law, legal or conventional procedures.
*Among self-resolution methods, three mechanisms are often discussed:
- Reconciliation: The mediator tries to re-establish a broken bargain or start negotiations.
- Mediation: The mediator proposes solutions to the conflict, which the parties agree to take action on.
- Arbitration: The arbitrator resolves the conflict through a binding resolution called an arbitration award. This requires the agreement of the parties to choose the arbitrator and comply with the mandatory arbitration award. Mandatory arbitration exists, but it is exceptional. Most legal proceedings require reconciliation before proceeding. If one of these systems (or SERCLA ASEC) has been used before, conciliation is not required.