Labor Relations Commons^™

Shaping The Agenda 1: Exploring The Competencies, Skills And Behaviours Of Effective Workplace Mediators, Brian M. Barry, Margaret Bouchier, Alec Coakley, Deirdre Curran, James Dillon, Cyril Joyce, Treasa Kenny, Oksana Kokaylo, Louisa Meehan, Genevieve Murray

Reports

This report outlines what is currently known about workplace mediation: its benefits, styles and strategies, its expected outcomes and training challenges. It also identifies an urgent requirement for Irish research in light of the increased promotion of mediation at state level in Ireland. It outlines some international experiences of the difficulties faced in balancing high quality accreditation and regulation with innovation and growth.

Shaping The Agenda 2: Implications For Workplace Mediation Training, Standards And Practice In Ireland, Brian M. Barry, Margaret Bouchier, Alec Coakley, Deirdre Curran Dr, James Dillon, Cyril Joyce, Treasa Kenny, Oksana Meehan, Louisa Meehan, Genevieve Murray

Reports

The Report and its sister report, Shaping the Agenda 1, give a fascinating insight into the world of workplace mediation in Ireland and abroad. It identifies key issues in relation to mediator skills, competencies and behaviours in this sector of mediation. Of enormous significance is the application of this research to the Irish context and specifically to the setting and maintenance of standards of training and practice in relation to workplace mediation. This work has put the MII, as the professional association for mediators in Ireland, in a position to build standards and policies on solid, detailed and considered research, …

Justice Or Just Between Us? Empirical Evidence Of The Trade-Off Between Procedural And Interactional Justice In Workplace Dispute Resolution, Zev Eigen, Adam Seth Litwin

Adam Seth Litwin

In this article, the authors examine the relationship between an employer’s implementation of a typical dispute resolution system (DRS) and organizational justice, perceived compliance with the law, and organizational commitment. They draw on unique data from a single, geographically expansive, U.S. firm with more than 100,000 employees in more than 1,000 locations. Holding all time-constant, location-level variables in place, they find that the introduction of a DRS is associated with elevated perceptions of interactional justice but diminished perceptions of procedural justice. They also find no discernible effect on organizational commitment, but a significant boost to perceived legal compliance by the …

The Nlra Defamation Defense: Doomed Dinosaur Or Diamond In The Rough, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] This Article explores an underappreciated and promising NLRA protection of collective activity. It elaborates the NLRA’s role as a defense in state defamation cases. Specifically, this Article explains how the “NLRA defamation defense” frees defendants from some forms of defamation liability when the allegedly defamatory statements are made during labor disputes. The defense has no effect on defamation liability in what this Article refers to as “more egregious” state defamation law cases. However, the defense forecloses liability in “less egregious” state defamation law cases. It makes it harder for defamation plaintiffs to win their cases because it requires them …

Saturns And Rickshaws Revisited: What Kind Of Employment Arbitration System Has Developed?, Alexander Colvin, Kell Pike

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] In this article, we examine a new, more detailed dataset of employment arbitration cases administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA), which includes information on many important aspects of these cases that are not included in the California Code of Civil Procedure disclosure requirements. With the availability of this new data, we are able to revisit Estreicher's argument and look at the question of whether employment arbitration has become a new Saturn system of justice providing better access to employees and to what degree it is different from the Cadillac-Rickshaw system of justice in employment litigation. We begin by …

Comparing Mandatory Arbitration And Litigation: Access, Process, And Outcomes, Alexander Colvin, Mark D. Gough

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] What do we know about mandatory arbitration and its impact? Some existing studies have examined samples of employment arbitration cases, usually obtained from the American Arbitration Association (AAA), which is currently the largest arbitration service provider in the employment area. Although some early studies found relatively high employee win rates and damage awards in arbitration, comparable to those in litigation, these results were mainly based on arbitration under individually negotiated agreements or in the securities industry and involved relatively highly paid individuals. More recent studies using larger samples of cases based on mandatory arbitration agreements find much lower employee …

Individual Employment Rights Arbitration In The United States: Actors And Outcomes, Alexander Colvin, Mark Gough

Alexander Colvin

The authors examine disposition statistics from employment arbitration cases administered over an 11-year period by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) to investigate the process of dispute resolution in this new institution of employment relations. They investigate the predictors of settlement before the arbitration hearing and then estimate models for the likelihood of employee wins and damage amounts for the 2,802 cases that resulted in an award. Their findings show that larger-scale employers who are involved in more arbitration cases tend to have higher win rates and have lower damage awards made against them. This study also provides evidence of a …

Newsroom: Yelnosky On Firefighters Decision, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Employment Arbitration: Empirical Findings And Research Needs, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] There is vociferous opposition to employers forcing pre-dispute arbitration agreements on employees. Critics argue that employees are not voluntary participants in the process, which they say unfairly favors employers. Advocates of mandatory arbitration dispute these charges and argue that arbitration offers employees and employers significant advantages over litigation. For example, they argue, among other things, that that litigation is not as accessible as arbitration because lawyers will not take low value employment cases on a contingency basis.

Critics of mandatory employment arbitration have moved the debate into the legislative arena. Bills have been introduced in state legislatures and in …

Participation Versus Procedures In Non-Union Dispute Resolution, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

This study examines the resolution of conflict in non-union workplaces. Employee participation in workplace decision making and organizational dispute resolution procedures are two factors hypothesized to influence the outcomes of conflicts in the non-union workplace. The adoption of high involvement work systems is found to produce an organizational context in which both triggering events for conflict, such as disciplinary and dismissal decisions, and dispute resolution activities, such as grievance filing and appeals, are reduced in frequency. Dispute resolution procedures have mixed impacts. Greater due process protections in dispute resolution procedures in non-union workplaces are associated with increased grievance filing and …

The Emerging Anglo-American Model: Convergence In Industrial Relations Institutions?, Alexander Colvin, Owen R. Darbishire

Alexander Colvin

The Thatcher and Reagan administrations led a shift towards more market oriented regulation of economies in the Anglo-American countries, including efforts to reduce the power of organized labor. In this paper, we examine the development of employment and labor law in six Anglo-American countries (the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand) from the Thatcher/Reagan era to the present. At the outset of the Thatcher/Reagan era, the employment and labor law systems in these countries could be divided into three pairings: the Wagner Act model based industrial relations systems of the United States and Canada; the voluntarist system …

American Workplace Dispute Resolution In The Individual Rights Era, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

This article presents a theoretical conceptualization of the rise of alternative dispute resolution and its impact on American employment relations in the individual rights era. The idea of an industrial relations system advanced by Dunlop is no longer a plausible general approach for understanding American employment relations given the decline of organized labor. This article examines the question of whether a new individual employment rights-based system of employment relations has replaced it. The old New Deal industrial relations system was based on three pillars: labor contracts that provided a web of rules governing the workplace; economic strikes, actual or threatened, …

Final-Offer Arbitration And Public-Safety Employees: The Massachusetts Experience, David B. Lipsky, Thomas A. Barocci

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] We conclude that, in terms of its impact on the bargaining process, final-offer arbitration has had a mixed record in Massachusetts. On the one hand, the law must probably be given some credit for preventing police and firefighter strikes; in addition, the rate of arbitration usage was remarkably low compared to experience in other states. On the other hand, the law probably led to more impasses in police and fire bargaining (although the experience in the commonwealth was still favorable compared to other states) and reduced the effectiveness of the mediation stage of the impasse procedures. Perhaps most important, …

Final-Offer Arbitration And Salaries Of Police And Firefighters, David B. Lipsky, Thomas A. Barocci

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] Did final-offer arbitration have a discernible impact on the salaries of police and firefighters in Massachusetts during the 3-year trial period which ended June 30, 1977? To analyze this question, we collected information on the maximum salary paid to police patrolmen, police sergeants, firefighters, and fire lieutenants for a large sample of Massachusetts municipalities. We integrated these data with police and fire impasse experiences and added several economic and environmental characteristics for each Massachusetts municipality. Then we performed several tests of the economic impact of final-offer arbitration.

The Outcome Of Impasse Procedures In New York Schools Under The Taylor Law, John E. Drotning, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

The effectiveness of New York’s Taylor Law, and of the Public Employment Relations Board established under it, may be measured in a number of ways. One is to see whether it does, in fact, eliminate strikes of public employees. Another is to compare the results of mediation and fact-finding under the Board’s auspices with settlements arrived at without intervention of PERB. The authors, who are engaged in a broad study of the latter kind, present some of their findings as they relate to the public school system during 1969 and 1970.

Conceptual Foundations: Walton And Mckersie's Subprocesses Of Negotiations, Thomas A. Kochan, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] Walton and McKersie's 1965 book, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, provides much of the conceptual underpinnings of what grew into the modern-day teaching of negotiations in business, public policy, law, and other professional schools. We therefore believe that it is useful to outline the basic concepts and ideas introduced by these authors. We do so, however, with a word of caution. There is no substitute for the original. Every student should have the pleasure of struggling (as we did the first time it was assigned to us as students) with the tongue twisters like "attitudinal structuring" and the …

Resolving Workplace Disputes In The United States: The Growth Of Alternative Dispute Resolution In Employment Relations, David B. Lipsky, Ronald L. Seeber

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] For more than a decade a "quiet revolution" has been occurring m the American system of justice. There has been a dramatic growth in the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to resolve disputes that might otherwise be handled through litigation. We define ADR as the use of any form of mediation or arbitration as a substitute for the public judicial or administrative process available to resolve a dispute (Lipsky and Seeber, 1998A}. In the United States mediation, arbitration, and their variants ordinarily are private processes in which the disputants themselves select, hire, and pay the third-party neutral who …

Patterns Of Adr Use In Corporate Disputes, David B. Lipsky, Ronald L. Seeber

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] Is it reasonable to expect that the use of ADR by U.S. corporations will continue to grow in the future? We asked the respondents in our survey a series of questions designed to determine their view on this issue....In general, a large majority of the respondents in our survey believe that they are "likely" or "very likely" to use mediation in the future—38% and 46%, respectively. They were more cautious about the use of arbitration. Only 24% said they were very likely to use it in the future, while 47% said they were likely to do so. More than …

The Social Contract And Dispute Resolution: The Transformation Of The Social Contract In The United States Workplace And The Emergence Of New Strategies Of Dispute Resolution, David B. Lipsky, Ronald L. Seeber

David B Lipsky

In recent years, a significant amount of public and academic attention has been devoted to the unravelling of the so-called 'New Deal' social contract and the emergence of a new social contract between workers and employers in the United States of America (US). In our paper, we will identify the forces of change that undermined the New Deal social contract during the post-World War II era and led to the reformulation of the workplace social contract in the US. It is our thesis that the transformation of the workplace social contract in the US significantly affected the resolution of employment …

Online Dispute Resolution Through The Lens Of Bargaining And Negotiation Theory: Toward An Integrated Model, David B. Lipsky, Ariel C. Avgar

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In this article we apply negotiation and bargaining theory to the analysis of online dispute resolution. Our principal objective is to develop testable hypotheses based on negotiation theory that can be used in ODR research. We have not conducted the research necessary to test the hypotheses we develop; however, in a later section of the article we suggest a possible methodology for doing so. There is a vast literature on negotiation and bargaining theory. For the purposes of this article, we realized at the outset that we could only use a small part of that literature in developing a …

The Arbitration Of Employment Disputes In The Securities Industry: A Study Of Finra Awards, 1986-2008, David B. Lipsky, Ronald L. Seeber, J. Ryan Lamare

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] This article reports on the results of our recent study of 3,200 arbitration awards issued in employment cases administered under the auspices of FINRA, its predecessor the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). It responds to Colvin’s call for more empirical research while providing some data on the debate over the fairness of mandatory employment arbitration agreements in the securities industry. After disclosing the limitations of our study and presenting our findings with regard to the FINRA cases, we consider how these findings bear on the debate about mandatory arbitration, specifically whether …

The Conflict Over Conflict Management, David B. Lipsky, Ariel C. Avgar

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In this article we look at the traditional approach to workplace conflict, the evolution of conflict management, criticism of this process by progressive and traditional critics, and then consider whether they can be reconciled by taking what we call a strategic view of conflict management in the workplace. This view calls for an alignment between the goals of the conflict management system and the overarching nature of the organization in which that system is implemented. The management of conflict, according to this approach, should complement the organization’s strategic posture and existing structures. We maintain that the level of fit …

Workplace Arbitration In The Current Economic Crisis, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In the midst of our economic crisis, arbitrators are facing unprecedented challenges. As the financial implosion has spread from Wall Street to Main Street, we are hearing cases that require us to decide issues the parties never anticipated when their arbitration programs were established. Take labor-management arbitration as an example. Unlike in the past, when labor arbitrators sometimes had to decide whether a layoff complied with the collective bargaining agreement, today they are addressing the repercussions of mass layoffs resulting from plant shutdowns. Similarly, in previous years, labor arbitrators frequently decided cases dealing with alleged infractions of Title VII …

Contemporary Issues In Employment Relations—A Roundtable, David Lewin, Adrienne E. Eaton, Thomas A. Kochan, David B. Lipsky, Daniel J. B. Mitchell, Paula B. Voos

David B Lipsky

For the 2006 LERA research volume, leading scholars were assembled in a roundtable for the purpose of eliciting their views on key contemporary industrial relations issues. The roundtable members were Adrienne E. Eaton, professor and director of labor extension in the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations; Thomas A. Kochan, the George M. Bunker Professor of Management and director of the Institute for Work and Employment Research in the MIT Sloan School of Management; David B. Lipsky, the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution and former dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University; …

Level-Of-Aspiration Theory And Initial Stance In Bargaining, Bruce K. Macmurray, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

This research focuses on the effect of initial stance in bargaining. Following level-of-aspiration theory, the research examines whether the pattern of early concession making modifies the impact of tough vs. soft initial stance. The experiment manipulated opponent's concession pattern (decreasing, constant, increasing) in the early phase of bargaining within an overall tough or soft initial stance. Results indicated that a decreasing concession pattern within the early bargaining extracted larger initial concessions than a constant or increasing concession pattern. Implications for Siegel and Fouraker's (1960) level-of-aspiration theory are discussed.

Contemporary Issues In Employment Relations—A Roundtable, David Lewin, Adrienne Eaton, Thomas Kochan, David Lipsky, Daniel Mitchell, Paula Voos

David Lewin

For the 2006 LERA research volume, leading scholars were assembled in a roundtable for the purpose of eliciting their views on key contemporary industrial relations issues. The roundtable members were Adrienne E. Eaton, professor and director of labor extension in the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations; Thomas A. Kochan, the George M. Bunker Professor of Management and director of the Institute for Work and Employment Research in the MIT Sloan School of Management; David B. Lipsky, the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution and former dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University; …

Power And Tactics In Bargaining, Samuel B. Bacharach, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

This paper develops and tests an analytical framework for analyzing the selection of tactics in bargaining. Using a variant of power-dependence theory, the authors propose that bargainers will use different dimensions of dependence, such as the availability of alternative outcomes from other sources and the value of the outcomes at stake, to select among different tactics. To test this model, the authors conducted two simulation experiments that portrayed an employee-employer conflict over a pay raise, manipulating four dimensions of dependence: employee's outcome alternatives, employee's outcome value, employer's outcome alternatives, and employer's outcome value. Within this context, respondents estimated the likelihood …

The Impact Of Case And Arbitrator Characteristics On Employment Arbitration Outcomes, Alexander Colvin, Kelly Pike

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] A major development in systems for the enforcement of individual employment rights is the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures to resolve claims by employees. At their best, ADR procedures may hold the potential for greater accessibility by employees to enforcement of substantive employment rights, while avoiding burdens of excessive costs for the public and employers in processing claims. On the other hand, ADR procedures, particularly mandatory employment arbitration procedures, have also been criticized for producing the privatization of justice and denial of effective enforcement of employee rights. In this paper, we present the results of a new …

Gerechtigkeit Ohne Gewerkschaft Und Betriebsrat? Konfliktschlichtung In Gewerkschaftsfreien Betrieben In Den Usa, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

Zu den Faktoren, die in jüngster Zeit in mehreren Ländern – insbesondere in den USA – zu einem Rückgang der Mitgliederzahlen der Gewerkschaften geführt haben, zählen Strategien des Human Resource Managements wie „nonunion arbitration“ (gewerkschaftsfreies Schiedsverfahren“. Arbeitgeber in nicht tarif- und gewerkschaftsgebundenen Betrieben führen solche „neuen Verfahren der Konfliktschlichtung“ (NVK) mit dem Ziel ein, einen Teilersatz für die gewerkschaftliche Interessenvertretung zu gewähren. Sie stellen eine besondere Herausforderung für die Gewerkschaften dar und machen die Anpassung ihrer Interessenvertretungsstrategien erforderlich. Zwei alternative Handlungsmöglichkeiten bieten sich an. Eine Möglichkeit besteht darin , solche NVK einfach mit dem Argument abzulehnen, dass es sich um …

Aligning Employees Through Line Of Sight, Wendy R. Boswell, John B. Bingham, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

Aligning employees with the firm’s larger strategic goals is critical if organizations hope to manage their human capital effectively and ultimately attain strategic success. An important component of attaining and sustaining this alignment is whether employees have “line of sight” to the organization’s strategic objectives. We illustrate how the translation of strategic goals into tangible results requires that employees not only understand the organization’s strategy, they must accurately understand what actions are aligned with realizing that strategy. Using recent empirical evidence, theoretical insights, and tangible examples of exemplary firm practices, we provide thought-leaders with a comprehensive view of LOS, how …