IF there is one thing the recent spate of industrial unrest has shown us it is that personalities can always get in the way and the finely tuned industrial relations mechanisms devised thirty plus years ago get neglected or become an after-thought in the hub-bub of exchanges that define the modern industrial dispute.
Many of the individuals at the heart of the current disputes have little experience of engaging in the resolution of industrial relations unrest of this magnitude. This is not a criticism but rather an observation about what needs to be in and out of “the room”.
So in the first instance it is necessary to look at the “p” words and in the fine tradition of “Blockbusters” I can say “I’ll have a P please Bob” (a dated cultural reference for those of a certain vintage!)
:: Poker faces may abound but the impact of ego, brinkmanship, power-plays and the use of the media needs to be balanced against the realities of dated collective agreements with antiquated dispute resolution clauses and pay review bodies that have become increasingly under the spotlight having moved from their original terms of reference.
:: Personalities have their part to play but it is vital that the persona in the room is not the ideologue wedded to positional negotiation with no possibility of what is termed “wriggle room”. The ripple effect of hard-nosed negotiation will soon become apparent when previous moderates become radicalised and politicised and set the tone for all future industrial relations.
:: Processes need to be examined and the choreography needs to be appropriate. The dispute resolution mechanisms in collective disputes in the UK generally are hindered by “failure to agree” clauses which are hampered by a lack of necessary precision and contemporary processes requiring parties to engage in a principled process of resolution.
:: Positions are always good to have but not necessarily carved into celestial stone as a degree of compromise is always a feature of dispute resolution and rarely if ever is the a “split the difference” mind-set when the stakes are so high.
:: Practical experience of high level collective bargaining and dispute resolution in the UK has become somewhat of a lost art and in the absence of corporate memory and faded blueprints for chartering a course to resolution means that parties revert to “toeing a certain line” or “saving face” as listed priorities.
:: Parameters both in terms of codes of practice and behavioural governance need to be clear and precise so that the ground rules are clear to all. In recent years it has been the unfamiliar face of the superior courts that define when an impasse has been reached and dispute mechanisms exhausted and this is not the natural order of collective negotiation.
:: Penalties for getting it wrong in sectoral disputes can extract a high price with relationships soured and reverse gear impossible to find and everything else looking like a climb-down. Today’s failures to resolve merely add bricks to walls of tomorrows disputes.
A plethora of other “p” words could be included with everything from procrastination and posturing through to polemics and politicking, but the one I want to finish with is peace in the industrial sense of course. Industrial peace looks some way off just now and there are so many forests that the wood is rarely in sight.
Enter the honest broker, with eyes on wood and trees alike they offer a wooden table to sit at and a fresh pair of eyes to see where the peace could be.
:: Mark McAllister is director of employment relations services at the Labour Relations Agency (LRA)
