Intervening in Collective Labor Conflicts: A cross-cultural approach to mediating in organizational conflict

Collective conflicts are an inevitable part of organizational live. Escalation of these conflicts make the daily news, with strikes or other collective actions, as part of negotiating CLA, or in response to downsizing, work pressures, or changing working conditions. The tensions between the interests and rights of employees, management, and owners, being shareholders or public agents can easily escalate into destructive levels. For that reason, societies develop legal frameworks to regulate these conflicts, for example the right to go on strike. An important element in these regulations is the role of third parties to end the conflict, being either through arbitrage, the court or through the use of mediation. This round table focusses on the role of mediation in the prevention and regulation of collective labor conflicts. We focus on organizational conflicts, that is the level of the company or local entity, as setting of the conflict. This round table explores the current forms of third party intervention, and especially mediation, around the globe, based on a new handbook to be published fall 2018, containing original studies from 18 countries. We open up the black box of mediation in collective conflicts. Who are these mediators, and what do they actually do? Secondly, we present good practices and policies to promote the use of mediation, both in preventing and resolving costly conflicts. Thirdly, this round table aims to explore how mediation can be used to promote a constructive social dialogue in organizations in different cultural contexts.