How mediation can help resolve workplace conflicts and improve relationships between employees and employers.
In the employment relationship, conflict is inevitable, given that it underlies the origin of the employment relationship. Or, put another way, the employment relationship is the basis of conflict and the long-term solution. The interests of the company and the workers are by nature opposite. It is therefore a complex relationship and we should not fall into certain currents of thought that preach that the ideal job is one in which there are no conflicts. Although it may seem strange, a work relationship without conflict is far from being a healthy and productive work relationship.
He Job issue It is, above all, the manifestation of a discrepancy between the subjects of the employment relationship regarding one or more of the working conditions that constitute it. Therefore, the expression of this manifestation is key to considering the existence of the conflict. Although it is vital to understand that labor conflict is always accompanied by the perception that the desires, positions, interests and values of the company and the worker are incompatible, with the limits of labor conflict being avoidance and violence.
Therefore, labor conflict can manifest itself in different stages of evolution, making it prudent to classify it so that its identification is clearer.
Types of labor disputes:
Depending on the number of workers affected, the conflict will be:
Individual: When it affects a single worker. Ex: A claim from a worker for commissions owed.
Plural: When it affects a group of workers considered singularly. What would be a sum of individual conflicts. Ex: The sum of individual claims of several workers for commissions due.
Collective: When it affects a group of workers as a group, regardless of their particular interests. The claim of the works council for the improper application of commissions due to the sales team of a company.
By virtue of the subject matter of the conflict:
Legal: The discrepancy about the interpretation of a norm or its application. Both of legal and conventional origin. Ex: How to pay a bonus for family assistance established in the applicable collective agreement.
Of interests: When, in the absence of a standard, the parties to the employment relationship cannot agree on how to resolve the situation. Ex: What increase should be applied when there is no applicable salary table for the current year agreed in the collective agreement.
Thus, we can find different situations of labor conflict:
- Manifest Conflict. Ex: A claim before the social jurisdiction.
- Latent Conflict. Ex: Failure to update salary tables.
- Real Conflict: Ex: The presentation of a request for collective mediation regarding the behavior of the new company in a case of subrogation regarding certain rights that are considered consolidated by the workers.
- Known differences: Knowledge of the positions of the company and the works council regarding how to deal with a negative economic situation. Ex: Address an ERE.
- Unreal Conflict: Situation in which one party understands that the other is not willing to address a situation without having discussed it. Ex: The implementation of an equality plan in the company.
- Erroneous communication or wrong perception between the parties of the employment relationship: That one of the parties perceives from the statements of the other that they consider a matter closed because it is annoying or inopportune to continue discussing it. Ex: Not addressing the request to modify the vacation shifts, because the real interest of certain workers who did not seem aggrieved with the maintenance of last year's vacation shifts was misunderstood.
For all this, it is necessary in the work order to understand the reality of the conflict. We should not focus on the effects and consequences of the conflict, but rather we must focus on the causes and problems that generate the conflict.
In the labor conflict, positions, objectives, positions, perceptions, needs and interests of both parties are intertwined and displayed simultaneously, so it will be essential to carry out this prior work of clearing some issues from others. From the positions it will be very difficult to resolve, or even address, the labor conflict. On the other hand, based on interests and needs we will find common points that will allow us to deal with the conflict appropriately and resolve it.
Hence the importance of the person in charge of carrying out labor mediation and their use of the necessary tools to manage the conflict.
Let's quote the basic ones:
Create an appropriate atmosphere of empathy.
Clarify perceptions.
Humanize the opponent: encourage the language of needs and interests.
Promote the language of responsibility versus that of guilt: facilitating reconciliation.
Project towards the future, recognizing and learning from the past.
Identify and develop feasible ones gradually.
If possible, develop verbal or written agreements beneficial to all parties involved.
Mediation, unlike other means of conflict resolution, shows that each conflict has a unique character and is determined by the personalities and biographies of those who participate in it, the nature of the discrepancies, the economic background and of the thinking of the negotiators. It is necessary for the success of the mediator to act with the courage of one who resists the “here and now”, to exercise the discretion of one who assumes that he is “a means and not a protagonist”, to know how to create bridges and anticipate the good and the bad. bad of agreements from the knowledge of human relationships, placing itself in the place from which the perceptions and values of the parties can be ascertained with the precise dose of impartiality and neutrality. Without forgetting the knowledge of how labor relations work, regulations, collective bargaining and the solutions found in similar conflicts.
In this way, it will be possible to overcome the resistance and mistrust of the subjects in conflict who disagree on basic issues that condition their relationship (salary, working time, work/family life balance, workload, modifications to the employment relationship, collective bargaining, union presence , etc).
And the employment relationship is a balancing exercise in which mediation acts as a witness to the balance. Let us therefore use the balance of precision that mediation entails and let us not be carried away by the temptation to measure something as complex as the employment relationship.
If you want to train in labor mediation, enroll in the International Mediation School.
