6.4 Social partnership and the delivery of a flexible system of dispute resolution
Over the past two decades, successive governments have developed a social partnership approach to labour market and wider economic governance (O’Donnell and Thomas, 1998). A great deal has been written about the Irish model of social partnership, much of which is either overly supportive or overly critical. This is not the place to rehearse these positions, but it is probably safe to say that the actual impact of social partnership lies somewhere between two extremes. When the first social partnership agreement was signed in 1987 the main motivation driving it was: a) to reduce the employment relations instability that was a feature of the Irish economy in the early-mid eighties; and b) to incorporate employers and unions into a broad coalition to address the country’s dire economic problems. Since those early days, social partnership has evolved at both the national and enterprise level although it is fair to say that the former is more advanced than the latter.
At the national level, the social partnership framework has undoubtedly played a key role in the country’s spectacular
economic and employment performance during the past decade. It has also positively contributed to a more stable and orderly employment relations environment, particularly in the private sector. The peak organisations of business and workers, IBEC and ICTU, appear to interact with one another in new ways. In particular, both organisations appear disposed to developing common policy positions not simply through a process of hard bargaining but also through problem-solving interactions that aim to devise solutions identified through a process of analysis and dialogue. These deliberative exchanges have brought considerable benefits. Firstly, they have revealed more information about the strengths and weaknesses of existing methods and procedures designed to organise the labour market. Secondly, improved quality of decision-making has occurred on particular policy matters (for example, pensions provision). In a nutshell, this has allowed shared understandings to emerge between business and labour about the economic threats and opportunities facing modern Ireland.
At the enterprise level, the main thrust behind the diffusion of partnership has been to promote a greater degree of mutuality in employee-management interactions. No blueprint or design plan has driven this activity. Instead, it has evolved in a highly pragmatic manner, influenced as much as anything by a desire to build consensus-making procedures inside the employment relations system. The vision promoted of enterprise partnership saw managers and workers sharing more information with each other, creating project teams to bring improvements to the organisation and its working environment, listening more intently to each other’s concerns and working to strengthen informal processes that would allow them to cooperate more closely together (Greenhaugh and Chapman, 1995). Enterprise partnership was seen as much about developing an ethos of problem solving amongst managers and employees as building new institutional procedures inside organisations (O’Donnell and Teague, 2001).
No systematic evidence exists about the scale of the diffusion of enterprise partnerships and what they actually do. The available research suggests that enterprise partnerships normally arise in the private sector when an organisation is
• facing an imminent threat of closure
• launching a corporate restructuring programme and thus eager to gain the support of the workforce
• seeking to leave behind a period of poor employment relations
• and/or influenced by the leadership of a dedicated group of people, normally a coalition of trade union officers and managers, who carry sway inside the organisation.
In the public sector, social partnership principles have been diffused to help advance the modernisation of government services. Many arrangements have been established at a variety of levels in the public sector, but in an uneven manner. Departmental partnership committees in some instances are still searching for a modus operandi. Some of the factors causing this fragmented picture were explored in the previous chapter. Overall, the consensus is that the principles of social partnership have been more effective at the national level than at the enterprise level. There is a growing feeling that enterprise partnerships are losing their way both in the public and private sectors.
Yet the social partnership structures that have been established could be harnessed to meet the challenge of creating an up-to-date flexible system of dispute resolution. Consider the idea of creating a responsive regime of labour law regulation that would encourage dispute resolution inside organisations yet still permit employees to use public agencies to seek redress to an alleged infringement of an employment right. Responsive regulation promotes the private enforcement of public employment law. Conditional deregulation of this kind runs the danger of employers creating organisational- level dispute regulations systems that are rigged in their favour. To reduce this possibility employees should be closely involved in the design, delivery and monitoring of such systems, and so employee involvement or participation is a crucial element to a responsive regulation regime of dispute resolution. Enterprise partnerships are well positioned to perform this role and can act as the verifier that any new dispute resolution arrangement has the support of the workforce and is being implemented in a fair and efficient manner. Where the system is not performing properly then the enterprise partnership, or at least the employee representatives on this body, can act as whistleblowers. Enterprise partnership can become the fulcrum of a system that encourages the resolution of disputes through alternative and innovative methods, but ensures that such arrangements are not overly biased in favour of employers.
A feature of the Irish social partnership framework is the presence of a range of organisations charged with promoting these arrangements. For example, the National Centre for Partnership and Performance (NCPP) exists to promote the idea of partnership at all levels within the Irish economy. In addition, a number of training organisations have been jointly established by IBEC and ICTU to provide managers and employees with the skills to set-up and operate partnerships arrangements. These bodies could do more to promote pro-active forms of dispute resolution. For example, the NCPP could link more with the Equality Tribunal or the Labour Relations Commission to design initiatives whereby enterprise partnership arrangements could play a role in in-house dispute resolution arrangements. Invariably this type of activity would require these enabling bodies to think creatively about new and experimental forms of dispute resolution which would oblige a closer assessment of the mechanisms used to handle workplace grievances in the non-union sector. This paper clearly sees organisations such as NCPP having a leading role to play in the promotion of learning between the union and non-union sectors on disputes resolution.
A criticism of the development of social partnership in the public sector made in chapter 4 was that it was not strongly enough tied either to the collective bargaining system or the HRM function and was caught in no man’s land between the two. This paper argues that partnership arrangements are likely to remain stunted in this situation as management and unions remain confused about what partnership arrangements are meant to do. Clarion calls for the use of enterprise partnerships to deliver better performance in the public service are unlikely to reverse this situation. Partnership can only positively contribute to the upgrading of organisational performance in the public sector if it is properly integrated into the collective bargaining and human resource management systems. To have a system where managers insist that developing partnership cannot intrude into their right to manage, where unions insist that partnership must be kept at arms length from collective bargaining activity, and yet partnership is given a mandate to bring about improved organisational performance, is a recipe for either deadlock or for weak partnership arrangements.
Partnership will only assist in the endeavour to modernise public services if it gives rise to meaningful joint manager/
employee initiatives, or problem-solving processes that reduce barriers to improved performance. This means intruding on the way collective bargaining is conducted and the methods managers use to make decisions. Connecting partnership with collective bargaining would open the door for a concerted initiative on integrative bargaining. Integrative bargaining is an attempt to weaken adversarial behaviour that is often associated with distributive bargaining. It also helps to dissolve the artificial barrier between dispute resolution and dispute prevention. Using partnership arrangements in the public sector as a vehicle to promote an alternative system of collective bargaining behaviour would not only help address the identified problem of adversarialism but would also help breathe new life into structures that are widely perceived to be flagging. The overall message is that a wider view must be taken of dispute resolution and partnership is an integral part of the picture.