The Labour Relations Commission and the Labour Court work at solving industrial disputes after discussions at local level have met with no success, writes John Downes.

Imagine you had a problem with somebody at school and, despite your best efforts, neither of you could manage to resolve your differences.

Imagine then that there was a voluntary system which allowed both of you to sit down and talk through your differences with someone from outside your school specially trained to facilitate this process.

Imagine if, even after all this, you still could not arrive at a reconciliation, and you could go to an independent judge who would consider both of your arguments and then issue a judgment which you could choose to agree or disagree with.

Not a bad idea, eh? Well, the scenario outlined above pretty much describes how Ireland's Labour Relations Commission (LRC) and Labour Court processes work.

"I'd say 90 per cent of our work is industrial disputes," explains Mr Raymond McGee, director of the conciliation service of the LRC.

"That does not mean strikes, but any situation where there is a dispute. We usually deal with groups of workers, employers and their representatives."

Some of the typical areas where problems might arise in the workplace include pay, overall remuneration, and conditions of employment: basically, anything affecting people's working lives.

Before a dispute reaches the LRC, there first has to be local discussions between the parties involved.

Mr McGee believes the LRC's role is very much an extension of these local discussions, albeit with the added benefit of an outside conciliator to try to help the process along.

There are two clear and distinct stages to the Labour relations process: conciliation and the Labour Court. Importantly, participation in the system is entirely voluntary.

"We will come in at a date, time and venue suiting them. We will listen to both sides, and then when we are happy we have heard everything, we will separate the two sides.

"I find people will always tell you more when the other side go outside the room. So we will engage with them separately," says Mr McGee.

"We use techniques to try to push them towards one another. Conciliation is the art of compromise. No one ever wins or loses but they compromise."

At the end of the conciliation phase, there can be a number of outcomes.

First, the problem can be settled at conciliation; otherwise, the conciliation/industrial relations officer will put a set of proposals to the parties in the hope that they can agree to resolve their dispute; and, finally, if this has still not achieved accord, the matter can be referred to the Labour Court which will ultimately issue a recommendation.

The Labour Court, however, is very much a court of last resort, according to Mr McGee. Indeed, he underlines the fact that some 82 per cent of disputes are settled at conciliation stage.

So why is it so important that the process is voluntary?

"The operation of the institutions is reliant on the goodwill of the parties with regards to co-operation with the procedures - and a willingness to accept the findings of it," explains Mr Brendan McGinty, director of human resources with the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC).

"I think it would be fair to say that there has been a creeping finality to the process, however," he believes.

"Where historically industrial relations issues would have been voluntary, in certain areas parties would have agreed to resolutions being binding."

Examples of these would be successive social partnership agreements, where parties agree that the decisions of the outside arbitrator are final.

On the legislative side, rights commissioners also have the ability to offer binding decisions on certain aspects of employment law.

"We would always be of the view that there is a need for the Labour Court to be seen as a court of last resort," Mr McGinty adds.

"That ultimately is what drove us to reach a binding process. It emphasises our capacity to come up with solutions within the existing industrial relationships," he says.

Having a relatively stable industrial relations process also has a knock-on effect on the health of the economy, Mr McGinty adds, although this is something which is not always recognised.

"It would be fair to say that the ability of the LRC and the Labour Court to facilitate reaching agreement is extremely high and they should be commended about that," he says.

"We need to have a system whereby issues at enterprise level can be resolved.

"Any organisation looking to invest in Ireland will profile a whole range of benchmarks," he says.

"One of these would be the capacity for the resolution of disputes. And they certainly have found that the dispute settling mechanism \ has been effective."