LABOUR IMPASSE
What is Labour Impasse?
Managers and trade unions inevitably arrive at the
bargaining table with different positions and interests.
These differences are most often resolved through dialogue
and negotiation. Nevertheless, there will be times when they
may find it difficult to reconcile their respective positions.
Even after a collective agreement has been concluded,
disputes may arise over its application and interpretation.
Sometimes after months of effort, the two sides find that
they remain so far apart that they see no way to reach an
agreement—a situation known as impasse.
In such cases, one of the two sides may try to put pressure on
the other to change their position by taking industrial action.
Industrial Action
Industrial action is defined as to include the following actions:
Employees performing work in a manner different to how it is
normally performed.
Employees adopting a practice that restricts, limits or delays the
performance of work.
A ban, limitation or restriction by employees on performing or
accepting work.
A failure or refusal by employees to attend for work or perform any
work.
The lockout of employees from their employment by their employer.
Types of Industrial Action
1. A Strike
The partial or complete concerted refusal to work, or the
retardation or obstruction of work, by persons who are
or have been employed by the same employer or by
different employers, for the purpose of remedying a
grievance or resolving a dispute in respect of any matter
of mutual interest between employer and worker, and
every reference to work in this definition includes
overtime work, whether it is voluntary or compulsory.
This type of industrial action is taken employees.
Types of Strikes
The following commonest forms of strike:
Wildcat strike: This form of strike is in violation of
contract and not authorized by the union because no
reason or notice is given to employer before embarking
on it.
Sit-down strike: This is type of strike involve workers
being present at work but literally not working.
Jurisdictional strikes – This is when there are more
unions in one working place and one union seeks to
have dominion over the other. The dominated union
will exert pressure on management to recognize it as
such.
Recognition Strike – With this kind of a strike, the
union mounts pressure on the employer to recognize
and start dealing with such a union.
Sympathy strike – A strike action taken by another
union in support of the other union as a way of
mounting pressure on management to give in and
compromise it’s position.
Constitutional strike: This refers to actions that
conform to the due procedure of the collective
agreement. The agreement usually specifies the time
and the procedure for conducting a strike by the
workers
Unconstitutional strikes: This is a strike action that
does not conform to the provisions of the collective
agreements or the relevant public policies.
2. A lockout
The exclusion by an employer of workers from the
employer’s workplace, for the purpose of compelling the
workers to accept a demand in respect of any matter of
mutual interest between employer and worker, whether
or not the employer breaches those workers’ contracts of
employment in the course of or for the purpose of that
exclusion.
3. Picketing
Action by employees or other persons to publicise the
existence of a labour dispute by patrolling or standing
outside or near the location where the dispute is taking
place, usually with placards indicating the nature of the
dispute.
The aim of picketing might simply be to communicate
the grievance to the public or it might be to persuade
other employees in that workplace not to work and to
take their side in the dispute, to persuade or pressurise
customers not to enter the workplace, to disrupt
deliveries or drum up public support.
4. Boycott
This is a tactic in which a union and its supporters and
sympathizers refuse to do business with the employer
during a labour dispute. Boycotts are legal as long as they
are limited to the products and services of the firm with
which the union has a direct dispute.