Labour arbitration and mediation where there is a union

The first reference in Puerto Rico’s statutes to bodies created to air and settle labour disputes is Ley Núm. 84 of 14 March 1912, which created a Labor Bureau; when labour arbitration took hold an arbitration section was created, and from that emerged, around 1951, the Conciliation and Arbitration Bureau. Its primary purpose is to carry out the public policy of fostering and maintaining labour peace. Both employers and unions request its services to resolve their disputes practically and democratically. Arbitration is a contractual procedure by which an employer or a union submits one or more controversies to an arbitrator; mediation is direct negotiation of the conflict between the parties with a neutral intervener who seeks to assist them; and conciliation is the process by which the parties obtain an objective, reasoned but non-binding evaluation of the conflict on its merits.

The NCA is the forum for labour disputes where a collective agreement exists: its services are requested by employers and unions. For arbitration, the sequence the Department describes starts from the union and employer having exhausted all remedies available within their collective agreement’s grievance committee. If you have no union and no collective agreement, this is not the route: the Labor Standards Bureau and the Mediation and Adjudication Office are the forums for the non-unionized private-sector employee.

• Having exhausted the remedies available within the collective agreement’s grievance committee, where the parties are obliged to make genuine efforts to resolve the complaints submitted.Verified against the official source
• Filing the Request for Designation or Selection of Arbitrators in harmony with the agreement’s provisions, especially the time limits it sets for filing the grievance or requesting the arbitrator.Verified against the official source

• The Request for Designation or Selection of Arbitrator, which the NCA publishes on its page along with the Regulation for the Interim Order of its Services, the Arbitrators’ Code of Ethics and the Room Use Request.

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   Step 1: Exhaust the grievance committee first

   Arbitration is not the first step. The union and the employer exhaust all remedies available within their collective agreement’s grievance committee, where they are obliged to make genuine efforts to resolve every complaint or controversy submitted for their consideration. Only if they cannot agree does the aggrieved party turn to arbitration.

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   Step 2: Look at the deadlines your agreement sets, not the law

   This is the most important thing in the whole guide, and it is why PRFácil cannot give you a number. The Request for Designation or Selection of Arbitrators is filed in harmony with the agreement’s provisions, especially the time limits it sets for filing the grievance or for requesting the arbitrator. The clock lives in your collective agreement. Find it, read it, and if you do not have it, ask your union for it before anything else.

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   Step 3: How the arbitrator is chosen

   It depends on what was agreed. In some agreements the parties have stipulated that the Secretary of Labor and Human Resources or the Director of the Conciliation and Arbitration Bureau will designate the arbitrator. Others incorporate a different mechanism: they ask the Bureau to send the parties a panel of arbitrators; on receiving it, each side strikes or challenges one of the names, and whoever remains is the selected arbitrator.

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   Step 4: The hearing and the award

   As soon as the arbitrator is informed of their designation or selection, they set the case, and do so well in advance of the hearing date so that the parties representing the union and the employer have enough time to prepare and bring all the oral or documentary evidence they consider relevant. Once the hearings conclude, the arbitrator analyses all the evidence received and issues the award. The decision is final and binding on the parties, and the arbitrator’s principal function ends with issuing it. The service is offered free of charge.

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   Step 5: Mediation: no form and no paperwork

   For mediation there is no form. The procedure is quick: as soon as one or both parties contact the Director by phone or letter, a mediator is assigned immediately, and afterwards a written communication is sent giving their name. The NCA also offers its availability to mediate on its own initiative when a disagreement, complaint, grievance or dispute arises, and responds to calls from employers or employees by every available means: phone, mail or in person. In most cases it is one of the parties that requests the intervention.

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   Step 6: Conciliation is not the same, and it does not bind

   It is worth not confusing them. In conciliation the parties obtain an objective, reasoned but non-binding evaluation of the conflict on its merits, based on the essential information, oral or written, that the parties submit to the conciliator. It is for parties whose interest is maintaining good labour relations in their workplaces and who meet with the conciliator to smooth things over. An arbitration award, by contrast, is final and binding.

Conciliation and Arbitration Bureau of the Department of Labor and Human Resources. For arbitration, file the Request for Designation or Selection of Arbitrators. For mediation there is no form: you call or write to the Director. To use the rooms, the parties request them by phone or written communication and they are reserved subject to availability; to request a mediator as a resource for a conference, a written communication is sent to the Director.

• Going to arbitration without having exhausted the agreement’s grievance committee.
• Looking for the deadline in a statute instead of in the collective agreement, which is where it lives.
• Confusing conciliation with arbitration: the first does not bind, the award does.
• Looking for a form to request mediation when none exists.
• Arriving at the hearing without oral or documentary evidence, when the arbitrator sets it in advance precisely to give time to prepare.
• Taking an individual claim with no union or collective agreement to the NCA.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Departamento del Trabajo y Recursos Humanos (DTRH)

  Departamento del Trabajo

  www.trabajo.pr.gov